February Cupcake Challenge

I know I've done red velvet before but I can't get enough of them How could you not love this luxurious, rippling mixture. Ooozy, dripping, oh-so-good passion. With Valentine's Day knocking on the door (and a wedding for some friends) I decided to cook up a batch of sugary indulgent love for my teaching team.

I have spent a good few weeks moaning about starting back at work.  The hurdles have been phenomenal at my new job and there are many more to come. However, amongst all this, I have failed to point out that I have a great and supportive teaching team. There are 5 ladies who have made me very welcome, who have listened to my endless stories about a life teaching so far away, they have attempted to be as supportive as they possibly could be and seriously, I would be lost without them and their combined knowledge of my new school. I also have a supportive administration, and lets be honest, that's what makes a school. The kids can be great, the teachers can be great but if the admin aren't on the same page it all goes pear shaped. I am lucky. But I'm still struggling with it.

You know when something changes and, even though you didn't like the old stuff, the new stuff seems even worse just because it is new? I think that's where I'm at. So now I've chewed you're ear off lets look at things that don't change, that are always reliable and that will forever make me happy:

My Bloody Valentine Red Velvet Cupcakes
makes about 15
2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 1/2 cup caster sugar
1 cup buttermilk
200g butter
2 eggs
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
red food dye

Heat oven to 180 Celsius and prepare muffin tray with paper cases.

In a large bowl combine the flour and cocoa powder. In another bowl use an electric mixer to beat the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla. Continue to beat until well combined. Add the butter milk to the egg mixture and stir with a spoon to combine.

Tip the wet mixture into the dry mixture and stir to combine. Add the red food dye to this mixture. How much you use is up to you I find about a tablespoon does the trick but it depends if you are using liquid or gel.

Finally add the bicarb soda and the vinegar on top of all of this. It should fizz a little. Mix it all together, if it is a little lumpy use a handheld whisk to gently smooth it out.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin paper cases and bake for around 20 minutes.


Creamy Valentine Frosting
30 grams butter
80 grams cream cheese
1 1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Beat the cream cheese until it is smooth. Add the butter and continue to beat until mixture is fluffy.

Gradually add the icing sugar, mixing continuously until the icing is at desired consistency and smooth. Add the vanilla and mix through.

Pipe on top of cupcakes or dip cupcake tops into the icing mixture.

Chocolate Caramel Fudge Cupcakes

Yes, you read that right. Chocolate. Caramel. Fudge. Mr Scumpalicious had a day off this week - we still haven't managed to align our schedules - so he decided to spend some time in the kitchen (ah-mazing!). This was the incredible concoction I came home to on Friday afternoon and, after spending 6 hours with the 9 to 11 year olds this was the best thing that happened to me all day! I love my husband!!

Chocolate Caramel Fudge Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups water
2 1/4 cup caster sugar
185 grams butter
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon bicarb soda
2 1/4 cup self-raising flour
3 eggs
Caramel top-n-fill 

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and prepare a muffin tray.

Combine the water, sugar, butter cocoa and bicarb soda in a large saucepan. Stir over medium heat but don't let it boil, until the sugar has dissolved and the butter is melted. Bring to the boil then reduce heat to low. Simmer for four minutes then transfer to mixing bowl. Let this cool to room temperature.

Add the flour the bowl and beat on a low speed until combined. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tray. Bake for about an hour or a little longer to crisp up the tops (fan forced oven seemed to help this).

Let the cupcakes cool then carefully cut out the centre and spoon in the caramel top and fill. Cut the centre piece down slightly and replace on top of the cupcake to cover the caramel.

Fudge Frosting 
90 grams butter
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 1/2 cup icing suga
1/3 cup cocoa powder

Combine the butter, water and caster sugar in a saucepan and stir over a low heat until the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved.

Place the icing sugar and to cocoa into a mixing bowl and gradually add the hot butter mixture to the bowl. Cover and refrigerate until frosting cools and thickens. Mix until spreadable and then pour or pipe over cupcakes or dip the cupcakes into the mixture.

Banana Bread

You know there is still some life in my kitchen - it just hasn't been appearing on my blog. Sometimes I wish the awesome posts I think of while I'm cooking would just show up here by osmosis....can someone invent an app for that?

I am settling back in to the routine of being a teacher, though I am still loathing my position. I find if work solidly all day Saturday and part of Sunday as well as get up at 5am and work til 6:30am two or three mornings during the week and stay at work til about 4:30 or 5 two or three afternoons a week I feel about 80% prepared for classes. So that is leaving very little time to do anything much that I really enjoy.

Anyway, something that is getting me through is a firm favourite of mine - Banana Bread.

Banana Bread is special to me. It reminds me of Rose and spending mornings standing behind the coffee machine, serving drinks and talking about the life that seemed oh-so-complicated at 18 years of age. Years later, my own banana bread gives me so much comfort, especially when paired with some sweet iced chai tea.

Banana Bread
1 1/2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
1/4 cup wholemeal plain flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
50 grams butter
2 or 3 bananas
1/3 cup walnuts (cut, crushed, broken...however you like them)

Heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line or butter up a nice loaf pan. Combine the flours, cinnamon and sugar in a large bowl.

In a smaller bowl whisk the eggs and add the milk and butters. Lightly mash the bananas and add them, with the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Sprinkle in the walnuts over the top and gently fold it all together.

Scoop the mixture into the loaf pan and bake for about 35-45 minutes. Check it with a skewer because it is very dense and can remain wet for a while.

Enjoy it toasted with oozing butter.

