Well, as I have suspected for some time now, my housemate's cup measures in the second drawer (you know how cutlery is always in the top drawer, and useful things are always in the second drawer?) do not actually measure One Metric Cup. No, apparently the large cup-ish sized cup measures 1 Decilitre. I don't truly know what that is, as I've never had to measure 1 Decilitre, but there you have it. I was warily using it as a rough guide to 1 Cup, and yeah. Turns out that it's really not. However, I have discovered that cinnamon sugar disguises the flavour of anything...
For as long as I can remember, my mother has been making caramel slice. Ohhhh, it used to be my favourite thing. (It still is, but I can't eat copious amounts of it on the Atkins diet. Or in fact any amounts of it. Sad.) The recipe was actually from the back of the Nestle Condensed Milk tin! See pictured. (EDIT: It's actually Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk. Oops.)
So, Joe and I have both been run haggard lately with our commitments. I've just finished the coursework and final recital for my Master of Music degree at the Australian National University, and Joe has just completed his first film internship on a new independent film called The Discoverers, as well as working full-time. Consequently, Joe went for weeks without a day off until his body held up two hands in protest and gave him a headcold with a lingering cough. Poor darling. Perhaps it was in aid of his cold, or maybe Joe just felt like a little comfort food, but he suggested that our next Skype Bake Date be a nice cup of hot chocolate.
As an avid reader of “The Babysitter’s Club” by Ann M Martin from a young age (and even I, at that young age, knew that Ann M Martin had punctuated the title of her 200-300 book series WRONG), I had definitely heard of making hot cocoa to drink in the evenings before bed. However, growing up as an Aussie, the only warm chocolatey drink that I ever had in the evenings was a mug of Milo. I was definitely curious, and keen to try it. Joe, bless him, found an Atkins-friendly recipe for Mexican Hot Chocolate! We thought that maybe a little piece of slice to go with the cocoa would be ideal, and so I immediately nominated the time-honoured Aussie favourite, caramel slice, as the accompanying dessert. And we immediately hit a few snags.
“Copha?”
“Golden syrup?”
“Lamington pan?”
After some discussion and some research, Joe found himself some substitutes. I hadn’t really realised that the recipe was so inherently Australian, and therefore tricky for Joe to master… but I’ve come across my own conversion dramas whilst following the Atkins diet, as all the Atkins recipes are designed with Americans in mind. I would tell you what substitutes Joe used, but I don’t actually know their names. Oopsy.
I made my caramel slice in a bit of a slap-dash, haphazard fashion. I’ll admit, I’m not actually usually that bad. I generally take a little bit of time to do my baking, but this time, armed with the knowledge that I’d made it several times before, I just powered through it. And then I made the incredible mistake of pouring the hot caramel onto the hot base before pressing the base back down into the pan with a spoon, so the hot caramel ended up going THROUGH the base. Needless to say: messy. Tasty, but messy. Joe’s caramel slice, by contrast, looked perfect. He’d even cut it into perfect squares. Points to the American for the Australian slice.
The making of the hot cocoa itself was amusing. We’d both forgotten to buy cinnamon sticks, so I made up for this fact by dumping some cinnamon-flavoured sugar into the pot. After stirring and whisking, I poured mine into a cup, only to have it come up short. This after I had just watched Joe pour his into a cup and find that there was too much for one cup. So that settled it for me – the “cup” measure that my housemate has really isn’t a cup measure after all! I can only hope that some Good Soul will send me a good one for Christmas. My hot cocoa was very, very flavoursome! Chocolate-y and cinnamon-y and really delicious, though it definitely packed a punch and was clearly too sweet. Joe reported that his wasn’t so flavoursome and, if anything, lacked flavour. Yikes. Clearly, we need to be in the same kitchen so that we can put our cocoa together and come up with the perfect blend…
This past week has been madness itself. I have just worked seven days in a row at two jobs, whilst Joe has juggled Thanksgiving and some major turkey preparation (and a pumpkin cheesecake – how delicious!) with his full-time job. Consequently, we haven’t seen in each other in days! It’s lonely. I’m surrounded by people all day long, and still, without his beautiful, smiling face at the beginning and each of each day, I feel lonely in my bones, right down to the bottom of my soul. It’s lovely to know that I have such conviction in loving and missing Joe, but I wish that it weren’t quite so hard sometimes. Some days, it seems so easy to love Joe, as I see our futures spreading out before us, like I’m viewing a map with a huge “X” to mark the spot, and I grin and think to myself, “Well, it’s all gonna be so worth it! I can easily wait out this initial separation.” Other days, it feels like every day without him in it is literally longer than any other, and that I might never reach that blessed day when we may be united for good. Still, if we were in the same country, we might never have met. And then you wouldn’t be reading this blog post. And I wouldn’t have found my true love. (“That’s when you KNOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW…”)
Verdict:
Caramel slice: TICK.
