by the way wednesday

i adore

perfect icing from sweetapolita

a watermelon cake spotted on hip hip hooray

cute ways to use teacups from kingdom of style

adorable chalk board (reusable) gift tags from the rusticblend etsy shop

a delicious birth announcement from prudent baby

great upcycling from my friend staci. i need a loft apartment to pull this off.

avocado fries. yes, that's right. we made these on saturday afternoon

and they really are as amazing as they look. thank you adventures in cooking

a beautiful outdoor dessert party from amy atlas

another dream backyard setting from suziebeezie

welcome home

my sister and her husband returned from traveling the globe on wednesday. they had been gone for  over 4 months! i felt it was an occasion worth commemorating with cake (and of course diy cake toppers, because really, what is a cake without a topper?) 

most occasions these days call for cake. 

you got a job? you get a cake! 

it's valentines day? here have some cake! 

you got a high score on fifa? guess what, you get a cake!

you've probably worked out by now that when it comes to cake and i, any excuse will do. i really should be double my size, but like most problems, i'm just not going to ignore that, and hope it goes away.

the cake is just your basic chocolate cake, you know sugar, cocoa, flour, eggs the usual and the icing is whipped chocolate ganache. i know that sounds fancy but chocolate ganache is just cream and chocolate melted together, no lie, google it.

i'm all about you bear

oo em gee i love marriage. or maybe i just love my husband. either which way there is something so nice about doing life with your best friend. it's not always roses, but it is pretty darn good.

i was reading a poignant post by one natalie holbrook over at nat the fat rat (a blog i must say i stalk frequent a lot). she wrote a post about marriage and said a bunch of great things but the one that stuck with me the most was 

'be fiercely loyal to your husband' 

i liked that so much. i already knew it, but i previously couldn't find the words to articulate it.

fast forward to the hutchins household last night. there wasn't anything particularly special about last night, no romantic dates or grand gestures, but for the most important things there never really is, is there? 

i was watching oprah (as you do) and nick was in the kitchen cooking (oh my, you will drool hear about this a couple of paragraphs down). so anyway, oprah was talking.....oh wait, side story to make this story make sense.

nick's from michigan, i'm from sydney, we both live in sydney now and whenever he sees/hears a reference to michigan he goes 'woo'.

so anyway, back to the previous story, oprah was talking about love, peace, happiness, the usual and mentioned ann arbor, michigan.

i said woo (i'm cool like that)

nick from the kitchen says did she mention australia?

i said no, ann arbor, michigan 

he said i love that you do that 

i said i'm all about you bear 

he said i'm all about you nay

and for anyone looking in on our marriage (as you are now) that might seem like an insignificant exchange but for me, it summed up my marriage and so perfectly exemplified what i want our marriage to continue to become.

then, to put a cherry on top of the proverbial 'perfect marriage moment' sundae, he watched oprah with me. ain't he sweet? and he cooks too! 

because you stuck with that story now you are rewarded with some snap shots of a wintery weekend in ol' sydney town.

what's going on?


a bit of church
some belt shopping
my spinach, feta & pine nut filo tart (jamie oliver)
people who sleep in have to eat breakfast in the car
nick's chocolate and raspberry bread pudding (donna hay) 
i got to lick the spoon (i came running)

post script

i bought some new jeans this weekend

while wearing my new jeans i hear nick wolf whistle behind me

feeling pretty chuffed i turn to take the compliment 

he's whistling at the case of corona he's opening

he then started singing my corona to the tune of my sharona

there are no words.

some diy cake toppers and some diy cake

first and foremost, how good is cake? i know, right?

i am 23. the grand milestone happened a couple of weeks ago and nick baked me a cake. this was not your ordinary yellow cake, this walnut and chocolate extravaganza was absolutely delicious and totally looked the part (we're talking double layers here). 

ten husband points to nick.

this inspired me to get my bake on. i took it that one step further and made some cake toppers too. they are so easy to make! i have some stamps, so that helps, but the idea is simple and it just makes a cupcake or cake that little bit better (but yes, it is hard to beat a chocolate cupcake, cake topper or not).

i own a single cup cake stand. it is rather ridiculous how excited i am about this fact. 

thank you cathie!

i've decided it's difficult to not look like a farm animal while eating a cupcake. it's the whole cupcake to mouth ratio, it's way off.

case in point

what to do when your husband is working and you're home alone at night

google pictures of guys who look like him

this guy's from parenthood, but we're on a personal basis with that show, so we call it the 'hood (because yes, we're that cool).

this is the guy from it's complicated.

eh? i know, right?

