Hello, who am I kidding? Cookies for a cause? Since when do I need a reason :D

I got an email last week saying that our school had registered to host a schmoozy morning of snacking in the tea room for Australia's Biggest Morning Tea, and could each lab please contribute a plate of something tasty. Ever since I've had big cookie plans in my head.

In fact, about five minutes after I got the email I went to the Pink Ribbon Shop, also known as the National Breast Cancer Foundation Official Merchandise Online Store, and bought these cutters:
I'd seen them before in my interwebs browsing, but I never really had a reason to buy them until now. And just so you know, Pink Ribbon shipping is super fast; I ordered on Thursday and the courier delivered them at 7.45am on Friday!

Since Biggest Morning Tea is not, shall we say, 'cancer-specific', so I've decided that I shouldn't just make pink ribbons... In fact, I've heard people being whiny biatches about how all the money goes into breast cancer research, and what about rates of prostate cancer in men yada yada. To which I have three things to say:

• Men get breast cancer too, so they can also be beneficiaries of breast cancer research. Admittedley, male breast cancer has much lower frequency than female, but the incidence is rising.
  
• Prostate cancer is, in the majority of cases, something men die with, not from. It is, as cancer goes, fairly easy to treat, and affects older men. Breast cancer typically affects women over 50 and has improving survival rates, however prevalence in women under 40 is rising (currently 5.7% of new cases). Younger women have lower levels of survival. And also, my dad's sister died, so shut up.
• I am not just making pink cookies.

I'm trying to decide what other colours I'll make, and wowsers, who knew there were so many awareness ribbon colours out there?! Narcolepsy? Sexually transmitted infections? Eosinophillic disease? Responsible use of public land? Colon cancer..in brown...slightly disturbing...

I think I'll stick to pink, orange (melanoma awareness apparently, which seems appropriate for an Australian morning tea), and blue (prostate cancer, so I can't be accused of sexism).

And maybe also because those are the icing colours I currently own...

That previous post was my 300th. Wowsers. I really want to say total amazement city, but no one will get the reference. Although if you do work it out let me know and I'll totally get you a prize or something. I mean, I probably won't, but I'll definitely think about it...

Actually, we're past the 300th post, but I've deleted a few over the years because they were too cringe-making on second look, but hey, in five years of blogging I guess things change. Look, does anyone remember whimsical bird?

I actually really loved that template and I've lost the graphic now, which will detract eternally from the sense of whimsy attached to it in my memory.


I've put this post in the category Loves because you know what, even though there have been long periods when I haven't posted, particularly last year when things were at the lowest point, I love my blog.

I've never really been a diary-writer, I always start out with good intentions and then forget after a week, so this is my chart of ups and downs and adventures and life. It goes something like this:

Hmmn, so there are points of correlation between postage frequency and general life happiness. Not quite as much as I thought though. I can't believe I just spent an hour making a graph to show that.

Anyway, 300 posts. I hope you've enjoyed the ride too.

I was working on Wednesday, doing a second year biochem lab, and it had a fair bit of downtime; there's only so many graphs I can draw in a three hour period. I was wandering around and reading things in the lab and actually had a close look at the risk phrases chart. I realise it's quite difficult to see, the torrential downpour that was going on outside made it really dark inside the lab...but really.. R:57

I never would have imagined that there was an entire category of risk dedicated to bees.

Obviously if you think about it, bees are very important, pollination and all that. I learned this from Bee Movie, thank you Jerry Seinfeld*, but wow, a dedicated risk phrase.

I had a look at ChemAlert, and just for your reference, if you are a lover of bees you should steer well clear of organophosphates.

*Although there is a good chance that I already knew the environmental importance of bees as pollinators and didn't need it condensed into moralistic cartoon form, but damn, I liked that movie.

You see, I sucked you right in with the post title, didn't I. Sorry, this post isn't about the office, or feet, but it really does smell off in here. Especially when people are eating hummous. It's a confined space mmmk.

I haven't posted much recently. Life got to be too much. Perhaps you heard about the incident with the water tank and our rent increase. Perhaps not.

I've seen some bizarre things this week though, and I took photos just for you. I'm a giver like that. I have to warn you right now, this post is going nowhere. Just so we're clear about that.

I feel that perhaps this one should actually be Part IV in my recent series "A Quality Education" but since I saw this sign in the Pavilions whilst I was getting my chicken lunch roll with special sauce, I think technically we shouldn't be concerned. Hopefully the sign was placed neither by Facilities Management or by one of our country's future medical professionals. Things should all be ok.

