Why, hello! We’ve missed you! We’re back to blogging again, and though it will probably not be as frequently as before, we’d still like to share our joys and boo-boos in our kitchen, garden and while we are out and about. And what better way to resume honeyandsoy than with a post about macarons? I made these delicate lemon and vanilla macarons for a dear friend’s hen’s tea party. Yes, you read that right. No raucous group of girls with unmentionable decor and drunken shenanigans, we were a picture of ladylike elegance, with 3 generations of women enjoying a sit-down afternoon tea. And what a spread there was! All fitting in with a yellow theme, as that was supposedly the groom-to-be’s favourite colour.The bride-to-be didn’t enjoy the restraint for long though, as she was made to wear a home-sewn yellow tuille tutu, blindfolded, and made to guess the flavours of sausages and fish balls that she was fed. Don’t ask

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Why hello again! We have sadly, been very quiet in cyberspace, and we’ve decided to officially take a short hiatus until Honey finishes her doctoral thesis. We have still been busy enjoying food in all its glory where we can, and have had delicious experiences in Singapore, Bali, Malaysia, Canberra and Sydney over the last few months, and hopefully we will be able to share these with you very soon when we come back to regular blogging.

In the meantime, we wanted to share some good news with all of you: we finally bit the bullet and are one step closer to living sustainably- we got chooks!

Chickpea and Mrs Brown are 20 weeks old and seem to be settling into their new home in our backyard. There have been a few escape attempts and hilarious episodes of us chasing them around the garden, but we have now safely clipped their feathers so they should happily remain within their fence, away from our veggie garden! As we learnt from Celia, the chooks are in a moveable pen so they will move all around our backyard, helping us to till the soil and keep our grass in control. It has been fascinating watching them so far, scratching around and digging holes for dust baths.

The girls happily pecking away from the feeder that Soy so proudly made from scratch!

After 2 weeks of waiting, we got our first egg 2 days ago! We hope all of you are doing brilliantly, and until next time, we wish you many new and exciting food adventures!

Honey and Soy xx

Last Christmas, we received Hembakat är Bäst (Home made is best), Ikea’s baking recipe book direct from Sweden, lovingly flown to Australia into our hands. The book is beautiful, and the way the ingredients are laid out pictorially borders on abstract art. Even now, when I flip through the book, I gawp in awe of the perfection and meticulousness involved in putting the book together.

As we were first flipping through the book, Niklas told us how much he loved princess cake, and that it reminded him of home. I promised to make it for his next birthday, in return for an English translation of the recipe, and I made good on that promise!

What I found interesting was the use of potato flour in the sponge, which I’ve never used before. And I was pleasantly surprised to realise that I could easily make the entire cake gluten free by substituting the small amount of flour with more potato flour. Soy and I tried bits of the sponge that we pulled off the tin, and the sponge just melted in our mouths. I think that if you used wheat flour, the texture of the sponge may be slightly firmer, but we were happy to have the cotton-like texture of the potato flour sponge for something different, and best of all, make it gluten free so our friend K could eat it without worry.

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