Hobbies and interests of Carly Gooch
Things in life
I spent the morning in the kitchen. I forgot how much fun it is as recently I have had a lot of other pressures and the kitchen isn’t much fun in summer.
I made pumpkin soup and the start of my daring baker’s challenge (yes I will actually complete this one)
I then went to watch the planes fly overhead and had an interesting conversation with a neighbour. Both her son’s are in the aviation industry and her father was an airforce pilot.
So the weekend’s plan was to spend Saturday cleaning & cooking to entertain my parents and uncle in law on the Sunday. We chucked the plan out the window to allow the newest member of the family some time to settle into his new home. So lunch turned into a BBQ and Birthday dessert turned into cupcakes and I gained a few free hours to catch up on some work. An extra benefit was a chance to catch up with our nieces who came to visit the puppy too.
Now time for the awwww pictures…
Click the button with the arrows to go to a full screen slideshow
And my cupcakes…
We had the wonderful joy of joining Andrew’s parents in welcoming their new puli to Brisbane. He is very adorable and it was hard to say goodbye. Looking forward to more cuddles tomorrow.
We are off to the park this afternoon and I figured muffins might be a nice addition to our trip. I asked my husband if he wanted blueberry and raspberry or just blueberry. His reply was “just blueberry, with chocolate chips and no blueberries” (cheeky!)
So I split the batter and made some blueberry and some choc chips. I made mini ones because a full muffin is often too filling.
I used this raspberry and blueberry muffin recipe with the addition cup of flour, extra egg and 1/4 cup less sugar suggested in the comments. The final product is nice and moist but not dense, just like a muffin should be.
I’m not sure if the choc chip ones will last until this afternoon as my husband seemed very pleased with them.
In other news, my baking mojo has been interrupted recently with my doctor’s bombshell announcement that I had to go get tested for insulin resistance. I’ve been recenly diagnosed with another condition and the two are often linked. At 27 it really scared me and was one of those moments that you realise your not invincible – especially when I found out a few family members have it. I’m not overweight, have never smoked, don’t drink, eat reasonably healthy and exercise but there is still a lot of room for improvement. So after finding time to do the 2 hour test at the blood collection center and waiting impatiently for the results, I’m not insulin resistant at the moment (phew) but I still will be taking a lot more thought with my eating and excercise.
I had the honour of making my godson’s birthday cake for his party this morning. I put on my engineering hat and armed with cake, icing and lollies constructed the cake last night and early this morning.
I must credit some of the success of this cake to our new fridge. A few weeks ago we upgraded from a 250L fridge/freezer to a 520L fridge/freezer and I’m over the moon with all the space we have as I could cool the 3 cakes worth of cake and store the completed cake without any issues. So here is the cake in the fridge. You can also just see my ‘baking’ shelf where all my butter, cream cheese etc is stored – I’m so spoilt!
My car, train, plane (well any vehicle) mad godson LOVED the cake. We arrived to find him in tears and completely covered in the bark from the playground that he had just faceplanted into. As soon as he saw the cake the crying stopped replaced by happy squeels of toot toot. He insisted on driving the train on the track. The cake was large enough to cut and serve from the other side of the cake 😉
And the wreckage… complete with fingers through the icing.
The cake is chocolate with chocolate buttercream icing for the main part. The blue and green icing is fluffy frosting from the womens weekly book or more commonly known as italian meringue. It was fresh so still a little soft. The gold rocks are home made honeycomb left over from the honeycomb icecream cake.
On a side note, we all went to the Ipswich railway museum yesterday. It is a wonderful place for kids (toddlers to us bigger ones) and I highly recommend going while the thomas exhibit is on for any Thomas fans. We now have an annual membership so are looking forward to more fun trips filled.