Enchantment

Are you suffering from dating exhaustion? Tired of swiping right to disappointment? Kissed too many amphibians in princely clothing?

Well allow me to introduce you to HopelessRomantic. 

Yes, HopelessRomantic. It was a lonely Saturday night of home-cooked pasta and leftover cheesecake in my thin-walled one bedroom apartment. I could hear the thump of commencing parties and the frantic heels of my next door neighbour. Company was needed. Ok Cupid, sharpen your arrow. I first saw him in his profile picture, overflowing with enthusiasm as he jumped through the sky, his beautiful brown limbs extended like a gazelle and his eyes inviting some kind of other worldly adventure. The conversation began and flowed naturally between us as we carved out our impressions of each other, and moved quickly to open our very own whatsapp conversation. Born in Sri Lanka he had lived all over the world and was currently visiting his native country for a short contract of work as a wildlife photographer. He was also a composer in the stages of completing his first album, his music alike to a fantasy film score, inspired by the imaginary and unseen. His humour was witty and oh so funny, his nature soft and inquisitive, and generous of spirit as he shared his love of art, enchantment, dogs, elephants, and mangoes. Note: He was in Sri Lanka, 8348 kilometres away. But as our conversation traversed religion, fantasies of parallel universes, and our mutual desire for soul-wrenching love I felt my world begin to expand, my iphone screen exhaling wonder into the air around me, dipping my senses in fairy dust. His imagination flirted with the thought of sending his magic carpet across the seas to scoop me up and deliver me to Singapore, where he would be waiting with orang-utans for a sunrise breakfast. I was truly spellbound.

And so, it was a Whatsapp love story. We talked into the early hours and he kissed my cheek from afar before I sunk into dreams of waterfalls, tropical fruit, humid perspiration, miraculous sunsets, and moonlit jungles. And he was there with me when I woke the next morning, investing time to discover every detail of my world and sharing his with me. My life quickly became full of him as we poured ourselves into each other, inspiring each other with our musical tastes, discussing our fears and disappointments, and choreographing fantastical romantical meet ups. We cyber laughed, our wicked senses of humour combining gleefully. He offered to create a website for my business venture and encouraged the creative in me. And he timidly shared his haunting musical compositions and breathtaking photographic images. He was forever dreaming up projects, like the large fishpond he was building in his backyard. His imagination was a universe in itself, it’s stars burning so brightly. Every part of me was alive with feeling, my senses awakened to a new and superior reality. I was flying high above the clouds, “soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky”. And he was there. He was there for the beginning and the end of my day. He was there when I discovered that the woman I thought was orgasming regularly at 7 am was actually a whiny little dog. He was there with therapeutic advice and caressing words when I was unexpectedly laid up in bed. He was there with me on the late night tram, together with the loud talking prostitute who was grieving her late cat, Fester. He became part of every special moment. And I was there for his. I was his darling, his smile, his happy sigh. He was so present in my world that I could almost taste his salty lips and smell the ripening mangoes in his backyard.  

Within weeks we had established our very own universe. Nothing of consequence seemed to exist outside of it. The air around me was heavy with intoxicating spices. But as we revealed more and more of ourselves a certain kind of melancholy crept in. He became self-deprecating, hopeless and frustrated. He spoke of his yearning for a muse, believing she would be the link to his artistic success, as though he were Beethoven himself. I plied him with compliments and became a constant source of reassurance, all the while doubting if I was enough for him. Our magic carpet lost momentum and flopped dramatically to the sandy ground of some unknown wilderness, not an oasis or genie in sight. I was exhausted and emotionally parched. What had happened to our magic?

Hoping to become airborne once again, I persisted. But the more I championed him the more hopeless he became. He declared his work futile and without soul. If I were his muse I was failing. He became distracted, coming and going from conversations, stating that he was feeling wretched and needing rest. I wanted to be there to kiss his cares away but he seemed to be slipping into another dimension altogether. But during a particularly agonising interaction he disappeared intermittently and then on return to the conversation called me by another name. A name I didn’t answer to. He cleverly explained the name was for a character he was writing into a short story but when it happened a second time I started to smell a rodent. It seemed I was not the only contender in his quest to find a muse. And as he slowly disappeared into the virtual sunset I felt the veil of enchantment dissolve. I had been trapped in my very own fantasy world, in love with the intangible and transcendental. Playing the part and not living it.

