Welcome to the April edition of Spell the Month in Books which is hosted at Reviews From the Stacks. The link party opens on the first Saturday of the month, but I won't be posting until after that as I already have other things scheduled every Saturday and for the first two Sundays of the month.
The idea is that you use the title of books to spell the month name. There is also a theme each month, with the theme for April being animals on the cover.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - I couldn't go past this children's classic which includes talking hares, grinning cats and so much more!
The Restaurant in Pelican Crossing by Maggie Christensen - Whilst I might be cheating with this one, this is the first book in a series set in a small Australian coastal town called in Pelican Crossing, and the word pelican appears in the title of every one of them
Rescue my Heart by Jill Shalvis - It's been many years since I read Jill Shalvis, but I do recall enjoying her trilogy called Animal Magnetism, which is set in and around an animal shelter
Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros - Does a dragon count as an animal?
Lion in the Valley by Elizabeth Peters - This is the fourth book in the excellent Amelia Peabody series set in Victorian Egypt.
There's no set theme for May. Maybe I will have to come up with my own! Or maybe I will just keep it simple next month. We'll see when we get closer to the time!
I am sharing this post with Sunday Salon hosted by Readerbuzz.
Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's is a Halloween freebie, so we can post whatever we like, presumably at least Halloween related. However, I haven't been reading anything particularly Halloweeny recently as I am all about the feel good reads at the moment,
Bearing that in mind, my post this week is called Trick or Treat, and the books will all start with the letters of those words.
TRICK
These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
Cracklescape by Margot Lanagan
Kitchen by Banana Yashimoto
TREAT
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Exit Strategy by Kelley Armstrong
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte
We don't really do Halloween but I can say it anyway......
Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Favorite Heroines (or heroes, if you prefer!) but I am going to go off topic this week...again. I am currently listening to Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, so I thought that I would share classics I have read. I know that I should have read many more, but oh well. No guilt allowed right!
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne - Listening to this now!
Les Miserable by Victor Hugo - What a massive undertaking this was!
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - I read this last year for Cook the Books and thoroughly enjoyed it!
East of Eden by John Steinbeck - There's several books on this list that I read thanks to Oprah's book club!
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald - I read this back in high school and then read it again 10 years ago.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - This was another Oprah read. I did end up going on to read and enjoy a number of his books.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - Still the only Austen I have ever read - Shocking I know!
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - I read this after reading Mr Pip!
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell - I did think about putting up the cover of the DVD of the BBC series as the picture here (hello Richard Armitage) but I restrained myself!
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I really enjoyed this! Another Oprah read!
This month's choice for Cook the Books is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It is such an interesting choice for Cook the Books as it isn't necessarily a book that you would consider foodie, but it is absolutely full of food references. It was also a fun read to revisit as an adult, especially when you consider that the book itself is over 150 years old, and yet it is timeless.
Reading this again reminded me of the White Night event that was held in Melbourne back in 2015. In honour of the 150th anniversary of the book being published, one of the themes for the event was Alice in Wonderland, with many of Melbourne's building being transformed into giant canvasses for projections. Here are a few of the Alice related pictures I took that night.
The adventures that Alice has after she follows the white rabbit down the rabbit hole are zany, and yet apart from the fact that the game of croquet is something that kids today might not be familiar with, pretty much everything else is still easy for us to understand. Although, I did tend to skip through the poetry but I do that in books like The Lord of the Rings too.
The most well known food reference is probably the mad hatter's tea party, but there were so many others, and I had several ideas of what to make. I ended going with something that wasn't directly related to the story. If you google for ideas there are so many elaborately decorated items - topsy turvy cakes, giant tea pots etc. Unfortunately my decorative skills do not extend to such skilled designs. I do taste good, not necessarily looks amazing!
Some of the ideas I considered were a big cake surrounded by small cakes to represent the food that Alice ate that had the effect of either making her grow big or small. I also thought about making a treacle tart or an onion tart. There were so many options.
So what did I make? We were having our first guests here for dinner at the new house, so I wanted to make something dessert worthy. I also love making chiffon cakes, so once I found my tin in one of the still packed boxes, I decided to make an Earl Grey Chiffon Cake, inspired by all the tea references in the book.
I ended up adapting a recipe which was made with French Earl Grey tea. I only had a couple of bags of French Earl Grey, and I really wanted to use just normal Earl Grey (British I guess) tea instead. The original recipe also called for orange to be included but I didn't have any. I also took some inspiration from a couple of other recipes that I found online by including some of the tea leaves in the cake mixture.
I do love making chiffon cakes (also known as angel food cake). I have made a lemon flavoured one before and a coffee cream cake that isn't called chiffon cake but uses exactly the same techniques. I might try to make a chai flavoured one next. (editted to say....the next one will be a vanilla one as per my husband's request)
The flavour might have been stronger had I used more teabags, but you could definitely taste it, particularly on the second day. There wasn't a lot left for the second day as all the family loved it, especially my nephews who both came back for seconds!
