Cookbookmaniac
  • 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…

  • Doughnut French Toast by Nigella Lawson
    Doughnut French Toast by Nigella Lawson
    Cheap Eats Recipes

    Midnight munchies. Has there been any research into whether midnight owl syndrome is genetically hereditary? It seems that everyone in my family, with the exception of my dear father, are at their most active when the sun has set and clock hands are hitting the 12. There use to be all 6 girls living under one roof. Imagine this... One sister has gone downstairs to make herself a sandwich, she opens the fridge and another one hears the gush of the door. She also heads downstairs and starts cooking some instant noodles. Another sister is on her way to the bathroom and the scent of the instant noodles is dancing in the air, she heads downstairs and re-heats last nights dinner. Another sister hears the beeping of the microwave and decides to have breakfast for supper, so she fries up some eggs and bacon. I wonder what all the murmuring…

  • 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…