Category Archives: Uncategorized

I bake, therefore I am #1: Apple Crumble Muffins

Posted in Uncategorized by

009

It’s funny that I have become somewhat known for my baking – certainly for the quantity, if not the quality – since I used to be a bake-a-phobic in the not-too-distant past. Looking back I actually wonder if it isn’t this particular recipe (or at least the first incarnation of it I found many years ago) which kick started my baking career. These days there’s not too many days which go by without me bringing a batch of muffins or choc chip cookies or some other baked goodies to the office or sending some to Big Jay’s office after packing some for the kidlets to take to school for recess.

Of course the aforementioned kidlets would much rather take an LCM bar or a packet of broken glass for recess than anything their mother lovingly bakes for them… but that’s another story and best left for the psychiatrist’s office.

Today I am going to share a new variation on my versatile “Anything Goes” Muffin, a muffin I’m calling:

Apple Crumble Muffin (patent pending, all rights reserved)

Ingredients
1 egg
1/2 cup olive oil (or sunflower oil/rice bran oil/any oil you like that’s not very strong in flavour)
1 cup light sour cream (or not light sour cream/Greek youghurt/other youghurt/buttermilk/vanilla custard/something wet and thick)
1/2 cup maple syrup (don’t substitute with maple flavoured syrup because that’s just wrong and possibly against the Geneva Convention)

1 apples (any type), peeled, cored, diced small
1 3/4 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup sugar, white or raw
1-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 Tablespoons rolled oats
1-2 Tablespoons pecans, chopped (or walnuts/almonds/macadamias and/or coconut – whatever rocks your boat)

Method
1) Pre-heat oven to 190C. If your oven runs hot you may need to reduce to 180C.
2) Prepare crumble mixture: in a small bowl mix brown sugar, oats and nuts.
3) Place paper muffin cases in a regular sized muffin tin (12 muffins). I like to spray lightly with spray oil to ensure no nasty sticking occurs.
4) Whisk first FOUR ingredients in a large bowl with a fork until well combined and smooth.
5) Add chopped apple and stir through.
6) Sift flour, sugar and cinnamon onto the wet mixture and stir through until just combined.
7) Divide mixture into the muffin cases (I like to use an old fashioned ice cream scoop to ensure even distribution).
8) Sprinkle the crumble mixture evenly all over the top of each muffin and gently press into the batter with the spoon or fingers – gently, don’t sink the mixture into the batter.
9) Bake for 20 minutes. Check the muffins. They need to have risen and be firm on top. You want the crumble topping to be a little caramalised and the brown sugar to be melting. If that’s not happening you want to leave in the oven for another five minutes or turn on your grill and carefully grill the top of the muffins for a couple of minutes to achieve a nice result. I’m a little anal about the crumble looking nice on top (note to self: probably shouldn’t be using the word anal in a recipe).

If you love the Apple-y, Cinnamon-y, Nutty, Oat-y goodness of an Apple Crumble you will love these. And by using oats you can kid yourself, like I do, that you are doing something good for your heart health and cholesterol levels. No, don’t thank me.

Enjoy.

[Instant Rewind #2] New York countdown is on

Posted in Uncategorized by

Today marks three months until I head off for the much anticipated Middle-Aged Women Gone (Not So) Wild in NYC trip. New York City with my sister and some of my very best besties. Heaven? Very close to it.

Yesterday I finally purchased tickets to The Book of Mormon on Broadway which was a very exciting moment. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this production since our last visit to NYC in 2011. We are also hoping to see Once while we’re there because I’m owed an extra Broadway show after seeing a grand total of none last time we were there.

This trip has been in the planning/dreaming stage for a very long time and it’s hard to believe it will be upon us so soon. In the meantime Big Jay leaves for his Middle-Aged Men Gone Batshit Crazy trip to Las Vegas next week, so I do have 10 days of solo parenting to get through (an experience which I find is getting easier and easier as the kidlets get older and more self-sufficient).

Here is a little rewind to May 2011 when we set off on our first trip to NYC. Enjoy.

[Instant Rewind #1]

Posted in Uncategorized by

I’ve just transferred the previous incarnation of DeepKickGirl – The Adventures of Deep Kick Girl Down Under – onto WordPress and to celebrate I will be revisiting some of my old posts for those who didn’t suffer through them the first time around. There are 877 posts to sift through if you have a really large cup of coffee to get through.

No, don’t thank me.

Hard to believe our last visit to New York was almost two years ago. This was 26 May 2011.

Oh! MONA

Posted in Uncategorized by

No I’m not going to spout lyrical about best forgotten cover versions of inspid songs by ex-Neighbours’ stars. I am going to spout lyrical about Tasmania’s greatest un-natural treasure: MONA. The Museum of Old and New Art.

