Month: February 2010

Eeeeeeeeeee!

Sad, but true.

The Lactation Resource Centre put on a conference/seminar every year for health professionals working in lactation, and every year there are exciting international guest speakers. Last year I saw the speakers as a webcast, but I really wanted to attend this year. Of course, registration fees were beyond the meager budget, so I was really excited when an opportunity came up to volunteer (and possibly sneak into the sessions).

And then a week passed, and another week, and I hadn’t heard from the organisers, so I figured I’d missed out. No friends Nigel once again.

But yesterday I was emailed a registration confirmation, and I’M IN!

I used to get excited about going to concerts and parties. Look what I am reduced to.

Those evil feminists have been at it again

A new ad featuring Pamela Anderson dressed in a gold bikini, rubbing herself against another woman in an office environment, and being splashed with a white liquid has been taken off air. Crazy Domains (the company being advertised) managing director Gavin Collins said the ad was “tongue in cheek” and blamed feminist bloggers for stirring up complaints.

Because of course, it’s UN-AUSTRALIAN to complain about women being objectified.

SMH article here. Can’t wait to read the Hoyden on this one!

Protecting Breastfeeding in Haiti

Link here.

It is common for women to believe that there will be a problem with their milk after a natural disaster, that the stress, or lack of adequate nutrition will make their milk “bad” or somehow unsuitable for their babies. In fact, the human body will provide milk for an infant even when the mother is malnourished.

And with the influx of foreign aid comes powdered infant formula (PIF, sometimes referred to as artificial baby milk or ABM), with the inference that this is better for the baby than what the mother is already providing.

And in a disaster, where there is a lack of clean water, giving a mother powdered infant formula often means she has to make it up with dirty water, leading not only to introducing infections to the infant, but by depriving her of breastmilk, she is also deprived of a natural defence against life threatening diseases.

In normal circumstances, breastfeeding needs to be protected. In a disaster, it is vital.

Old

40.

I do hope to get a lot older, but 40 has a certain gravitas. I do feel that 40 year olds should have a certain amount of their shit together. Not all of it, of course, or you might as well give up, but 40 means goodbye to nightclubbing (at least the way *I* used to do it), and hello grown up and responsible.

So I am planning a party. A knitters house party. Mum and Dad have said I can have the house at Pearl Beach for the weekend of my birthday, so people can come and go all weekend, and hopefully some people will want to stay over, so we can all sit around and watch movies, drink wine, knit, and chat.

Sounds like a proper grown up part don’t you think?

Rainbow Cake Recipe

Thanks to my friend Simone who made Inigo’s first birthday cake, and then shared the recipe with me to make his second.

Ingredients
250 g butter
250 g white chocolate
200 mL water
1½ cups caster sugar
1¾ cups plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

And food colouring. Don’t bother with the liquid ones you get at Woolies, you need specialty cake decorating gels. Liquid colours won’t give you the intense colours that you need for the full rainbow cake impact, and if you’re going to go to all that trouble, you want to get the wow factor. I got mine here – cheaper than eBay, and awesome quick service.

Method
Preheat oven to 150°C. Line the cake pan with baking paper (this cake will stick).

Heat butter, sugar, chocolate, and water in a saucepan and stir over low heat until all combined. Let it cool a little bit so the self-raising flour doesn’t fizz before its time.

Sift both flours together and blend into chocolate mixture (don’t worry about lumps).

Stir in eggs, sour cream and vanilla (use a whisk for this bit and any remaining lumps will break up once these wet ingredients go in).

Pour the mixture into a deep 20 cm tin* and cook for about 1 hour, or pour into two 20 cm shallow tins and cook for about 45 minutes (this time is way out – cook it until a skewer comes out clean which will take much longer). I would also seriously consider cooking the cake/s au bain marie ie. once the mix has been poured into the cake pan, put the cake pan into a big roasting pan and fill the outer container with boiling water so the cake won’t form the really thick crust that comes with having to cook it for so long.

Recipe notes
Instead of sour cream you could use thickened cream, yoghurt or condensed milk, this just adds to the moistness of the cake. Also great with white chocolate ganache (hell, what isn’t?).

Colouring

Here is where being married to a maths nerd is handy – but don’t worry, I married one so you don’t have to. My cake batter weighed at about 1600gms, so I separated out the batter for colouring in the following proportions –

500gms – red
400gms – orange
300gms – yellow
200gms – green
150gms – blue
50gms – violet

Pour the colours into the tin in the above order, trying as much as possible to keep the pouring centered. You will end up with a tin that looks like a multi coloured target from the top, and each colour will fall “inside” the previous colour like a bubble.

1.7 litres (3 pints) = 200 mm (8 in) ROUND = 180 mm (7 in) SQUARE
2.3 litres (4 pints) = 230 mm (9 in) ROUND = 200 mm (8 in) SQUARE
3.4 litres (6 pints) = 250 mm (10 in) ROUND = 230 mm (9 in) SQUARE
4.5 litres (8 pints) = 280 mm (11 in) ROUND = 250 mm (10 in) SQUARE

And if you want more rainbow goodness – try pancakes!