I still smile when I think of HopelessRomantic. He was truly spectacular in many ways. But he was also spectacularly foolish. Everything he needed for success was inside of himself. No muse required. Even though I would have been a truly spectacular choice. But enough of this spell casting, carpet playing, wish denying, enchantment trading, Aladdin faking misfit. I will be a muse only unto myself because therein lies the magic. It’s time to enter the kitchen and dream up a dish to enrapture my tastebuds into a flight of fantasy while my feet remain firmly on the ground. 

A taste of Magic – Chicken Fesenjun

Ingredients:

5 to 6 chicken lovely legs

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, diced

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 tbsp tomato paste

1tbsp pomegranate molasses

1 cup pomegranate juice

1-2 tbsp sugar to taste

1 tbsp honey

1 bay leaf

200 g shelled walnuts

1 tsp salt or to taste

Fresh pomegranate, seeded

fresh lemon juice (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Scatter walnuts on a baking pan and roast until golden brown. Once ready remove them from the oven and place in a clean tea towel. Rub over with the tea towel and remove as many of the walnut skins as possible. Now place the walnuts in a food processor and blitz until coarsely ground.  

Add olive oil to a deep based frying pan. Brown the chicken legs well and remove from the pan. Add onion and fry until translucent. Add all the spices and the tomato paste and stir through until fragrant. Add the pomegranate molasses, pomegranate juice, walnuts, sugar, honey and bay leaf. Season to taste. Put the lid on the pan and leave to cook on a low heat for an hour or longer, stirring at intervals. Add a little water if required. 

Once ready serve with plain basmati rice and scatter with pomegranate seeds. Add a little fresh lemon juice for acidity to taste.

This Persian dish has sent me soaring and tumbling in flavour induced ecstasy. It’s a whole new world. Three wishes? No need. Just this. 

And while this dish may have looked like it had already been digested once served it was so good I once again ate it all before taking my celebratory ‘into the tunnel’ photo. So here I am with an empty spoon and happy tummy.

The Elephant in the Room

Are you suffering from dating exhaustion?  Tired of swiping right to disappointment?  Kissed too many amphibians in princely clothing?

Well allow me to introduce you to Mr Wheezy.

Yes, Mr Wheezy.  I was fresh out of university and in my first year of working as a nurse.  It had been a shock to the system.  10:30 pm clock-offs and 7 am starts.  Collecting mucus specimens, and inspecting prolapsed orifices.  I survived on coffee, bed-time port and an essential warped sense of humour.  And my newly acquired sisters.  All of us living the crazy life together.  So every now and then we needed to cut loose, and if anyone knows how to have a good time it’s an apron of nurses.  No, a better collective is required.  A hoot of nurses. 

On one particular summer’s night we gathered at a local Latin themed bar to drink our cares away.  We were a howling clutch of hens, under-slept and overstimulated, impregnated with alcohol, gossip, and mutual affection.  And as we relaxed into our second or fifth beverage a rather handsome couple of young men innocently wandered past. And so we heckled them into flirtatious conversation.  One rooster in particular caught my eye.  It was Mr Wheezy.  He was slight yet appealingly athletic, a trained gymnast with startlingly blue eyes, and a smile that would begin shyly at the corners of his mouth and spread slowly across a beautifully chiselled countenance.  Note: Even though he was well and truly legal he was a generation gap younger than my 31 year old self, so I attempted to quieten my hormones.  But as I gawked shamelessly our eyes met and a virtual message was exchanged.  We were swiping right in the flesh.  My temperature was rising.  Mr Wheezy and his friend retreated slowly, perhaps overcome by such a resplendent rabble of nightingales.  As I watched my new crush slip away into the peopled street I gushed uncontrollably.  I desperately wanted to kiss those slowly spreading lips.  And so my gang of sisters urged me to catch him up and lock lips.  Injected with a large dose of lust, emboldened by sangria and with very own cheering squad roaring, I tipsily pursued.  And upon reaching him I breathily expressed my desires.  Mr Wheezy consented.  There in the unflattering fluorescent street light with an audience of rowdy unknown restaurant goers, he kissed me.  And he kissed well.  His hand cupped my face and pulled me in closer.  I was gone.  Lost in the moment.  High on the ecstasy of the risk worth taking.  We exchanged phone numbers and I danced the air back to my now shrieking brood of nursies.

