Mum's birthday, or, mission impossible

Today was Mum's birthday.

So we started out by cooking a cake. This may not sound a big deal, but mum is allergic to gluten, wheat, sugar, dairy, eggs, iodine, yeast... suffice to say, that building a cake which looks like a cake, and tastes not like a metal sponge is verging on mission impossible stuff. difficult.

But we have found a solution: There are a couple of new brands available at the local supermarket

• Easy Bakers yeast, dairy & wheat free flour. From Lauke Flour. Which is actually flour that looks and feels like real wheat flour, and not (to randomly choose something) re-fried dirt.
• Orgran, gluten free, No Egg - which is an egg replacement.

We sort of followed the "basic cake" recipe on the flour box. Flavia inevitably asks me why we can't at least follow the actual recipe once before deciding that it won't work without substantial creative input. I don't know why recipes are written that way, but the answer is we just can't.

So. Into 250g of the nifty flour (correct to recipe) sieved, we added 5 heaped teaspoons of No-Egg should have been 4 whole eggs. We also added 150mL fresh-squeezed orange juice that should have been 100mL water and some water because it wasn't looking wet enough and about 20 drops of Sugarine should have been 75g of sugar. I also accidentally added 1/2 a teaspoon of the vanilla essence we have in the cupboard in a moment of non-concentration. We then cut a super-ripe banana and dropped the slices into an concentric-round cooking dish (it was supposed to be a flat square tray) covered the banana in nutmeg and cinnamon the recipe is just looking at me shaking it's head with a why-oh-why do I even bother type look and poured in the (rather small looking) batter. It was starting to rise and bubble in the mixing bowl.

Oven at 150C correct to recipe and the whole thing cooked in about 10 minutes which I take to be reasonable when the recipe said 30 minutes or when golden. The batter was golden when I put it in, so no help there, and after all, they hadn't accounted for half the stuff I did o their recipe..... We just did the classic toothpick test a few times.

Mum loved the cake, it actually tasted like banana bread, and we started the day with a completely out of time and tune happy birthday song in English and Portuguese. Lilly helped blow the candles out, delivered the present, opened the present, stuck her head in the bag and shouted There's chocolate! and after handing Mum the chocolate, shouted And a scarf! So the surprise element of the present may have been lost.

Astute readers may wonder, with all those allergies, what we're thinking giving Mum chocolate for her birthday, but it's (again a recent find) Sweet William chocolate which I have to say is one of the best foods we've found for Mum ever. It is milk, sugar free, but still tastes close to real chocolate.

We've previously bought mum membership to the National Gallery of Australia, and so we took Mum for the first time to the "members lounge". She was impressed with the view and the service. Lilly loved looking at the forest from above, and watching the people walking around the trees. I carried Gabriel in the Baby Bjourn, facing outwards this time, and he had a great time. Never complained once.

In the lounge Flavia noticed some lilies in water - and pointed them out to Lilly. Lilly was fascinated that flowers have names. So after returning home, she noticed that we had some flowers in vases on the table. These are Lillies! No, they are camellias. Oh. All flowers have different names. We looked around the house and pointed to some pansies Lilly had planted a while ago. Pantsees? Pansies. Ah. And did Lilly remember the little tiny blue flowers that grew in the grass outside? Mum asked her What do you think they are called? Harry.

So we now have some tiny blue grass flowers which are named Harry.

We've ended the day with watching the first Mission Impossible movie, it seems appropriate.

Good coffee

It is somewhat inevitable that a blog tinged with espresso ought to at least once advocate a coffee.

My drink of choice is a 4-shot espresso. With a drip of milk. You might shout "Machiato" at me, but really, the objective of the milk is to curdle and hence, with it's sacrifice, show that the coffee is indeed of a strength to be walked across. In this sense, I'm not so much asking for milk, rather I'm asking for a sacrificial latte-canary to send down the caffeine mine-shaft.

My coffee demands:

• strong. I enter your shop in the "I haven't slept for three days, and am not sure which way is up" state. I want to get to "I'm ready to roll and sign contracts" state, and I do not wish to spend time passing through the "ye gods, is that me in the mirror?" phase.
  
• fast. I care not for banter (witty or otherwise)
  
• excellent taste. I may asleep for the first shot, but I can still taste it.
• smiles. I am bleary. Make my day better. Do you know my name? Good. Remind me. But for God's sake, don't try to engage me in conversation. By definition, I haven't had my coffee yet!
  

I have found the best coffee producing shop ever, by my standards (poorly defined as they may be), called Group 7, on London circuit. It helps a lot that I work in the building directly above them, but frankly I'd walk a fair way to get to them. They use their own coffee, rather than a mass-consumer brand. Obviously the coffee wasn't grown here.

The staff (which seem to change a lot - do they burn out after a while, or are they on rotation?) are friendly, and know me by name. Not completely unexpected since I'm there 2-3 times per day, asking for a four shot espresso. The barrista, who I have been told is also the owner doesn't waste time discussing the finer points of where he bought his coffee - he looks up at the list of coffees to create, makes mine, and gets on with it. He may deign to nod at me. I nod back. He knows what he's got. Enough said.

My typical coffee purchase: I enter at about 8:30 or so. The sun outside is a pasty white egg, and the wind-chill 50 gale is trying to shred me. Welcome to Canberra winter. I get in. The shop is warm. There are two coffee machines running full tilt and about 25 people waiting for coffee. I look at the cashier, she nods, writes my name and four crosses on the A4 page of all the coffees awaiting order. I wander aimlessly away or perhaps I stare haplessly out the windows.

A few minutes later I have my cup, holding it in both hands, I sip, and I am alive.