Easter Sunday

After the morning session at Katoomba, we drove to the cousins’ for an Esater egg hunt. When you are dealing with such a range of ages, it is best to have the collected eggs dropped in a basket for fair distribution at the end. For a start, poor old Huw was asleep.

I hid 25 eggs and, despite making the hiding spots fairly obvious, we had quite a job finding them all.

And quite a job keeping everyone from scoffing them straight away.

We went up the Leura village and popped in to the book fair. I bought a copy of Samuel Butler’s The Way of all Flesh (having recognised the title from A Room with a View – can anyone else remember Mr Beebe looking at George’s books?) and a Daphne Du Maurier omnibus. Speaking of books, I have read Muriel Barbery’s The Gourmet, Helen Garner’s The Spare Room, Mary Ann Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and potato Peel Pie Society and……. Twilight. Jossie is desperate to see the movie so I thought I had better check it out. You know, I really didn’t mind it, how embarrassing. Briony lent it to me and she lent us the DVD as well. Jossie and I watched it on my laptop last night. It didn't suck either.

Offline

Oh, it has been so long. We have been offline so I have been unable to share the joys of our holiday so far. We have been away since the first of April and have just arrived home, but I will start from the beginning.

On Thursday the first we drove to Leura to stay with our cousins, Teen, Guy, Briony, Hamish and Huw. We haven’t seen them for a long while and enjoy their company so much, we were really looking forward to it. We were in the mountains for Katoomba Easter Convention, the first time we have been in many years. As we drove into the car park on the morning of Good Friday, we told Jossie that we last came up when she was a baby and we spent a lot of time with the Hamiltons. Not five minutes later we saw Dave Hamilton as we lined up to sign the kids into the kids programme!

How do I describe Katoomba conventions? Three thousand people gather in a very large shed to hear well-known preachers teach God’s word. The singing is a wonderful experience, the teaching is challenging, uplifting and thought provoking and you run into all sorts of people you haven’t seen for years. There are kids programmes for children of all ages, and our children had such a good time. Morning tea is provided, though I tended to line up at the real coffee cart instead J

The morning session has two talks, this Easter they were from John Lennox, a maths professor from Oxford and Stephen Um, a minister from Boston. John Lennox was born in Ireland so his accent was a pleasure to listen to. I knew I was going to find Stephen Um’s less appealing but he won me over by apologising for it straight away. We spent the afternoons with the cousins, relaxing, walking to Leura village and even taking the odd nanna nap.

There was a good deal of handball action.

And a bunny, named Kenny, for Bethany.

Huw kept everyone amused with his happy nature and funny faces.

Five extra people puts a lot of pressure on a household, so after two mights with the cousins, we went to housemind around the corner.

We still spent lots of time with the cousins, we just weren’t quite so much in the way!

Fabulous Food Adventure

I finished work this afternoon at 3pm. I picked the kids up from school and we are now on holidays until the 19th of April! Tomorrow we're driving to Leura where we will stay while we go to Easter Convention. We'll stay an extra day in the Blue Mountains, for chocolate shops, cafés and bush walks before heading down to Sydney for a few days. Andrew, Jossie and Toby are going to the Royal Easter Show while Bethany and I go on a food adventure.

I'm thinking we might go to The Rocks and visit La Renaissance. We could eat this....

Or this......

Or this.....

But I could also go to Zumbo's, whose website has much bigger pictures, and eat this...

Or this.....

Or this.....

Macarons are available at both places. Which shall I choose? Would anyone like to come on an adventure on Thursday the 8th?

A day in town

One of the great things about working in public libraries is the professional development. The State Library puts on plenty of training and subsidises travel for regional and rural library staff. On Tuesday Chrissie and I went to Sydney for a readers advisory seminar about crime fiction at the State Library called Murder in the Metcalfe.

These days in Sydney are very long. Having made school lunches the night before I was able to sleep until 5am but Chrissie got up at 4. She picked me up at 5.40 and we caught the 6.30 flight.

We landed in Sydney at 7.30 and caught a train to Museum before walking through Hyde Park. I love the living corridor of towering trees, so peaceful in the middle of the city.

First stop, the Lindt Café. Carrying these bags around all day prompted many others to pop in on their way home.

This is what we bought. The original plan had been to have a delicious breakfast at La Renaissance, on Kristy's recommendation, but we were given rather more to eat on the plane than we expected and also didn't have as much time as we thought. So, we bought these macarons for later and had coffee.

No sprinkling of powdered drinking chocolate on skinny cappuccinos at the Lindt Café. There was a delicious puddle of real chocolate in the bottom of my cup.