And so, it was seduction via sangria.  Within a few minutes the first text message was received.  And as my bevy and I danced into the night the message relay gained momentum and temperatures continued to rise.  I had to kiss those lips again.  It was as though the sangria had possessed me.  I had become ravenous for his gymnastical  body.  A crazed, horny, slightly stupido senorita.  Si.  So when I received a message  saying that he was exhausted and heading home, and that I was welcome to join him, I couldn’t contain my drunken libido.  Farewelling my knot of nurses I tumbled into the back of a taxi and headed to the address that Mr Wheezy had so kindly forwarded.  I was overflowing with happy excited excretions, my blood vessels dilating, my body lighting up like a pin ball machine.  I had visions of him lying naked across his bed while I sponged him into a state of delirious intoxication. 

When I arrived at his address I was surprised to discover a very dark and rather uninviting house.  I clumsily removed my hot and sticky self from the taxi and nervously sent a message to my host.  A screen door creaked and I saw the outline of my beckoning orgasm maker.  The symphony in my body returned with even more passion and I plunged into the darkness after him.  As I followed him he motioned for me to stay quiet.  “My parents are sleeping” he whispered.   My hormones screamed silently.  I ignored them.  He led me to his room where one candle glistened provocatively.  We fell onto his bed and started rocking and rolling and dipping and crashing….it was a water bed.  This time my stomach protested.  I ignored once more.  As the waves swelled our bodies paralleled the transformation, opening up to each other, ready to discover the ocean within.  But as I whispered in my not altogether stupid Sangria bitten state “Do you have a condom?” and he replied with the negative his ship was refused entry to port.  The thrashing waves lulled almost immediately into a disappointing ripple.  Mr Wheezy hadn’t thought ahead and neither had I.  This certainly did seem unfortunate.  A few frustrated caresses were exchanged as the weight of our alcohol induced exhaustion settled over our unsatiated bodies.  He blew out the lonely candle, whispered goodnight, kissed my lips once more and a hush entered the room.  There was a quiet pause.  But as my eyelids drooped I was suddenly interrupted by the most resonant and industrial snore I had every heard.  As it continued I gently nudged Mr Wheezy.  This only prompted the snore to become an incredibly high pitched wheeze, only to then transform into a whistle, then a rasp, a grunt, a snuffle, followed by a periodic stretch of teasing silence.  And then repeat.  What a disaster.  My fantasy had become an apnoeic nightmare.  I felt my nursing conscience tempted to wake and educate Mr Wheezy on his need for a sleep review but self preservation at this point was paramount.  I hatched a plan to escape the bellowing blackness.  A taxi would be my saviour.  But as I reached for my phone I discovered that it had like me also run dry.   

I lay there bobbing and pitching, an insomnolent island, as the remaining hours passed.  At the first kiss of the sun’s rays I roused Mr. Wheezy from his thunderous slumber.  As he dialed for a taxi I heard the creak of trodden floorboards.  Apparently the nightmare wasn’t yet over.  Bleary eyed and probably smelling like a moulding vineyard I accompanied my failed fantasy to the front door, only to be intercepted by his mother.  If ever there was a moment to define awkward.  I could feel her gaze burning through me, assessing my hungover, cradle-snatching self.  After a quick introduction I followed my toes to the front door and freedom.  As I gulped down the cool morning oxygen I vowed never to touch sangria again.

I sometimes think of Mr Wheezy and wonder if he still spends the night on a construction site in the middle of a raging ocean.  I hope for his sake that he is safely strapped to a CPAP machine atop a latex mattress.  Reliving this hot summer flunk has left me feeling dehydrated and low in blood sugar.  So enough tossing, heaving, hurling, deoxidising, rumbling, and wheezing!  Time to make a hangover fix.  And after that a nap on my very comfortable bed in my own peaceful house.

 Oh my happy days.  The crumble and blueberries are playing a symphony on my tastebuds.  These disappeared before I could even think about taking a photo of one escaping into my cakehole.  No disappointments here.  Just orgasmic flavour.  Yes, yes, yes!

Some day my Prince will cum

Are you suffering from dating exhaustion? Tired of swiping right to disappointment? Kissed too many amphibians in princely clothing? 

Well then there was PorntobeAlive.

Yes, PorntobeAlive.  It was back in the day.  Back in the day when mobile phones were the size of a small dog and the internet was not yet a thing.  Back when happy pants and MC Hammer were a hot combination.  When I believed in the archetypal love of Juliet and Romeo, and Cinderella and her Prince Charming.  I believed with no shred of doubt in the existence of unicorns.  I was fresh out of a strict Christian upbringing, where “friggin’” was regarded a swear word and Harry Potter was the spawn of Satan.  A virgin to almost everything.  While all the cool kids were watching Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I was watching Anne of Green Gables, attending progressive dinners, and learning bible verses.

