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Black Star Pastry (Strawberry Watermelon Cake)

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Some of you might know about the desperate attempt I made last year for the Strawberry Watermelon Cake (see previous post at  Black Star Pastry ).  Yesterday I had the privilege of tasting this cake at a party. I got super excited as I’ve been wanting to try this for almost a year now. I was so tempted to just skip the mains but I patiently waited for dessert time and made sure I left space for the cake :P In the meantime, I went to take a close look at the cake (could not resist, for obvious reasons) and I was amazed at how magical it looked. It was constructed beautifully starting with a layer of almond  dacquoise followed by cream, then a slice of watermelon with cream,   almond  dacquoise and cream again. Finally, it was topped with strawberries, pistachios and dried rose petals. It was a quite a delicious cake but unfortunately, it did not meet the expectations I had. I liked certain elements, such as the lightness of the cream layers, f...
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Wholemeal date and walnut loaf

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Happy Monday everyone! It has been a while since I baked a loaf so thought I'd make one :) Recipe adapted from http://daa.asn.au/recipes/wholemeal-date-and-walnut-loaf/ Ingredients 2 eggs, lightly beaten 100 g pitted dates, chopped 45 g margarine 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 cup water 40 g walnuts, chopped 1 cup self-raising flour 1 cup wholemeal flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 tablespoon LSA oil to spray Method 1) Preheat oven to 180 °C. 2) Combine dates, margarine, sugar and water in a saucepan. Stir and boil gently. Set aside to cool. 3) Sift flour, baking powder, LSA. 4) Add in walnuts and eggs  5) Add in date mixture and mix well. 6) Lightly spray a loaf tin pan. Line with baking paper. 7) Pour mixture into pan 8) Bake for 45-50 mins. Skewer should come out clean.  9) Remove from oven and cool for 10 mins 10) Turn out on a cooling rack. Slice and serve with yoghurt, if desired.
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Marvellous May

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This month was a one hell-of-a-month for me. I still had a lot of work left to do from the major revisions of one of my old papers which took me a really long time. I was trying really hard to finish this because we had a deadline. But then, I got caught in the last wave of flu. I don’t get sick very often, but when I do, it’s really bad. I would’ve liked to take some time off to recover, but I knew I needed to push myself to meet the deadline. Working during that time wasn’t easy, it was tough. There were times where I struggled a lot, but I refused to give up. I ended up working from home for two days which helped me work and recover at the same time.  The next task was revising my other paper which was nearly done. I hadn’t worked on this for a while, so I had sort of forgotten what I was up to. The good thing was I did a writing workshop this month where I used this paper as an example. I found this to be incredibly useful because it helped me get into the mindset again...
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