Week 2

So last week was actually awful. I don't think I've ever come home and just wanted to hide under the blankets for ever......but that was how I felt. There are a handful of things that make teaching difficult

1. teaching kids who don't know you - obviously you are JUST meeting them, you need time to develop relationships and understand how each of you do things

2. the workload - what is up with the start of the year and the end of the year and that part in the middle? starting from scratch at a new school is always tricky.

3. locked out of school computer network - i dont get why it seems like a great idea to totally delete you from the network when you start at a new school, like it isn't hard enough already

4. unknown routine - changing from secondary to primary school is hard, so is getting used to things like Music and Library, apparently these are actual subjects! 

Fingers crossed this week is better and I can find a bit more balance to enjoy some time in the kitchen. I want to make Panna Cotta and Brownies sometime this week. That's the goal...we'll see!

first day of school

my throat feels like i've eaten a box of razor blades. not from yelling just projecting. who knew 28 kids make so much noise or not so much  noise just......okay noise..... and there was only like 24 of them there today! apparently i have spoken louder than a whisper for the past 7 weeks of holidays.

in other news, after the 3 days storm-cyclone-flood the drinking water is now running out. seriously, what is up with this weather. and, is it friday yet?

Visual Timetable

As the beginning of the school year rapidly approaches (I start on WEDNESDAY) I am trying not to panic, cry, scream, have an anxiety attack to get organised. This year I have committed to the visual timetable. I tried it last year but I hated my pictures and didn't follow through with it. That said, a few students did mention that having the pictures on their books made it easier for them so there is merit in this and there will be a lot more merit if I do it right. Right?!

So my opinion on the visual timetable is this: In my experience, visual timetables are something that are placed within a verified students Individual Education Plan and never really addressed. I know that when I first started teaching my opinion often consisted of this "Are you kidding? I have enough stuff to do, now you want me to compile a bunch of pictures for one kid?!" Now, my opinion is like this "Are you kidding? I have enough stuff to do....but I know this is important for all the kids I teach."

How I do my visual timetable:  well...as I said earlier, I didn't do it so great last year but this is the basic premise of mine. I have a large set of pictures that every morning I put on my whiteboard. I bluetack them because I'm not fancy. Some students might ask to do this job but I feel it is more important that I do it because it helps me really focus on each of the pieces I have planned for my day. My large set of pictures have an image that represent the subject and the subject name on them. The large set is slightly smaller than an A4 sheet of paper, it is laminated for durability and they live in a folder that sits on my desk.

As well as my large set of pictures I print a small set (6cmx7cm) on sticky paper. This small set I cut out at the beginning of the school year and distribute to students. Students stick the small set onto their designated subject books. This way, when the student sees we have "History"on the whiteboard they know they have to find the book that has the picture that matches the one up on the board (does that make sense - the pictures match so it is easier for students to find the right book as well as know what to expect for the day).

As an added bonus, when I was working in a rural setting, I would quite often have students who would come in late (I'm talking like, school started at 8:30 and they would be there at 11:42). Having the visual timetable allowed me to simply say "Name" or make eye contact and tap the picture of the subject we were currently doing. I find this is a timesaver and allows the student far less embarrassment than having to stop the whole class and say, "Name....we are doing Science right now, please find your book and catch up with us."

The technicalities: visual timetables take a little time. Mine took about an hour and a half. Most of that time was spent searching the internet for the appropriate visual. Some people like them basic and are happy with Word Clip Art. I like mine to be just a little bit nicer so I use Phillip Martin's Clip Art. It's free, and the way it stays free is through donations. So...donate because the pictures are great and applicable to a wide range of school related things.

This is an example of my large pictures (obviously copied from MS Word doc). I will get some shots of them displayed in my classroom and students books once the school year starts.....so....soon I guess (gulp)

Carrot Muffins

Mathematics is difficult. carrots are tricky things to plant,  you have to work the soil well to make sure there are no lumps so the carrots grow straight. Planning for teaching maths is like planning to teach Swahili. carrots originated in Afghanistan. I can never seem to concentrate long enough on one topic and the topics seem all over the place anyway. carrots never used to be orange, they were purple, red, white and yellow. Geometry. Chance & Data. Measurement. Number & Place Value. And what's the other one? the orange carrot we know today was invented to honour the Dutch Royal family, known as "The House of Orange". Patterns and Algebra, that's the one. The most horrible one of all. I think that you either have a maths brain or you don't. There's no halfway with maths like there is with English. beta-Carotene is the substance that gives carrots their orange colour. it is in a lot of different fruits and vegetables and if you eat too much sometimes your skin will start to glow orange....natural tan much. The tricky thing is, maths is exactly like learning a new language. If you don't get the basics you can't do anything else. people used to wear the leafy tops of carrots as hair or hat accessories. Trying to plan to teach something I don't enjoy is very challenging and makes me want to eat. one cup of carrots contain 52 delicious calories. I don't know much about maths. i know a lot about carrots and i know you should make these because they make planning to teach maths a little bit bearable. 

Carrot Muffins
1 3/4 cups wholegrain self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sultanas
1/4 cup walnuts
2 or 3 grated carrots
1 cup of milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons oil

Preheat the oven to 200 Celsius and line a muffin tray.

In a large bowl combine the flour, bicarb soda, sugar, cinnamon, sultanas, walnuts and carrots.

In a small bowl whisk the eggs, milk and oil. Tip the wet mixture into the dry mixture and combine (don't mix the heck out of it, just gently fold it together).

Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin tray and bake for 15-20 minutes.  Once they have cooled slightly you might want to top them with cream cheese icing (30g butter, 80g cream cheese, 1.5 cups of icing sugar beaten and dolloped on top), I did this while mine were still warm and so the cream cheese became extra melty and delicious. They are also amazing served with butter and just on their own with a nice glass of iced chai tea.