DAYOFJAY

• Not all ovens are the temperatures they say they are.


• Cakes rise (dont put on the top rack!)- learnt that the hard way.


• if you are doing a Jack McLean signature triple batch cake. dont pour all the mixture into one tin. I think this is a great tip especially when it comes to flourless cakes (my favourite). The smaller the cake, the quicker and more evenly it will cook (logic, right?). You can simply layer them after.


• Get to know your oven. experiment with simple cookie recipes, and place them in different parts of the oven. Did it burn on the top rack, but not on the bottom? maybe that tells you casserole cooking is better at the bottom of the oven, as its a lower heat. Did it burn all round? Maybe your oven is hotter than it says it is. Just make notes on your recipes to adjust. Its easier than you think!

This recipe is totally easy, and such a good introduction to baking (with a hint of fancy).

It's not only gluten free, but you dont need icing for it (trust me its rich enough), but the more prefixes you add before any recipe make it sound better, right?

Gluten free, flourless chocolate cake with Craisin and Pistachio garnish. (um, how good does that sound?) Finish it off with my Easy vanilla icecream, and youre done. (recipe for this to follow)

200 grams dark chocolate - broken into small pieces (you can actually buy 200g packets at Coles. very easy.

200 grams unsalted butter - cut into small pieces. (if you buy a western star pack at coles, you can look on one side of the pack. It actually tells you where to chop.)

1 c sugar

5 eggs (try and have them at room temperature. it helps the melted choccy)

1. Pre-heat oven to180C. Butter an 8 inch round cake pan and cut a parchment paper to fit the round. Butter the parchment as well. *Note: dont use fan forced you will burn the top of the cake. remember, its egg based- not flour.

2. In a double-boiler*(get a metal bowl and put it on top of saucepan with hot water in it), slowly melt the chocolate & butter until smooth. Don't allow the water in the double boiled to touch the bottom of the bowl. Once melted, add sugar and stir well until smooth. Remove from heat and cool for about two minutes.

3. One by one, crack an egg into the batter. Stir until smooth and glossy before adding the next egg. The batter will become thick and viscous. (at this stage, at craising and pistacchios if you want them in the batter as opposed to a garnish)

4. Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake for about twenty minutes. At twenty minutes, if the cake seems really wet in the center, then set the timer for another two minutes and check again. The cake will slightly puff on the edges with a dense thick center. (I have made this cake maybe ten or twelve times, and the baking time is about twenty four minutes.)

5. Cool cake on a wire rack.

6. Once completely cool, refrigerate.

7. About twenty minutes before serving, flip the cake onto a plate upside down. Remove the parchment paper. And carefully, lay your serving plate on top of the cake. Then flip the cake over onto its right side and remove the original plate.

Sprinkle chopped pistachios and craisins to polish off what is, a super easy cake.

NOTE: I iced mine in the end, and made the pieces smaller. Who doesnt like Chocolate Butter icing? (whip equal portions of Room Temp. Butter with Icing Mixture. Whip in Cocoa to taste for chocolate flavoured)

Practise makes perfect with baking. Just with all cooking, the first step is to TRY to make it. Once you have it in your repetoir, its so much easier to make it the second time round.

If you can commit to cooking one different recipe a week, you will have 52 Recipes by the end of the year, which i can assure you, will be used for many years to come!

When you are in town, wearing some kind of uniform is helpful, policeman, priest, etc. Driving a tank is very impressive, or a car with official lettering on the side. If that isn’t to your taste you could join the revolution, wear an armband, carry a homemade flag tied to a broom handle, or a placard bearing an incendiary slogan.

At the very least you should wear a suit and carry a briefcase and a cell phone, or wear a team jacket and a baseball cap and carry a cell phone. If you go into the woods, the backcountry, someplace past all human habitation, it is a good idea to wear orange and carry a gun, or, depending on the season, carry a fishing pole, or a camera with a big lens. Otherwise it might appear that you have no idea what you are doing, that you are merely wandering the earth, no particular reason for being here, no particular place to go.

Terry Rodgers would have to be one of my favourite artists.

The intensity of his details and colours in conjunction with the genius composition of lighting makes you feel as if you were submerged in his fantasy of sex and money. He gives you an overall insight into his portrayal of what goes on behind the scenes in America’s ‘privileged’ youth.

He elicits strong honesty through his use of nudity, beauty and even ugliness; make you continue to want to stare at his paintings as though there is something about the scenario you are yet to discover.

The one thing i love most about his paintings are that the eyes of his subjects tend to not be focusing on anything in particular. The thing that speaks to me most about his work is the vapid, deathly, hollow stare of his subjects, as though their apathy is on show for any who cares to look.

It's as though they are completely detached from one another, as though terry is trying to express his view on how nonchalant this type of activity would be in his ideal world.

Cooking is spectacular. To me its an outlet like nothing else. The manifestation of a meal involves so many facets of energy it can be quite an overwhelming process (my form of meditation). Whether it be from creating a simple Curried Egg Sandwich with Mango Chutney on Organic Rye Sour-dough. Or to a Camembert stuffed chicken breast, wrapped in prosciutto served on a truffle and green pea mash, every meal for me always stems from one key ingredient. From there on in, anything can happen. Even from a can of tuna. Truly magical.

Here it is. It's now. It's wonderful. It's an unopened box. It's a corner unturned. It's fabulous. It's an unopened flower. It's An unpolished diamond. Its a soon-lit shadow. It's a pre-hatched egg.