But all of that changed when my first year of university and first taste of alcohol coincided. For a fledgling singing student who sang Kumbayah for her entry audition, I very quickly became acquainted with a world I had never known.   A combination of new friends, ideas, expressions, beliefs, tastes, sounds, and feelings had me in a heady spin.  I was in love with life.  Completely born again.  Baptised by the arts.

By my second year of university my eyes were well and truly open, my skin shed, awakened from my slumber.  And there in the second row of my first class awaited my Prince Charming, PorntobeAlive.  He was dashingly handsome, confident and self-assured, and wickedly humorous.  A 6 foot 6 footballer turned operatic baritone with an affinity for puffing the magic dragon and knocking back bottles of whisky, he was the life of the party I had never been to.  And within weeks the party had truly started and it was wild.  And I had never experienced wild.  Long nights out with even longer mornings in.  We just lived and breathed each other.  Our long limbs entangled in a new and intoxicating language.  It was the closest I’d ever come to tasting rainbows.  Perfect harmony.

And so, it was true love. 

And it was the first true love.  The first in every sense.  I’d never “been” with a man or exposed my privates to anyone.  So for all I knew Porntobealive was a god in the bedroom with the sex drive of a flipping dolphin.  The truth was that we would roll around for approximately 20 minutes in a charged and increasingly excited state, after which he would spend about 2 to 3 minutes poking around with his love tool, and then, and then, and then…..…well that was it.  And I didn’t know any better.  At that stage I was indifferent to the existence of the clitoris.  All I knew was that he made me feel warm and fuzzy in my lady bits and I ignorantly thought that was enough.  Ha!

So within months we were living together.  Life became a little more subdued as we worked, studied, and discovered the more mundane things.  Friday night football on the box tv as he gesticulated wildly and I stared blankly at the tiny shorts running after the funny shaped ball.  Videos hired from the corner shop and ordered in barbecue chicken pizza.  It was our little heaven in a two and a half room cream brick.

On one particularly lazy evening PorntobeAlive was watching an episode of ‘The Footy Show’ whilst I picked at my toenails and extracted fluff from my belly button.  One of the featured stories was an interview with a female porn star promoting her latest Penthouse centrefold.  My inner church girl recoiled at the sight of her wasp stung lips and flotation device breasts.  I knew nothing of this culture.  PorntobeAlive also showed obvious disdain, declaring her “a turn off”, amongst other less eloquent things.  So imagine my surprise when I came upon a freshly purchased Penthouse hidden not so inconspicuously amongst a pile of sheet music.  And there was “turn off” lounging also not so inconspicuously across the centrefold in all her plastic glory.  Well I never.  Seriously, never.  All of that skin.  All of that bursting breast.  All of that hairlessness.  All of those neat and tidily nipped lady bits.  Sex and flesh slapping me rudely and unashamedly across the face.  I was shocked, repulsed, yet strangely curious.  This was another new world that I had stepped into.   Was this the kind of woman PorntobeAlive favoured?   Were vaginas supposed to look like that?  Should I book in a XXX wax asap?  Could I tuck my flaps in to make my vagina look like that?   So many questions.  So many insecurities.

When questioned regarding said Penthouse PorntobeAlive simply stated that he had bought the magazine out of curiosity.  In fact he hadn’t even looked through it and was surprised as to how it even ended up fraternising with his collection of Schubert art songs.  (Said Penthouse was in far superior company.)  According to him I was foolish and untrusting to suggest that he would be interested in such a thing.  Somehow I was at fault.  I mean I should have just been happy with my 2 to 3 minutes of penetration and zero climax, right??

Holding tightly onto my slippery Cinderella story I attempted a return to normality but a number of events that followed saw my palace come crashing down.  Firstly, on return from a weekend choir practice I discovered a wad of semen soaked tissues lying like a little gift atop my dresser.  How delightfully thoughtful.  Clearly PorntobeAlive had been thinking of me.  Hmmm.  That same day during a cleaning frenzy brought on by his little gift I noticed a number of dirty fingerprints on the wall leading to more dirty marks at the manhole.  Peekaboo.  My heart racing, my insecurities compounding, I made a dangerous ladder out of unsteady furniture and poked my head through with pocket torch in hand.  There!  In the dusty corner lay a guilty pile of magazines.  I precariously made my way up and grabbed the dirty hoard.  And after making it down with my neck intact and my dignity shattered, I perused the not so freshly purchased pages and reeled at the images of nude ladies in countless compromising positions.  So many exposed orifices, so little decency.  And as I tore through his mecca of quick fix pleasure, pink bits flying, I felt like I was choking on the growing silt cloud of our falling kingdom.

Well PorntobeAlive had some explaining to do.  And long story short, he admitted to his weakness for porn, begging for my forgiveness and promising to never use again.  In a state of bewildered and pathetic insecurity I stayed.  But true love had changed.  There were intruders in the bedroom.  Dozens of big bosomed women were amongst the bedsheets performing lewd acts whilst PorntobeAlive pointed his 2 minute tackle at them and sprayed forth like a hose to a fire.  At least that is what was happening in my mind.  Intimacy was dead.  The taste of rainbows gone.  And when I returned home one evening to discover the ceiling surrounding the manhole had caved in I realised I was in a battle that wasn’t worth fighting and was never to be won.  I abandoned the scene of the crime for a corner store chocolate fix.  As I was paying at the counter the owner mentioned that PorntobeAlive had a long overdue video that needed to be returned asap.  Upon asking him the title he looked up from the loans notebook with a smirk and uttered the unforgettable words “Debbie does Dallas: The Next Generation”.  As I consequently inhaled the chocolate I realised my prince had turned back into a frog, and felt a strange longing for a world of Anne of Green Gables and  Kumbayah.

Now these days I am a little more wise of the world and realise that porn is a very present theme in many people’s lives and I have no judgement of that.  I also have a much better understanding of a man’s penchant to fiddle with his fiddle.  But wouldn’t it save a lot of time and emotional wastage if people were upfront with their desires and sexual habits?  If PorntobeAlive had come clean about his need for 30 second intimate moments with naked paper ladies it would have for me.  But enough of this pencil pulling, seed spilling, smut hoarding, early ejaculating, clitoris failing, unicorn slaying, fantasy obliterating fool.  Time to put him and all of his demons to sleep for an eternity.  He shall be ‘Sleeping Ugly’.  In the meantime I will set to constructing a palace to dizzy my tastebuds and create a real and satisfying foodgasm.

 

Dark Chocolate & Raspberry Brownies

Ingredients:

300g Green and Black’s 70%  dark chocolate broken into pieces

250g salted butter

400g light brown sugar

4 large eggs

50 g cocoa flour

140 g plain flour

200g fresh or frozen raspberries

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a 20 x 30cm baking tray tin or line with baking parchment. Place the chocolate, sugar and butter in a saucepan over low heat, and stir through once melted. Remove from the heat.

Beat the eggs and slowly stir into the melted chocolate mixture once it’s cooled. Fold through the sieved flour and cocoa. Stir in half the raspberries, empty mixture into the baking tray, and then scatter the remaining raspberries across the top. Bake for 30 mins on the middle shelf until the edges are looking crunchy and the middle is still moist.  Cook a little longer if you prefer a brownie that is firmer than moist.  Allow to cool before cutting into slices.

OH GOD, OH YES, GIVE ME MORE.  These are so good that I’m tasting rainbows whilst  flying through the sky on the back of my very own unicorn.

Preach not to me

Are you suffering from dating exhaustion? Tired of swiping right to disappointment? Kissed too many amphibians in princely clothing? 

Well then there was LookingforRecruits.

Yes, LookingforRecruits.  We met online.  A tranquil Sunday afternoon with nothing better to do than shop for a boyfriend.  His picture caught my eye first.  Cheeky smile, three day growth, dimpled, playful dark eyes.  And the conversation flowed like cheap easily drinkable champagne.  Within an hour a first date of pub beers and live metal was arranged, with the odd request that I wear flat shoes.  Height envy alert.  But the date was locked in and I arrived comfortably wearing a vintage sequinned mini and tee with my newly acquired pair of Mexican flat-heeled ankle boots.  He was funny, sweet, a little wicked, Colombian in background with a fierce determination to teach the greater community to spell Columbia (ie Colombia) correctly.  A tanned and dishy Latino with a ridiculously sexy accent, he was a musician who had traveled through Melbourne and couldn’t bring himself to leave, and now worked in construction fitting music in around the edges, and his slightly shorter stature was negligible considering the electric energy he exuded and the buzz that vibrated between us.   Two or three jugs of beer, many hysterical laughs and increasing flirtatious banter later we moved on to the next pub for a two person thrash band and a couple more cold ones.  Ecstatic, full of yeast, slightly deaf, and lustfully clinging to each other we finished the night in my bed making thrash music of our own.