A couple of important things to note when making these kinds of cakes. Firstly, you do not butter the cake tin. You want the cake mixture to stick. It is important that the cake is left to completely cool whilst still upside down. This prevents the cake from collapsing in on itself and ensures that the texture is extremely light.
Earl Grey Tea Chiffon Cake
4 Earl Grey teabags 160ml ( ⅔ cup) boiling water 185g (1¼ cups) self-raising flour 30g (¼ cup) cornflour 1 teaspoon cream of tartar ½ teaspoon salt 6 eggs, separated 200g caster sugar, plus 110g (½ cup) extra 1 teaspoon vanilla essence 100ml vegetable oil Icing sugar, to dust
Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Place an ungreased 21cm angel food cake tin on an oven tray. You can also use a bundt tin.
Place the tea bags in a small jug, pour the boiling water over and set aside to infuse until the water is warm.
Sift the flour, cornflour, cream of tartar and salt.
Whisk the egg yolks and 200g caster sugar on high speed until thick and pale then whisk in the vanilla.
Squeeze the tea bags so that you get as much flavour as possible into the water.
Cut one of the teabags and add the leaves to the egg and sugar mixture.
Add 125ml ( ½ cup) of the tea to the oil. The tea should still be warm but not hot. Add the oil mixture to the egg mixture and whisk on low speed until well combined.
With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and whisk until just combined. Set aside.
In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites on medium-high speed until soft peaks form. Add the remaining caster sugar and whisk until thick and glossy and the sugar has dissolved. Add about a third of the egg whites to the yolk mixture and use a large metal spoon or spatula to fold through until well combined. Add the remaining egg white mixture and fold until just combined.
Spoon the mixture into the ungreased tin and gently smooth the surface with the back of a metal spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Immediately turn the cake upside down still in the tin so it is suspended, for a minimum of 2 hours. If you are using a bundt tin for this, you can invert the cake over the top of a bottle to have the same effect.
When the cake is completely cool, run a small knife around the side of the tin to release.
Dust with icing sugar and serve with whipped cream and strawberries.
I have also linked this post up with Foodies Read hosted at
Weekly meals
Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Roast Pork
Monday - Beef Chilli with sweet potato wedges
Tuesday - Hainanese Chicken with bok choy and rice
Wednesday - Chicken enchiladas with rice and beans
Thursday - Out for dinner
Friday - Prawn Paella
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
I managed to fit in some audiobook time over the last week and so I was able finish An Island Wedding by Jenny Colgan. I have to say I was expecting a different ending... but I did still enjoy it..
I also finished reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll for this month's Cook the Books.
Then there's the books that I started. My read on a theme bookclub theme this month is autobiography or biography. I don't read a lot of biography, whether auto or otherwise, so I had to think hard about some choices. I realised that I had Jimmy Barnes's autobiogaphy Working Class Boy that I had purchased on Audible some time ago so today I started listening to that. I also borrowed The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku, so who knows, I might read two books for this month!
As we have now moved into a new area, it is time to start finding new brunch places. On Saturday I had to wait for my husband to get his haircut, I started reading a freebie Kindle book called It Was All the Pies Fault by Elizabeth SaFleur which is fun so far. And makes me want to make pie.
I'm watching
Last week was the finale of this series of My Kitchen Rules (MKR). I really enjoyed this series and I was glad with the result.
I did start watching the new series of Never Have I Ever over the weekend. I am not really the target audience at all, but I do enjoy it, especially John McEnroe's narration.
We also started watching Mr Robot tonight. I know this is an older series but we have never watched it.
Life
We are pretty much settled in the new house. There are still boxes in the garage but the house looks pretty good. We are still acqiring a few bits and pieces of furniture and there is one room that needs a lot of work, but mostly we are settled.
Life has gotten in the way a few times recently so it has been a couple of weeks since my last Monday post. That sounds like a confession of sorts right?
I have been doing a lot of driving lately so I have made some good progress with listening to An Island Wedding by Jenny Colgan, the latest book in the series set on the island of Mure. I really enjoy this series. Hopefully I will get some more listening in this week.
I did finish reading Starting Over in Bellbird Bay by Maggie Christensen last week, and I am just a few days behind posting the review! Must get onto that.
The current selection for the Cook the Books group is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, so I started reading that over the weekend. I did buy a version from Amazon which was very strange. It had a 3-4 page summary of the story and then 3 poems, not written by Lewis Carroll. Needless to say I will be returning this one. I am now reading one from Project Gutenberg.
I'm watching....
We have been watching a bit of this and that. I did finish Sweet Magnolias and now I am several issues into the latest season of Virgin River.
We had all the fun of setting up a new TV so have been setting up all the apps which has reminded me of how many things there are on all the apps that I either need to finish or start!
Life
We made a quick trip to Adelaide for my brother's belated 40th birthday last weekend which you can see some pics here.
The big news is ....... we moved house!!
We are mostly moved in and unpacked enough to be able to live. There are plenty of boxes in the garage, the wardrobes need to be reorganised, and a few other things, but we are in. I do need to get used to the noises here at night!
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