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Posts Tagged ‘easter’

Chocolate Carrot Muffins

Posted in Bake, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2011| 18 Comments »

Chocolate Carrot Cake Muffins

Chocolate Carrot Cake Muffins

When I was six my birthday fell on Easter Sunday.  I must tell you – this was probably the high point of my childhood.  I mean, how cool was that for MY birthday to fall on this day?  It was such a happy surprise and I wondered why I didn’t realize that this was the case for previous birthdays.  Easter egg hunt!  Birthday Cake!  Gifts! More Gifts! Party!!!

I spent most of the next year looking forward to my seventh birthday.  Dreaming about how to improve on that glorious birthday.  Could we get the Easter Bunny to make a surprise guest appearance?  What about a piñata in the shape of a rabbit?

My birthday bubble was shattered when I found out about a month before my seventh, that Easter Sunday wasn’t going to fall on my birthday (I know… I wasn’t thinking).  It was a rude awakening to discover that Easter Sunday changed every year.  No wonder I got weird looks When people asked me when my birthday was, I’d say “it’s the same day as Easter Sunday!”

Chocolate Carrot Cake

Chocolate Carrot Cake

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Chocolate and Almond Biscotti

Posted in Bake, tagged , , , , , , , on March 22, 2011| 24 Comments »

Chocolate Biscotti

Chocolate Biscotti

A work colleague once asked me if I order in restaurants the same way that I order coffee.  I thought his comment was pretty funny, especially since the weekend before my husband had said I was a waiter’s worst nightmare.

“What do you mean?” I asked my husband.

“Well, you like to change everything in the dish.  You want to order the steamed fish but have them fry it instead, and have the sauce on the side instead of pouring it over the fish – and if it comes with potatoes, you want rice instead!”  He said.

Surely he was exaggerating!

But I did have to concede to my work colleague that being finicky with my coffee never earned me any brownie points with the baristas.  One day I’m having a cappuccino with one sugar then the next I’m having it with one and a half sugars.  Then I learned that you get more milk with a latte so I switched to that (with one sugar).  Then I went off coffee and started having chai lattes – then soy chai lattes, then I missed my coffees and got back on to the lattes – but I wanted a weak latte, one and a half sugars and chocolate sprinkles on top…. oh and extra creamy.

And then I switched to tea – but that’s a whole different story altogether!

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Salt Cod with Red Pepper Sauce (Bacalao a la Vizcaina)

Posted in Cook, El Comedor, tagged , , , on April 4, 2010| 46 Comments »

Bacalao a la Vizcaina

It seems to me that in Australia, one of the staple Easter treats, are hot cross buns. In my family, it’s Bacalao a la Vizcaina. Every Easter, particularly, on Good Friday, this is the one dish, we all looked forward to having. Growing up, the idea was that on this particular Friday, we were required to fast the whole day and the one main meal we’d have, we’d have to abstain from meat. Bacalao, being the first meal we’d have for that day, was something we eagerly anticipated.

In my younger years, I always associated Lent and Holy Week as a season of sacrifice. Which is why we had to fast and abstain from meat on Fridays, say extra prayers and go to confession. I always had this notion that part of the sacrifice was having the Bacalao dish. Not because it wasn’t any good. In fact, I thought, it was so delicious, that the “grown-ups” (as we used to call the… uhmm… “grown ups” in the family) decided to serve it but only in very small quantities to torment us. Can you imagine, fasting the whole day and only having one small serving of this dish along with a slice of tortilla espanola? It was pure torture!

Now I think the only reason we had so little of it was because Bacalao was not that easy to come by in the Philippines – at least then. Luckily, Sydney has a few stores that stock up on salt cod and last Friday we all managed to have generous portions of this dish. Honestly, it was so enjoyable, I almost felt sinful for being able to eat so much!

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