And so, it was beer and music fuelled infatuation.  The following morning, groggy and dry-eyed, we recovered with a fatty breakfast and strong coffee.  Good conversation, affectionate touch, and sugar replacement.  Bliss.  Within a couple of days he was again at my abode and this time for dinner.  We listened to music for hours while he strummed his guitar, we danced to bachata, and fell asleep entwined in the summer heat.  Our third date was a lazy Saturday afternoon of couch lying, sorting through favourite musical tracks, and discussing all sorts.  During the afternoon LookingforRecruits broached the topic of conspiracy theory and it soon became clear that it was more than a casual interest to him.  In his world such phenomena as the Illuminati, fluoride mind control, chemtrails, and the possibility of hanging with Elvis and Princess Di were more real than reality itself.  Being a little naive on the subject I agreed to watch a documentary recommended by LookingforRecruits.  It was fascinating if not a little far-fetched and led to many more discussions on a number of occasions, interspersed with copious amount of music, food, laughter and mutual like.  But as the weeks passed by there seemed to be less flirtation, less affection, and nearly zero mattress dancing.  A little confounded I decided to bring up the ‘what is this?’ subject the next time we met.  And when I did I became even more confused.  LookingforRecruits suggested that we move in together.  And when I asked under what circumstances we would co-exist he replied “good friends that have fun”, expressing a really vague position on commitment.  Even though it was foolish, part of me entertained the idea.  Clearly I was crazy about this guy as my brain had ceased to function.

A little perplexed on what to do next I accepted an invite to join LookingforRecruits and his friends on a Saturday night out.  It was a blast.  And I felt like his girlfriend.  He held my hand, we danced together, he stroked my leg as I sat beside him, regularly checked in to see that I was ok and happy to stay, and ended the night entangled once again.  But then on the next few occasions there were again mixed messages.  A cuddle here, a handhold there, but no more kissing or clotheless sleepovers.  A consistent theme did remain however.  Conspiracy theorising in conversation abounded, and LookingforRecruits seemed on a mission for me to become more of a believer.  I knew the time was approaching to put an need to this non-relationship as it was ripping my heart out and Romeo was leaving me so unsatisfied.

On our final meeting we met at the beach together with a couple friends of his.  It was unbearable.  His friends were all over each other in love and there we were with a proverbial pillow wedged between our half naked bodies.  I felt ridiculous.  Time. to. quit.  But when I poured out my heart to him, revealing my inability to friend zone him he didn’t seem upset.  Just disappointed.  And not a ‘disappointed to see you go’ kind of disappointed.  It was more of a ‘I’m disappointed in you’ kind of disappointed.  And then it dawned on me through my infatuation drugged haze.   I had failed him as a student.  He believed himself the messiah and he had lost his disciple.

But enough of this conspiracy preaching, intimacy abusing, accent flirting shortass. Time for a real Columbian, I mean Colombian treat.  I’m going to whip and beat and smear and bake and create.  Ah, the religion of food.  The divine.

A taste of Colombia

Brazo de Reina

Ingredients:
4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup plain flour
400 mls cream
2 tbsp icing sugar
10-15 strawberries, sliced
1 tsp honey

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Line a buttered lipped baking tray with baking paper and grease the paper.
Separate the eggs into two small bowls. Beat the yolks until pale and then slowly add the sugar whilst beating. Then beat the whites until stiff. Slowly add the flour to the yolk mixture and combine. Now fold through the whites. Spread evenly across the buttered pan. Place in the oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until lightly golden on top. Leave to cool.
Whip up the cream and icing sugar until thick. Slice the strawberries into a bowl and drizzle the honey over the top of them.
Spread the cream over the top of the cooled sponge and scatter with the strawberries. Slowly roll the sponge from one end to the other. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

I served this cake with fresh fruit tea. To make the tea boil 3 cups of water in a saucepan and add a cup of fresh strawberries, half a cup of blackberries and 15 fresh mint leaves. Let the concoction simmer for a few minutes and then take off the heat. Add honey to taste.

Deli!  I’d consider worshiping a strawberry if it preached to me.

My housemate, who has an insatiable appetite, gourmandised my Colombian treat before I had the opportunity to take my food porn selfie.  Oh well, another strawberry will do me just fine.