cook some salmon. it was my first time, i was rather dubious nervous about the whole thing. but like any well educated house wife, i looked it up on youtube first. the sentence prior to this was written before i had cooked it. i just cooked it and ate it (talk about real time blogging). woah! salmon is my new favourite thing out of the sea. it was incredible. season the salmon with salt and pepper and cook the salmon each side in a medium to hot pan for two minutes per side, then make a sauce of equal part lime juice and honey, pour it over the salmon in the pan and let it cook with the sauce 90 seconds, serve and eat. you can thank me later.

watch the 'hood. i'm julia, nick's joel. is that weird?

oh and recovering after my trip to the supermarket. i went on the way home from work to buy ice cream and pva glue (separate uses, don't worry) and oh my! you would think the apocalypse is coming by the way people are storing up food (in what i can only imagine would be their underground bunkers). for those in the states, it's a public holiday tomorrow, so no shops are open. hence the completely irrational need of nine tenths of society to buy uncontrollably in the last remaining hours of our consumer driven thursday

oh an making a new blog header. funny story that. starting a blog was a very spur of the moment thing. i started one mainly because i wanted to document our lives, from the mundane to the flippin sweet stuff that happens. i trawled around blogger world to see how other people had set out their blogs therefore the design of the old header was kind of copied borrowed from another blog i like to read. i know, not cool right? so i finally got around to doing my own. and hence i am now an officially legit blog.

raspberry deliciousness

made some raspberry cake this week, yum! if anyone is interested i've included the recipe

before it went in the oven

Raspberry Cake

100g - Plain flour
160g - Almond meal
2 cups - Icing  sugar
180g - Butter, melted
6 Egg whites, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons - Vanilla extract
1.5 cup - Frozen or fresh raspberries
Extra raspberries and whipped cream, to serve

Method 

Preheat oven to 160 C
Combine flour, almond meal, icing sugar, butter, egg whites and vanilla in a bowl and mix until smooth. Fold half the berries through and spoon into a greased 18cm round cake tin that has been lined with non-stick baking paper. Sprinkle the remaining berries on top of the mixture and bake for 1 hour or until cooked when tested with a skewer.
Serve the cake warm with whipped cream with extra raspberries folded through. 

a quiet night in

sometimes it's nice to have a quiet night in with my favourite food (delicious salad with procuitto, mozzarella and basil chicken and cookies yum!), favourite man and favourite apron, which i just don't get to wear enough.

friday nights are also office nights! yay. getting to hear gabe say "isn't this the perfect romantic getaway, erin? sitting on a desert island in dog costumes. i'm gabe and i'm a weirdo" just makes my night.

let them eat cake

nick's birthday was this past weekend. 

happy birthday bear. you're such a spunk.

he turned twenty three. i feel old though i can understand we are not

to celebrate his birthday i made him a three layer ice cream cake, with each layer containing candy 

(note candy - he's american)

one layer contained snickers

one layer contained twix

one layer contained kit kat

all layers were yum!

it was then drizzled with dark chocolate and decorated with 

fun handmade birthday bits and pieces

valentines day in the hutchins household

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you - winnie p.

this if the first valentines day nick and i have actually spent together in the same country. last year on valentines day nick surprised me by having flowers sent to me at work. 
this year he bought me magnum ice creams inside joke


i gave him brownie cup cakes. i was super happy with how they tasted turned out

delicious

i have this immature weird trait where i simply will not eat something judging by the look of it (and sometimes the smell of it). for the longest time i wouldn't eat avocado, prawns, strawberries and banana bread. i still won't eat mangoes, ergh. I recently had banana and blueberry bread with a lovely friend of mine and have been converted. 

i made it this weekend and oh my delicious and so easy

ingredients

3 ripe bananas (smooshed)

2 eggs lightly beaten

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup of buttermilk or milk

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

2 cups of self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

150g fresh blueberries

1. preheat over to 170 C

2. mix bananas, eggs, milk and vegetable oil in a bowl

3. add flour (sifted), sugar and baking powder, mix together

4. add blueberries

5. line a loaf baking dish with baking paper

6. cook for 1 hour and 10 minutes, sometimes longer (just make sure skewer comes out clean)

i particularly like it toasted with some butter

i LOVE thai food

my husband and i love thai food. if given the choice of restaurant we will always pick thai. the problem is, we always order the same thing, pad thai. here is the issue, we know we like pad thai, so it's not a risk. while the menu might be full of weird and wonderful things, none of them come with the guarantee of deliciousness that pad thai comes with. hence us always ordering the exact same thing every time. i have been trying to perfect my home made pad thai with a recipe i found in one of my mum's cook books. it's getting better each time but still a long way from guaranteed delicious restaurant style