And what's this? A sign I see on the back of a 1 tonne tradesman's van. But what could it say??
I hope it says "Babe on Board," I like those signs because they're a play on "Baby on Board". Get it...Baby..Babe... mmmn I like tradespeople in their little fluorescent vests and big manly boots...mmmmn..oh wait, no let's get a bit closer... Wow, deep huh. The thing that concerns me here is that this potentially was placed by one of the future medical professionals of our country. You know, like, as a joke, like, for Med Revue. Wait while I burst into song and roll around on the ground with my med-student friends and we congratulate ourselves for being arrogant AND hilariously witty. "I like men.. haha" BA-HAH holy shit man, hilarious.

God, I'm way bitter today. It's ok though, I looked good that day. And just for you, I took a picture of myself in the reflection of the window to prove it.
Ok, so that didn't really work. But I did look good that day. You'll just have to trust me on that one.

Obviously there are times when we are all in need of a little clarification...


...but I would have thought this one was fairly self-explanatory. At least it was until they went and confused it with the sign...

Finally. Cupcakes. AKA Test Two.

They started out as White Chocolate Mud Cakes, from the Women's Weekly Cupcakes & Cookies but due to my somewhat free-spirited approach to recipe following, ended up as a kind of hybrid cupcake-muffin loaded with raspberries.

Don't worry, it was intentional. And it is test-kitchen weekend after all!

Hybrid White Chocolate & Raspberry Cupcake-Muffins.

125g butter
75g white chocolate
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup SR flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.

Combine butter, chocolate, sugar and milk in saucepan over low heat. Stir until well smooth and glossy, but don't boil.

Transfer mixture into a bowl and cool for a little while. My bowl is small and awesome. Small because the amounts above make a half quantity, and awesome because it's one of my new set of super lovely nesting bowls. A nest! Made of bowls!

Whisk in the flours, then the vanilla and egg.

Stir in the raspberries. I tried to break them up a little bit so I would get a bit of colour. It didn't really happen.

Fill up your papers. I filled mine very full and was worried about cupcake explosions, but it was ok. They stay quite flat.
Bake for about 35 minutes. Mine were closer to 40 minutes, the extra moisture from the berries makes a difference.

Eat, drink, and be merry.


Part of the reason I was testing this recipe today was because I want to make raspberry & white chocolate cupcakes for my lab very soon. My plan for those ones is to make the buttercream with raspberries and not have any in the cake, but I wanted to see what this cake would be like as the base.

Next time I'll cut down on the sugar big times, maybe by a third, because these are reeeeally sweet. I can't imagine how sweet they'd be with the marshmallow frosting that accompanies them in the book! Also, I'll leave the raspberries out of the cake. They're super delish (especially warm), but make the cake quite unstable, which would make frosting a little difficult.

Anyway, that's me done for the day. Time for another episode of Aircrash I think, with a hybrid cake-muffin to soothe my stomach :D

Faced with an extremely rare weekend, one where I have absolutely nothing else I should be doing, I found myself with two options for today. The first was to stay in bed, which I did until 2.30pm. The second was to go to the park and nap in a shady nook. By the time I made it out of bed though, I felt that I'd sort of abdicated the right to any nook napping. And there are only so many episodes of Air Crash I can watch before my stomach starts to feel a bit ooky.

I decided instead that today should be a test-kitchen day.

Test One.

I'm still trying to perfect poached eggs in the microwave, which I realise is probably a massive insult to egg purists, but they really aren't bad as eggs go. The eggs that is..not the egg-purists. Hmmn. In fact, today was my most successful attempt yet.

In case you're wondering, I have discovered that the key to it is to crack the egg gently, in a small bowl, into about 3/4 cup of cold water! For the first egg I carefully punctured some holes in the yolk with a fork, because I've read that otherwise the yolk explodes. For the second egg I completely forgot to poke the yolk, and ...nothing happened. So poke or no-poke at your own peril I guess.

Cover with a plate and microwave on high for 90 seconds. Or less, depending on your yolk-runniness preferences. Lift gently out of the water with a fork or other egg lifting utensil, be careful not to pierce the yolk. Eat.

Last time, epic fail that it was, I used hot water, thinking that it would sort of..seal the outside of the egg before I got it into the microwave. Instead, I ended up with a bowl full of whitish dispersed eggy water and a sad-looking yolk quivering at the bottom of the bowl.

I don't have any photos of this test-kitchen adventure for you because I am embarassed to admit that I have been cooking eggs in the microwave. It just seems wrong somehow. And yet, so so right.

Stick around for Test Two, it's sweeeeet. And I have photos to prove it.