My Favourite Recipe at the Moment is: Chocolate Bourbon Cake.

I found this recipe for Chocolate Bourbon Cake at Elise Bauer’s Simply Recipes. I have made it a few times since I first laid eyes on it. It has chocolate and whiskey in it. Any more questions? I have been making this with Jack Daniels, not really a Bourbon, but still turning out tasty, tasty cake.
The recipe goes like this:

You need to have:

225g unsalted butter, softened (more for greasing the cake tin)
2 cups plain flour (more for dusting the cake tin)
142g high quality dark chocolate
1/4 cup instant coffee granules
2 tbs plain cocoa powder
1 cup bourbon whiskey (more for soaking)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup icing sugar (for dusting)

You need to do:

Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease and flour a large bundt tin . Melt chocolate in a microwave oven or in a bain marie over simmering water. Let cool.

Put instant espresso and cocoa powder in a large measuring jug. Add enough boiling water to come up to the 1 cup measuring line. Mix until powders dissolve. Stir in whiskey and salt, let cool.

Beat softened butter until fluffy (2-3 minutes on high). Add sugar and beat until well combined. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract, baking soda and melted chocolate, scraping down sides of bowl with a rubber spatula.

With the mixer on the lowest speed, beat in a third of the whiskey espresso cocoa mixture. When liquid is absorbed, beat in 1 cup flour. Repeat additions, ending with whiskey mixture. Scrape batter into prepared tin and smooth top. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes.

Transfer the cake to a rack in its tin and soak with a little more whiskey. Let cool for a while, then unmold. Let cool completely and dust with icing sugar before serving.

This cake will stay soft and moist for a few days under cellophane in a cool place.

It's that good!

I like this one!

Older brother, restless soul, lie down. Lie for a while with your ear against the earth and you'll hear your sister sleep talking. Say "Your hair is long but not long enough to reach home to me but your beard someday might be."

And she'll wake up in a cold sweat on the floor next to a family portrait drawn when you were four, and beside a jar of two cent coins that are no good no more. She'll lay it aside.

Older father, weary soul, you'll drive back to the home you made on the mountainside with that ugly, terrible thing. Those papers for divorce and a lonely ring. A lonely ring.

Sit on your porch and pluck your strings, and you'll find somebody you can blame and you'll follow the creek that runs out into the sea and you'll find the peace of the Lord.

Grandfather, gentle soul, you'll fly over your life once more before you die. Since our grandma passed away you've waited for forever and a day just to die. And someday soon you will die.

It was the only woman you ever loved that got burnt by the sun too often when she was young. And the cancer spread and it ran into her body and her blood and there's nothing you can do about it now.

via

All I want is a shower curtain!

The problem is, I don't know what it should look like exactly.... As the bathroom now has quite a classic appearance, I would like to keep the colours plain and the design should not be too girly (by request of The Man). I would like for it to be made from fabric rather than plastic, because it will drape nicer, be washable and look a bit more elegant.

I have searched the Internet high and low, and spent a few lunch hours trawling through the shops, but so far, nothing has pleased. Or, anything that has pleased was from a source from over the big pond and hence not easily obtainable.

Here are a few that have caught my eye:

DKNY Color Block Navy

Marimekko Kaiku

B&Q Floral Shades

Anthropologie Avian Scene

It is (almost) finished!

After 3 weeks of washing my hair in the kitchen sink and hankering after a shower, the bathroom is now pretty much done. All it still needs are a few final touches, like a bath mat and a shower curtain, a coat of paint for the door, and a few touch-ups around the ceiling.

Phil the Plumber finally gave us the go-ahead for using the bath and shower on Friday night, and I've had a bath a day since then. I am very much enjoying lying in a bathtub that feels as big as an Olympic pool compared to what we had before, looking at lovely white brick tiles and shiny chrome things. And a heater in the bathroom? What an improvement! No more chilly mornings!

Here are a few pictures:

            

 

 

 

It's my bathroom and I cry if I want to!

 

© Free Clipart Junction

Okay, first update:

The extractor fan is not going in the uppermost corner over the shower, but more in the middle of the wall.

The new light switch got placed right next to the door frame and not at a nice-looking distance away. But apparently it can still be moved. Yay.

The best thing though, is, that we found out that our interior walls are made of some kind of mushy material and are only about 5 cm thick, which is why Phil cannot run the shower pipes directly in the wall. Because the wall may just crumble if you so much look at it in the wrong way.

Which is why he has to build a fake wall.

Which is why we are losing the ledge that was supposed to be at the non-shower end of the bath.

Which is why the towel radiator can't go there anymore, really, because it would overhang the tub and we might bang our heads on it while trying to have a relaxing bubble bath.

Which is why the towel radiator will now go next to the door by the sink.

Which is why it is going to look a bit more crammed in the room (but we may save money, because I can return the towel ring that was supposed to go next to the sink instead).

Plus, everything is dusty, My Man and I are biting each other's heads off over yet another bathroom discussion, and having to wash in a plastic bowl instead of having a relaxing shower after a bad night's sleep is just not cutting it.

I am sure I am over-reacting, but it's just that all these problems are coming up right at the start. (Did I mention that yesterday we thought we had had the wrong shower valves delivered for a little while?)

I am sure all will be fine in the end. I'll be laughing about this one day. Ha-ha.



Something's happening in my bathroom!

Wow! After almost three years of living with a pink bathroom suite and pink tiles with flowers on, our bathroom is finally being refurbished. Today was the first day of the makeover and Phil the Plumber, who we found via MyBuilder, really let rip.

When I left for work in the morning, the bathroom still looked like so:

And when I came home at night, it already looked so much more acceptable:

Now Phil has all our nice, shiny new purchases to play with, and hopefully in two weeks time, our bathroom will be a dream of white ceramics and chrome fixtures. I honestly cannot imagine what that is going to feel like. I was already more than a little ecstatic when I opened the Bathstore boxes and sneaked a peak at the sexy curved sink and the chrome tabs. After all the sleepless nights and headaches over what suite, tiles or lights to choose, I am just so happy that we now have everything at the ready. The pessimist in me is just crossing her fingers for no major drawbacks or disasters to occur during the remodelling phase, please!

By the way: our new toilet is called "Denver". Honest.

Get it? John?!