Hot cocoa: Work-in-progress (to be improved upon during our first stretch of time in the same country).
“Copha?”
“Golden syrup?”
“Lamington pan?”
After some discussion and some research, Joe found himself some substitutes. I hadn’t really realised that the recipe was so inherently Australian, and therefore tricky for Joe to master… but I’ve come across my own conversion dramas whilst following the Atkins diet, as all the Atkins recipes are designed with Americans in mind. I would tell you what substitutes Joe used, but I don’t actually know their names. Oopsy.
I made my caramel slice in a bit of a slap-dash, haphazard fashion. I’ll admit, I’m not actually usually that bad. I generally take a little bit of time to do my baking, but this time, armed with the knowledge that I’d made it several times before, I just powered through it. And then I made the incredible mistake of pouring the hot caramel onto the hot base before pressing the base back down into the pan with a spoon, so the hot caramel ended up going THROUGH the base. Needless to say: messy. Tasty, but messy. Joe’s caramel slice, by contrast, looked perfect. He’d even cut it into perfect squares. Points to the American for the Australian slice.
The making of the hot cocoa itself was amusing. We’d both forgotten to buy cinnamon sticks, so I made up for this fact by dumping some cinnamon-flavoured sugar into the pot. After stirring and whisking, I poured mine into a cup, only to have it come up short. This after I had just watched Joe pour his into a cup and find that there was too much for one cup. So that settled it for me – the “cup” measure that my housemate has really isn’t a cup measure after all! I can only hope that some Good Soul will send me a good one for Christmas. My hot cocoa was very, very flavoursome! Chocolate-y and cinnamon-y and really delicious, though it definitely packed a punch and was clearly too sweet. Joe reported that his wasn’t so flavoursome and, if anything, lacked flavour. Yikes. Clearly, we need to be in the same kitchen so that we can put our cocoa together and come up with the perfect blend…
This past week has been madness itself. I have just worked seven days in a row at two jobs, whilst Joe has juggled Thanksgiving and some major turkey preparation (and a pumpkin cheesecake – how delicious!) with his full-time job. Consequently, we haven’t seen in each other in days! It’s lonely. I’m surrounded by people all day long, and still, without his beautiful, smiling face at the beginning and each of each day, I feel lonely in my bones, right down to the bottom of my soul. It’s lovely to know that I have such conviction in loving and missing Joe, but I wish that it weren’t quite so hard sometimes. Some days, it seems so easy to love Joe, as I see our futures spreading out before us, like I’m viewing a map with a huge “X” to mark the spot, and I grin and think to myself, “Well, it’s all gonna be so worth it! I can easily wait out this initial separation.” Other days, it feels like every day without him in it is literally longer than any other, and that I might never reach that blessed day when we may be united for good. Still, if we were in the same country, we might never have met. And then you wouldn’t be reading this blog post. And I wouldn’t have found my true love. (“That’s when you KNOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW…”)
Verdict:
Caramel slice: TICK.
Hot cocoa: Work-in-progress (to be improved upon during our first stretch of time in the same country).
Some photos of the event:
Isn't he pretty? There's that smile that I miss! (Love you, honey.)
Merriment and joy to all (early season's greetings, all that),
and a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig kiss to Joe,
Pamma xoxo
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