Can you spell cacophony?

Here’s a nice recipe, minimally converted from a Tim Tam Cheesecake recipe to use Violet Crumble instead and to add some thermomix directions. It was a big hit with children and wife. Mum too, but she made me put more Violet Crumble in it the second time I made it (quantity below is this higher amount).

I love the way the honecomb “melts” if you leave this in the fridge for a while. I’ve never really been a big cheesecake fan myself (this was made primarily for my darling Linda, and then for Mum when she requested a re-do), but I could manage to eat lots of this I think.

Please excuse the copy-and-paste image. I’ll update the post with a photo taken of the real thing once I get the camera emptied onto the computer.

Ingredients:

• 250 grams plain chocolate biscuits
• 80 grams butter melted
• 375 grams cream cheese cubed and softened
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 cup thickened cream
• 3 teaspoons powdered gelatin dissolved in 1/4 cup boiling water
• 200 grams white chocolate melted and cooled
• 150 grams Violet Crumble chocolate (3 regular bars)

Method:

1. Place biscuits in a blender and process into fine crumbs (10 seconds in thermomix on speed 7)
2. Add the butter and process to combine (5 seconds in thermomix on speed 5). Press the mixture into spring-form baking pan and refrigerate 30 minutes.
3. Beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth.
4. Beat in cream.
5. Melt chocolate (in microwave, give 1 minute at 50% power, repeat until soft). Beat into mixture.
6. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water and beat into mixture.
7. Chop the Violet Crumble and stir into the cream cheese mixture then pour over the biscuit base.
8. Cover and refrigerate until set.

With this post, I would like address what I consider to be one of this generation’s most serious injustices.

The fact is, Coffee Cat does not get enough love on the net.

Coffee Cat is a part time coffee van that parks itself on the shore end of the tanker jetty in Esperance. You’ll find it there Thursdays to Mondays and only until 2pm. But most days, regardless of how terrible the weather they will be flat out barista-ing for the loving people of Esperance.

They have no net presence of their own, though there is a Coffee Cat Appreciation Society fan page on Facebook. If you google a little bit, you might find some short posts on a travel blog site or something similar. Our local paper, the Esperance Express will (whatever else its faults) occasionally print an article on the Cat, or its staff or its biscuits or even on how hard it is to find someone willing to make you a cuppa when you’re in Esperance.

I remember when they first opened. I’ve lived in Esperance for the best part of 14 years and I’ve lost count of the number of cafes that have opened, closed, changed owners and closed again in that time. While that article linked above might suggest that we live in a coffee wilderness, the fact is that more coffee places go out of business down here than manage to do it right. So when Coffee Cat first parked down by the jetty I thought it was an inspired move. It was just something different. Still just somewhere to get a cuppa, but not just another cafe. And to tell you the truth, the money my wife and I have spent on coffee since they opened compared to before just doesn’t bear thinking on. And why not? Who really wants to take seven children down to the cafe? But the beach, that’s another question!

Anyway, I just wanted to put the word out there that I think Coffee Cat is fantastic. The location, the coffee, the staff, the customers and even the ridiculously shortened trading hours. Shane and Lara… thanks.

Here’s a recipe I’ve converted for use in our Thermomix. I hope to make these sorts of posts ongoing, but we’ll see how I go

Original Source: Super Food Ideas May 2009

Ingredients:

• 10 whole black peppercorns
• 10 whole cloves
• 10 cardamom pods
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 10 teaspoons black loose-leaf tea
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1250mL water
• 1/4 cup raw sugar
• 1 cup skim milk powder
• ground nutmeg to serve

Method:

1. Place peppercorns, cloves and cardamom pods into thermomix bowl. Grind for a few seconds on speed 10.
2. Add tea, vanilla, cinnamon and water. Cook at 100C for 10 minutes.
3. Strain mixture into a separate container. Rinse TM bowl then put tea back in. Add milk powder and sugar.
4. Cook for 3 minutes at 70C on speed 4 or until frothy.
5. Pour into mugs or Irish coffee glasses. Sprinkle with nutmeg, serve.

Number 2 son especially liked this. He fancies himself as a bit of a tea drinker. It was a bit too sweet for me, but as I understand it, Masala Chai is supposed to be sickly sweet. But you could easily halve the sugar without any problems.

And just a note: I highly recommend the Super Food Ideas magazine. It’s quite inexpensive and there’s always good looking recipes in it.

Another post that spent far too much time in my drafts folder. The original title was “Why did I win this year?”. Sorry ’bout that.