Fortified with caffeine we wandered down Macquarie Street to the State Library. The seminar was great and we learnt a great deal about the many sub-genres of crime fiction and got some great ideas. Neither of us read much crime, though I enjoy watching it. I learnt that I like cosy crime which is when the murders happen "off screen" and the focus is more on characters and settings. Midsomer Murders (or the books they are based on) and Agatha Christie are cosy crime.

The last time I went to the State Library I'm sure we were sent out to find our own lunch, Japanese, of course. This time, we were given lunch and a short break. Having been up for so long did make the session straight after lunch a tough hard to stay awake in and we we very grateful when it was afternoon tea time but the doors were locked - they had forgotten to order afternoon tea! So, when we finished early, we headed down to the QVB for a necessary pick me up.

We shared pistachio and lemon friands.

Not real chocolate, but still good. We got sushi at the airport and were home at 8.30. I had eaten two macarons by 9 :)

Party Time

We had three invitations for Saturday morning so I asked Jossie and Bethany which party they would like to go to. Thankfully, as is was the one that we were all invited to, they both chose Jack's.

There was a jumping castle!

If you enlarge the photo above you will see the bubble machine.

There was so much delicious food. Kristy made sausage rolls and I made Belinda Jeffery's cheddar biscuits and lemon cheesecake slice.

I love Gumby, he shows up in such odd places.

Jossie enjoyed Kristy's wig.

Kristy made an excellent Shawn the Sheep cake.

Jack blew out the candles.....

And promptly ate Shawn's eyes.

Bethany ate a fair bit of hoof which was pure, black fondant....delicious. We had a lovely time and needed all afternoon to recover. Today I went to Sydney for work but I'll post about that later, now to bed.

Crazy Hair Day

Bethany's class is, of course, learning the alphabet. They are learning H at the moment and celebrated with crazy hair and hat day.

Bethany woke up super excited because we have a can of hair spray.

Mim gave it to us after she went to the Book Week parade as Anne of Green Gables.

We received four party invitations for this weekend, three of the parties being held on Saturday morning. The madness began this evening when I drove Jossie to a party at five, went home for a little bit to wash Bethany's hair....twice, drove Toby to Kids' Club at six, went home for a little bit, picked Jossie up from the party at seven and took her to Kids' Club and then, in lieu of going home for another little bit, went for an affogato with Narelle before picking up Joss and Tobes at eight and taking them home.

Jossie had her face painted at the party and then had her make-up and hair done at Kids' Club where they had secret men's business (involving fire and sport) and girls' stuff.

Tomorrow we're off to Jack's party - the winner of the three options. There's going to be a jumping castle and everything.

Nigella's Chocolate Marsala Cake

I love to make birthday cakes, any excuse at all to bake. I especially like making cakes that taste as good as they look, though I do also make themed children's cakes, unexciting as they usually are to eat. Natalie, from Bible study, had a birthday last week so I asked her what sort of cake she would like and she requested chocolate. I made Nigella's chocolate marsala cake, as I often do, because it is ethereally light, supremely chocolately and delicious before and after baking ( I do so love to lick the bowl). The recipe is from How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson, a brilliant book.

Chocolate Marsala Cake

100g unsalted butter

100g dark chocolate, broken up

4 large eggs

175g caster sugar

50g self-raising flour, sifted 3 times

3 tablespoons Marsala

for the Icing:

100g dark chocolate

1 tablespoon Marsala

100ml double cream

22cm Springform tin, greased and lined.

Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4.
Melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave or a double boiler, and then set aside to cool slightly. Beat the eggs and sugar together until thick, pale and moussey, and greatly increased in volume; it should double, triple even. My Kitchen Aid does this beautifully.

Gently fold the sifted flour into the egg mixture, trying not to lose all of the air. Now fold the butter and chocolate very carefully into the cake mixture.

Pour into the tin and cook for 35 minutes, by which time the top should be firm and the cake underneath dense and desirably damp.

The cake will have risen beautifully but will soon sink, leaving a crater perfect for dousing with Marsala and filling with ganache.

Cool on a rack for 5 minutes, and then pour over the Marsala. I find it easier to do this by the teaspoonful so that the liquid is evenly distributed. Leave the cake to cool completely before releasing it from it’s tin.

So, the icing: melt the chocolate, Marsala and cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a gentle heat. Take it off the heat, and whisk until it reaches a good icing consistency; smooth, thick, but not solid. I like to spread this just on the very top of the cake, which anyway sinks on cooling so that you have a roughly circular sunken pond to fill, leaving an outline of cooked-cake rim. When set, you're left, beautifully, with a Sacher-shiny disc of ganache suspened on top of this dusty-brown, matt cake.