Cookbookmaniac
  • Chocolate Pear Pudding by Nigella Lawson
    Chocolate Pear Pudding by Nigella Lawson
    Baking Recipes

    I love corner shops, they have always been there for me. I could always count on them to have enough lollies, chips and ice cream to make me grin like a spoilt child. They were perfect for the after school snack of pies and sausage rolls in my teenage years. They were the place to get the newspaper and magazine for the bus/train ride to work as a young adult. I also love the corner shop because whenever I have a craving and want to make something simple and quick... I can simply duck over to the little shop around the corner. No need to start the engine of the car. No need to dress nicely. Sure its much more expensive, but the convenience is far more important when you just want a homemade chocolate cookie fix. The corner shop became my hero when I decided to pull this together…

  • Hot Cross Buns by Nigella Lawson – Happy Easter!
    Hot Cross Buns by Nigella Lawson – Happy Easter!
    Baking Recipes

    House hunting. Patience is not a virtue of mine. If things aren't happening fast enough, a little voice inside my head starts panicking. I go into anxiety mode and either drop the whole thing altogether or scramble to try harder to get what I want. Looking for a house to buy has taught me a lot about patience. Pizzaboy and I have been house hunting for over a year now and it has tested me so me many times. Real estate agents, property prices and home loans have cluttered much of our conversations with friends and family since our venture into lifetime debt. I knew from the beginning it wouldn't be easy. We don't have all the money in the world to get what we want, and beggars can't be choosers... but we want a beautiful home, a gorgeous kitchen, a cool bathroom, a relaxing lounge room. So many things…

  • Madeleines – Marcel Proust and his heavenly cookies
    Baking Recipes

    Marcel Proust unintentionally immortalized madeleines in his novel Remembrance of Things Past. He vividly describes the moment in which he dips these sweet scalloped-shaped cakes into his tea and how it magically brought back warm memories of his childhood. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters…