Farewell 2010.

The last week of every year is always an insanely busy time in my life. This might have something to do with the fact that there is Christmas, followed by my sister's birthday (which always leads to lots of celebrating) and then of course more celebrating to ring in the new year.

Christmas was a super quiet affair this year, in fact if it didn't really feel like Christmas time at all. My sister and I have a tradition of watching 'Meet Me in St Louis' and baking Christmas cookies together every year - sadly this year I baked by myself, and we simply never got around to watching the movie. I did however hang out with some of my favourite people on the day AND I went to the movies. I don't know why I've never thought to go to the movies on Christmas before, it's fantastic! You get to see new releases without the accompanying first-week crowds. Think I know what my new Christmas tradition is going to be :P

The rest of the week has pretty much been spent helping my sister celebrate reaching the quarter century milestone in her life - and it has been lots of fun! I don't like to get too sentimental when blogging but I have to say I am so lucky to have such a great sister and am so proud of all her achievements this past year.

I must admit the highlight of my sister's birthday (aside from spending it with her, of course) was the cake. I absolutely love chocolate, so by default I absolutely love Lindt's cake collection. The birthday cake selected was the Chocolate Hazelnut Gateau. It is three layers of vanilla bean cake soaked in frangelico, layered with roasted nuts and gianduja (a hazelnut and chocolate paste). I highly recommend it...so delicious!

The day after my sister's actual birthday, the celebrating continued with a day of shopping, and this is where we finally tried this American-style diner that I've wandered past countless times over the past year but have never had the time to stop in and eat. The decor screams American diner with booths lined all along the walls, and the menu has typical diner fare with extensive burger and fries options, as well as all-day breakfast (featuring a dozen or so pancake options). We opted for pancakes, which were absolutely delicious and completely transported me back to my time in the States where I consumed insane amounts of pancakes (though the portion size was considerably smaller than American standards).

While I would definitely return, I have to say Melbourne has much better options when it comes to American-style diners. Guess I'll just have to get my year's worth of diner food fix when I return to the States.

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Well, I can't believe 2010 is about to come to an end. While it hasn't always been great, I have had some of the most wonderful times of my life this year. Thank you to all the wonderful people in my life that have made it a pretty awesome year, I'm so lucky and grateful to know you all. I hope 2011 brings good health and happiness to all!

Happy New Year!!

Morning Tea...

...was a success! The cakes were delicious. Okay, well I'm skeptical about my chocolate cake. My family loved it but they're my family so they always love everything I make.

This morning I woke up early and returned to the kitchen to finish the cakes.

Unfortunately I ran out of icing sugar so had to skip icing the sides of the Carrot Cake. Needless to say I am not entirely happy about this. In addition to the cakes, we had a super sweet dessert called Gulab Jamun. It's a popular dessert from the Indian Subcontinent, and is a dough that is fried (a bit like donuts) and then put into a sugar syrup. It is so, so sweet, but so incredibly delicious! My mother is a master at making these, I definitely do not have the patience for the process.

Despite being absolutely exhausted from yesterday, I decided to make little cheesy puffs since the morning tea spread was severely lacking in savoury food. They were an absolute hit for something that took less than 15 minutes to pull together. But then again who doesn't love cheese and pastry.

(NB: I did in fact make more than this!)

We were only expecting cousin R and her mum to join us for morning tea, but in a surprising turn of events another couple of relatives dropped by. In an even stranger turn of events my mother had set an extra couple of places at the table for "no reason at all" other than to have some spare plates and cutlery should we need them. It all worked out well, lots of sugar was consumed (well, on my part anyway) and entertaining conversations were had.

I've had a couple of hours to relax a bit, and now another guest has arrived for afternoon tea. The beauty, of course, is that there is such an excess of food that no extra work is required :P

Preparing for a feast.

Tomorrow we have various guests coming over at various times during the day. In preparation for this my mother has found it necessary to cook up a feast. This, however, means that I get given instructions and have no choice but to assist and partake in all the craziness. As a result I have spent the day running errands and baking.

My sister, being the flower enthusiast that she is decided to cheer us up during our stressful morning of running errands by buying a bunch of beautiful ruby-red Gerberas. She also thought it would look lovely as a centre piece for the table tomorrow.

My sister and I were instructed that at least two cakes were to be made. So my cake of choice is the 'Over the Top' Chocolate Cake from the Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook by Jennifer Appel. It is a super chocolate-y, rich and indulgent cake.

The batter was so smooth and creamy (always a good sign!)

Being lazy and faced with time constraints I decided to turn this usually three-layer cake into a single layer (but a enormously large layer at that!). It's currently cooling in its tin waiting for me to get muster up some motivation and inspiration to make some frosting and ice it.

My sister made a Carrot Cake (similar to the one here, but it's two-layers as per the original recipe). It too is currently waiting patiently for me to make some Cream Cheese Frosting. She also made a Key Lime Pie, which smells and looks so good right now. Cannot wait to dig in to that one!