It's a good Good Friday

How I love long weekends. This one is long overdue but, after getting off to a slightly shaky start, is finally here. I've stocked up on Easter eggs and even bought a few extra treats for ourselves, having been caught out in previous years staring at a pile of goodies to give away and none earmarked for us ... this year, I wasn't prepared to tempt fate again and I know now that our gifts will safely make it through to Sunday.

While I know that having buttermilk pancakes two Good Fridays in row doesn't exactly make it a tradition, it was a great way to start the long weekend. They went down really well with a mountain of maple syrup and an espresso made from Dr Mojo's Medicine coffee. 

It wouldn't be a long weekend without baking binge or two. I haven't made cupcakes in months and, given that it is practically compulsory to overload on chocolate this weekend, it makes sense to whip up some chocolate treats. I also want to try making hot cross buns using my breadmaker and am keen to give these maple syrup pikelets a go. Nom!

Although I plan to once again hit the books in a serious way this weekend, I do so in the knowledge that this weekend is entirely my own and that in itself is a very liberating thought. Heck, I might even do something really radical like read a book for pleasure!

Happy Easter, everyone. What are your plans for the long weekend?

Melting moments

Well, the choco buttons didn't last long ... yum! It has been a "I need to bake twice in one week" kind of week. These melting moments taste a lot like shortbread and were so delicious that even our cat helped herself to one - her first and last ever biscuit. (We were not impressed.)

I filled a few with strawberry jam purely for the sake of convenience and we ate the rest of them unfilled but I think they would taste great with butter or lemon flavoured icing.

Melting moments

Ingredients

• 200 g butter, softened
• 3/4 cup icing sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup cornflour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• butter icing or raspberry jam for filling

Method

1. Cream butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Sift flour, cornflour and baking powder together. Mix into creamed mixture, mixing well.
3. Roll dough into small balls the size of large marbles and place on a greased oven tray. Flatten slightly with a fork.
4. Bake at 180°C for 20 minutes or until cooked.
5. Cool and sandwich two biscuits together with butter icing or raspberry jam. Makes 16.

Melting moments

Choco buttons

This recipe for choco buttons isn't from the Edmonds Cookery Book but is similar in style. I remember my mother baking these when we were kids and we would dig into the bag of chocolate buttons while she was putting the rest of the mixture together. They are really easy to bake at the same time as cooking dinner, which is lucky as they nearly were our dinner tonight!

Choco buttons

Ingredients

• 150 g butter
• 5 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 ¼ cups flour
• 6 tbsp cornflour
• white and dark chocolate melts

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 160°C.
2. Melt butter in a large saucepan over a moderate heat. Remove from heat and stir in sugar and vanilla.
3. Sift over flour and cornflour and stir to combine.
4. Roll tablespoonfuls into balls and place on a greased tray.
5. Make an indentation with a thumb in the centre of each biscuit and place in a white or dark chocolate button.
6. Bake for 15 minutes. Makes 16-18.

Choco buttons

Marmite, shmarmite

Big news today. Forget crime, war or 'new' give way rules. Something bigger has got everybody talking: New Zealand is heading for a Marmite shortage.

Yes, Marmite - more specifically, the yeast spread that is made in New Zealand (not UK) in an earthquake damaged factory that is the main supplier for both here and Australia. Apparently the situation is dire and there will be no Marmite left in either country until the new factory is up and running again in July. How will we cope? Personally, I'm beginning to wonder if it's a great marketing ploy.

Actually, I'm a Vegemite fan myself so not at all bothered by the shortage. Both Marmite and Vegemite are acquired tastes and something you either love or hate. I did get to thinking, though, what would I do if warned of an impending shortage of say coffee? Or chocolate? Would I rush out and stock up? I'd certainly buy some coffee to keep me going, but not too much as it's only good when fresh. Chocolate lasts a bit longer and it would be a good excuse to fill the pantry. And then there's cheese. I'd buy one or two soft cheeses and keep some hard cheeses in the fridge for a rainy day but eventually it would go off.

What food shortage would see you rushing to stock your shelves?

Up and down

I love the notion of #lazysunday. Even if I am busy with work or study (like today), I still love escaping for an hour or so in search of coffee and the Sunday papers. A regular feature that I enjoy in the Sunday magazine is Up and Down, where a list of random things is categorised as either going up or down. Like most people's opinions, it changes weekly and I always say to myself I should collate a similar list sometime so I've taken a short break in my study to share my list for this week.

Up

• Water glasses kept in the fridge at cafés. Nice.
• Cheese scones. I still can't get enough of them.
• Ginger crunch. It smells so good in the oven and tastes even better.
• iPod shuffle. I love how my iPod is so random that I can go from listening to AC/DC to Los Bravos to The Muppets to Paul Simon to Amy Winehouse all within five songs.
• Noise cancelling headphones. It's amazing just how many irritations can be replaced by my favourite music (albeit temporarily).
• Good friends and long, leisurely weekend brunches. One can never have enough. 
• Missing Pieces. Never fails to produce a tear or two.

Down

• The price of movie tickets. $17 to sit in a dark room for an hour and a half with a bunch of strangers?
• Micromanagement. You know it's true.
• TV or radio ads that shout at me. No, Harvey Norman, No!
• Stress related insomnia. It wouldn't be so bad if I I could actually achieve something useful during those wee small hours.
•  Junk mail and circulars cluttering up letterboxes. Some weeks, my recycling bin can barely keep up.
• The impending end of daylight savings time. The mornings sure are getting darker (and colder)!

What's up and down for you this week?

Codependent chocolate cake

I was having lunch with a friend recently. She is newly single after a ten year marriage and has two young children. After telling her about the divorce party I was going to last December, she thought it was a great idea and considered throwing one with her ex-husband. I'm not sure that's still her plan. We caught up on recent events and she told me she is learning how to live as herself again and do some work on her codependency issues. (Her words, not mine. Yes, she's pretty straight up like that.) She was very positive about it all.

In the next breath, she announced some exciting news: she is in love. Yes! She met someone this weekend that she had known several years ago and knows he's the one. She had to move quickly as he was going overseas for three years this week, but she has got their future life together all sorted. With him away, she will have time to work on herself and address her codependency issues before he returns. Hmm.

I got to thinking that everyone might have a codependency of some sort. Quite sadly, mine is work. I know that is not a good thing. How I wish it was chocolate or cake (or chocolate cake) or something not so destructive, but that is the lot of a workaholic who descends from a whole line of high achieving workaholics. I keep on working longer and harder and keep on getting used and abused for my efforts, to which I respond by working even longer and harder than before. If work is not easily accessible, then other thankless tasks will do - study, for example. I'm just thankful that my codependency isn't housework or cleaning, although some might prefer that it was.

What's your codependency? Do you see any way of breaking the cycle?