It's been a while...

I've been re-inspired by all the food blogs I've been browsing. I especially like Smitten Kitchen (www.smittenkitchen.com). The pictures are beautiful. And so I'm going to try start blogging again. I'm posting pictures of the cakes I made for Christmas, even though it was ages ago. One is a Buche de Noel. A simple sponge cake soaked in a rum sugar simple rolled in bittersweet ganache and covered in ganache. Decorated with meringue mushrooms. And the second is Sachertorte (my first attempt at one). The first recipe is from the Williams Sonoma Desserts book. The second... I can't remember! I think I just browsed through my mother's books and found one which looked reasonable.





More recently I tried making some refried black beans! There's a place here called Trudy's at which I had my first tast of refried black beans. They were amazing! So I figured I could probably do it at home, so I looked up a recipe online and tried it for myself.

Two cans of black beans, rinsed and drain
Half an onion chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic minced
2 cups of water
A few bay leaves
Cumin to taste

Process the beans and water. Saute the onion and garlic and add the beans. Add the cumin, salt and pepper to taste and the bay leaves. Stir constantly over medium heat until it has thickened to your desired consistency! When I made it I didn't have cumin and I think that's what was missing! The original recipe I found had cumin though.

Also two days ago I tried the Chicken Miso Soup from a new recipe book I bought The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook. Monday I'm going to try the Vegetarian Chili.

I'll try keep up!