I am speaking of course, of my finally winning at NaNoWriMo. It was my third attempt last year and I think it would be quite a stretch to call my efforts in 2006 and 2007 “attempts” at all!

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So what did I do differently? What made the difference?

Here’s what I reckon (in no particular order):

1. I got started straight away. In previous attempts, I fell behind on day 1. I don’t think I need to explain this further
2. I got involved in the community. My primary community was the “Elsewhere in Australia” regional forum (we have even continued our association at the new Elsewhere Wrimos forum. The Fantasy Genre Longue was just too busy.
3. A bit of competition. Had a month-long word war with my writing buddy Kamu. She got to 50K first, but I was never more that just a good day’s work behind. It kept me motivated.
4. Used my bread maker to keep me up. We eat home-made breadmaker bread at home. I set the bread to cook every night so that it finished at about midnight. Once that is done, I can’t do to bed, otherwise the bread will be soggy in the morning. I have to stay up to get it out. This saved me from quitting early (for the night, not the month) on more than one occasion.
5. Realised I can write 2000 words in a stretch without too much trouble. Once that clicked, I knew that I could do it. Good days could net me 4K or more, but I knew that on any one day I could the minimum required without any trouble
6. Made and kept to a writing quota plan. I set up a spreadsheet table. Calculated how many days I had and how many words I had to write. Each day was given a weighting: either 1 for a normal day, 0 for a day I was not going to write at all or 0.5 for an easy day. It turned out a normal day was 2.5K (see above) and 1250 words for a lighter day and I had planned days off (eg Friday nights). I never fell behind in my total plan (I kept track of that too) though I did have a couple of days where I didn’t quite make my required total for that day. But because I knew where I was (and I had a great day 1, see #1 above) I could do that safely.
7. Almost killed myself in the first week due to lack of sleep (funny how the headaches went away during week 2).
8. Listened to the podcasts. I even got my voice on one episode! I was always looking forward to the next one coming out.
9. Plan. I’m a bit ambivalent about this one. It was good knowing where the story was supposed to go, but I think with all the other positive things that went right this time I might have managed without it. For this year I am tempted to start blank with the Mythic Game Master Emulator. Don’t ask me to explain now, I’ve got a Mythic post in my drafts folder too!
10. Jer’s Novel Writer. To be fair, I used JNW in 2007 and yWriter in 2006 (when I was still a Microsoft slave), so this is not a new thing. But I could not have managed this without the appropriate software.
11. Mini-goals with cheese. What? I set myself little goals through the night. “You can’t have your first coffee until you hit 500″. “No toilet break until you finish another 100″. “You can listen to the podcast once you’ve done 1000″. That sort of thing. The cheese was Blue Castello cheese. My favourite (actually, red is my favourite but no one sells it!) and I couldn’t have any until I had done 2000 words.

Please don’t take this as a how-to-win guide, you can find plenty of those around the place. This is simply a list of some of the things that gelled for me in 2008 and helped me win! Roll on NaNo ’09.

Since November, I have finally read my novel and on reflection is what a lot less pathetic than I first thought. If there are any masochistic readers of derivative fantasy out there who would like a look, just leave a comment to that effect.

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I like coffee. I like spices.

The idea of mixing them together seemed quite appropriate. There is such a thing as spiced tea (Masala chai) which I have had and enjoyed, but I like coffee more and wondered how I would go about making a nice spiced coffee.

At home, we tend to use the stove-top espresso maker. I find it gives a stronger brew than our home electric coffee maker and has the added advantage of making a nice big batch than you can go back to for seconds.

So here’s what I did: Filled the basket up with coffee, added in a couple of cloves and a piece of cinnamon. Worked wonders! My standard batch now also includes a small amount of ginger (I keep grated ginger in my freezer so that I can use if for my ginger beer). It gives just enough kick to make things interesting.

Note 1: we have black unsweetened coffee in our house. I imagine that this would still be nice even with milk or sugar, but you might perhaps need to use a bit more spice.

Note 2: I’ve also tried nutmeg and star anise. The nutmeg is a bit too pungent for my liking (though in small amounts is OK) and the anise was tasty (though my wife would disagree) but it leaves the pot tasting of it for a few more batches afterward. YMMV.

In hindsight, this whole idea seems to be something much more common than I had thought. For example, I found the photo here after only a minute of searching and this looks exactly like the way I make it. Perhaps I’m not as insightful as I sometimes like to think.