Researching my post I came across this* article about its founder David Walsh and now I have nothing left to write. This article captures so well many of my own thoughts I find it pointless to say much more.

Except to say this place had a profound effect on me. I am the first to shout “the Emperor is naked” when it comes to modern art. I know what I like and I don’t like much. But I fell into this place, like Alice into the rabbit hole and it wove a spell on me.

This quote from the article sums up so much:

“At this point, MONA begins to feel like a mashup of the lost city of Petra and a late night out in Berlin. Everything about it is disorienting and yet somehow familiar, from the high-tech tropes to the low-culture babble, the black humour about so much that is so serious, the attention to aesthetics in a museum unsure if beauty exists or, if it does, if it matters.”

I wouldn’t claim to like or enjoy everything in this place but I can say that most things here were thought provoking and/or emotionally challenging and/or striking in a way which makes them intensely memorable.

There is a lot to be said for benevolent dictatorships and this is why. A place like this is not the work of a committee but of a man who knows what he wants and doesn’t give a crap what others think. A true eccentric who has earnt his money and wants to spend it on the cultural playthings that make him happy.

Reading his story after having visited this amazing place gives me lots of “aha” moments. This man and this place make sense.

It is not just the Museum itself which is impressive; it is the grounds, the positioning, the views. It makes a statement, it’s weird but totally unapologetic. I loved it. I want to go back and visit the Poo Machine. I need another MONA hit.

015

016017

019

* This is an awesome article. Read it. Really.

Book Review: The Wasp Factory

Posted in Uncategorized by

I am a big fan of Neil Cross and his brilliant, dark writing. It was through a comment on his Facebook page about being inspired by the Scottish author Iain Banks, now terminally ill, that I became interested in exploring his books.

“The Wasp Factory” was Banks’ breakthrough novel published in 1984. Like Neil Cross’ work this story is deceptively simple and it unfolds steadily, with an underlying feeling of unease.

Frank is a strange young man living in relative isolation on a Scottish island with his reclusive father. His life is filled with bizarre ritualised behaviours and his relationship with his dad is strained.

Slowly Frank’s story is revealed, each revelation more strange and baffling. Overlaid onto this scenario is Frank’s brother Eric who has escaped from a mental hospital and is heading home.

I find stories with a dark bent fascinating and satisfying. There is a darkness in all of us which we ignore or control or embrace or fear or some combination of these. Reading about dark characters or good people being embroiled in dark situations allows me to explore my own dark side safely.

What I particularly loved about “The Wasp Factory” is the ending. Throughout the novel there is a building sense of foreboding, of a threat on the horizon. You crave a climax to explain or at least relieve the build up yet there is none. Or at least a finale which sets up more questions than it answers.

How delicious to end a book with a need to know more. So often I read a book which is the literary equivalent of a slice of white bread; tasty enough but with nothing to remember it by. The test of a truly great book is how it stays with you, how the characters haunt you, how the story rolls about in the recesses of your mind.

This book does just that and I can’t wait to see what other dark offerings Iain Banks has in his extensive bibliography.

It lives

Posted in Uncategorized by

On 24 June 2005 I dipped my toe into the new and slightly mysterious blogging world. After reading a very funny, moving blog I was inspired to put my own weird and wonderful thoughts out into the cyber world…and The Adventures of Deep Kick Girl Down Under was born. The 899th entry appeared almost exactly a year ago. I didn’t really lose interest and I didn’t stop having an opinion, I just kept meaning to get back to it “one day”. One day just never came. Until today. Deep Kick Girl lives and she’s going to be better, faster, stronger and just bloody well more fabulous than ever. More opinions, more crazy rants, more photos of food which will never appear in a Weight Watchers cookbook, generally more drivel of the kind you’ve known and loved in the past. But now with a little added motivation because, damn it, I love to write and no amount of work, child taxi duties and thankless school-related martyr activities fulfill me in the same way as writing. You might ask what prompted this re-birth. An opportunity which I like to think of as my first “paid” writing job. OK, I’m not actually being paid in cash or any other legal tender but, even better, I am being paid in food and experience. In two weeks’ time I, along with a few other bloggers and writers, am being flown to Kangaroo Island for the KI Feastival (aka the Kangaroo Island Food and Wine Festival). Two days of eating, drinking, sightseeing and generally soaking in the unique beauty and culinary abundance of this amazing Australian holiday spot. What a lucky little Deep Kick Girl am I? So welcome to the new, probably not improved, Deep Kick Girl. I hope you will join me for the next chapter.