Category: Recipe

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Everything Substituted Spice Carrot Cake

This recipe started as an experiment to see if I could make a gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free cake. We also had a lot of carrots, since my little girl loves buying carrots at our grocer. So it was only natural to combine the two and make a delicious and light carrot cake.

This cake is lovely on its own, but it is even better with the vanilla-cream and nutmeg icing. I had trouble taking really good pictures of this cake, and tried a few times – each time I had less cake to work with (over the course of 48 hours), because it was extremely popular and everyone kept gobbling it up!
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Gluten and Dairy-Free Chinese Beef Buns

Whenever I walk past a Chinese restaurant, I tend to get a little sad because of all the lovely food I can no longer eat. I particularly miss the lovely steamed buns which are springy and glutinous and soft inside. So in desperation, I checked online to see if there were any recipes that were able to show me how to make a gluten, dairy and yeast free Chinese bun. Nada. (Of course I was hungry, so it’s possible there’s one out there somewhere.) Thinking about how my bread mix doesn’t have yeast in it but does rise, I decided to experiment, and it worked!

These buns are so close to my memory of what Chinese buns should be it’s scary. There were a few hiccups along the way, as I misjudged the length of time they would need to steam and had to do some bun-surgery. I also created some wonderful carbon when the steam-water ran out and charcoaled in the steamer. Very lucky escape that one – and the buns weren’t hurt either!

This is so worth giving a try – you may need to fiddle around with the quantities for making the buns till you get them just right. I will be doing these ones again as they were a hit, so I’ll be able to let you know if they continue to work.
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Lamb and Sweet Potato Curry

This is a nice, simple and quick curry that we have started to make a bit – it’s a variation on a coconut cream-and tomato based curry – that has neither ingredient!

This one can also be made vegetarian, just add carrot, Kumara, potato and/or parsnips instead of meat. It’s also good with other stew-type vegetables – like tomatoes, or green, canellini, or kidney beans. Though it’s best not to try it with broccoli or zucchini. Shudder. This can be made quite hot, but we tend to keep it mild for the kids. This recipe has had some success on the children-will-eat front.
It should take about 1/2- 3/4 of an hour to put together. Don’t forget to have with rice or thick fresh bread.
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Gluten and Dairy-Free Train Wheel-Piston Cake

I was going to write more about our NZ trip, and I will next week, but today is recipe day, so I’m going to run through how I made C’s 7th Birthday cake. Seven? How did that happen? And after convincing him that I couldn’t design a cake with the cake-wheels on edge with an axle in between that would move, I worked through some sketches of train wheels till I had executive approval for this design.

It’s two train wheels, with a piston sitting on a train track in a coal yard. And as far as cakes go, this one wasn’t the hardest I have ever made. Working with fondant is like working with playdoh. Though it does taste rather commercial – next time I will be experimenting with different flavours but I ran out of time this year. I also think the cakes would be improved with the add‭itions of a jam layer – something tart, like apricot, so I will be experimenting with that too at a later date.

Anyway, enjoy the chaos!
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Campervanning Across New Zealand on the 2e Bandwagon: Soothing The Sensitivities

Campervanning Across New Zealand on the 2e Bandwagon: Soothing Sensitivities, yellowreadis.com. Image: Campervan in farmland with blue sky

It started as a dream 7 years ago, and a then, a few months ago we decided, why not? It was the same cost to fly to New Zealand as to fly and visit rellies interstate … we would live our dream.

So off to NZ we went. We had a whole list of things on our to do list. But dragging a toddler and primary schooler around NZ with as little stress as possible? That was the challenge.

Today I am going to go through the things that worked, and the things that didn’t.
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