Muar Chee

I had the best intentions and several blog posts lined up for December of last year, but somehow, they never got finished. Which is sad, really, because I had a shortbread recipe and a cupcake recipe that I made in preparation for Christmas that would have made great gifts, and I was going to share a recipe for gingerbread (and on making gingerbread houses) as well as strawberry shortcake that was part of my family's Christmas feast last year. I've been so busy lately though that it just hasn't happened.

Ginger Milk Pudding

I'm not one for New Years' Resolutions.  Oh, I tried.  Once upon a time, I sat down on January 31st and wrote out an actual list of resolutions with a pen on a piece of paper, numbered in order of priority.  I lost the list about four days later.

Olive Oil Pound Cake

The weather has been annoyingly erratic lately, as it usually is this time of the year.  Last week was positively screaming summer beach time with the sun blazing and everyone walking outside in tank tops and shorts.  Today, the temperature dropped 20 degrees, the sky turned a murky grey and then it decided to pour with rain.  It's the kind of rain that the small just-in-case umbrella tucked in your handbag doesn't stand a chance against.  And if you live where I do, where there's a side street that you must walk through to get anywhere and is dubbed the 'wind tunnel' (apparently a combination of geography, building heights and probably my bad karma), it means that on windy rainy days like this one, getting very, very wet is predestined.

But every dark, stormy cloud has a silver lining, right?  The best thing about this type of weather is that it's the perfect excuse to bake.  So that's what I did.

Strawberry Cake

One of the things I've found about living on the opposite side of the hemisphere to the large part of the world's population (food blogging population, that is) is that the seasonal produce is always reversed.  So, when most people are making berry tarts and churning out fresh fruity sorbets I'm in the land of apple pie and pumpkin cake.  For someone who really prefers summer heat over the winter chills, it gets incredibly irritating.

It also means this time of the year is absolutely fantastic.

Sydney's strawberries have been off the charts cheap recently, which means the house has turned into strawberry palooza.  There has been an abundance of chocolate dipped strawberries, fresh fruit salads studded with chunks of pineapple and bright ruby strawberries, and this lovely strawberry summer cake.

Raspberry Frozen Yogurt

A little while ago I was stuck with a box of frozen raspberries in my freezer that I had no idea what to do with.

For most people this wouldn't be an issue because a) it's frozen, so it'll last forever anyway and b) there are a million things you could do with raspberries.

Not me.