Jess Carey

Cook this: White chocolate, raspberry & pistachio brownies

It seemed like a good idea at the time. How many stories start like this and end really, really badly? A high percentage, right? I’m still not sure how, because I’m usually the poster girl for these kind of stuff ups, but this recipe is somehow the exception to the rule and miraculously turned out really, really well!

Ingredients:
– 300g white chocolate, broken into pieces
– 190g butter, chopped
– 1 cup caster sugar
– 285g plain flour, sifted
– 3 eggs at room temperature, lightly whisked
– 1 heaped cup of frozen raspberries
– 85g pistachios, slightly crushed

Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 160°C and line a lamington tray with non-stick baking paper.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a small pot of simmering water. Stir until completely melted and smooth, and set aside for 5 minutes to cool.
3. Stir in the eggs with a wooden spoon, then the sugar and the sifted flour.
4. Gently stir in the pistachios, then the raspberries – try not to over stir or the batter will turn pink.
5. Pour the batter into the tin, smooth it out and bake for 40 minutes, or until lightly golden and set, but still a little chewy inside as a good brownie should be!
6. Allow to cool completely in the tin before taking it out to slice up.

It’s like a super thick, dense mud cake/brownie hybrid. You just need to take care not to over cook it as it’ll lose its chewy brownie-like centre. I’m a big fan of white chocolate for a bit of a change every now and then, and I’m sure you could use this brownie base to mix just about anything in – it’s pretty versatile. Enjoy!

Recipes

Cook this: Easy buttermilk pancakes

These pancakes are literally easy enough to roll out of bed at 6:30am, have a shower, do your hair, put on a bit of make up, get dressed for work, and still have them on the table by 7:00am. This is by no means the “perfect” pancake, but it’s quick and easy, super delicious, and very versatile. It’s also a bit more exciting than cereal and toast, because some mornings, you need a bit of convincing to get out of bed. Breakfast win.

Here’s what you’ll need for two decent pancake stacks (this mixture made 8 pancakes):
– 1⅓ cups self raising flour
– ¼ cup castor sugar
– 40g butter, melted
– 1 large egg
– 1½ cups buttermilk
– 2 tbsp. water
– 2 tsp vanilla extract
– butter or spray oil for cooking

1. Sift the flour into a large bowl and add in the sugar.

2. Use a wooden spoon (controversial, I know, wooden spoon instead of whisk!) to then mix in the butter, egg, milk, water and vanilla until everything is well and truly combined and smooth. At this stage, feel free to add in anything else that tickles your fancy – orange or lemon zest, shredded coconut, blueberries, a swirl of Nutella, anything goes!

3. Heat a non-stick fry pan over medium heat (I really need to stress here that medium heat is essential. I got a little excited and cranked the heat up to high for the first batch of pancakes, and they came off crisp and burnt. Luckily, husband actually quite likes a burnt pancake, but lesson learnt – you can’t rush pancake perfection!), and use either cooking spray oil or a little butter to coat the pan before dropping your pancake batter on. I used ⅓ measuring cups to measure out the mixture and they made nicely sized pancakes, but if you want miniatures or pancakes the size of dinner plates or anything in between, go nuts!

4. Let them cook on one side until you can start to see the bubbles forming in the batter – check they’re browned (but not burnt), then flip them over and let them cook for another minute or two on the other side.

5. To serve them up, I stacked mine and topped them with coconut yoghurt and diced plums, but this is where the fun starts and you can just go crazy on these guys and top them with whatever the hell you want!

Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: Europe

Photo Journal: Positano, Italy

This is a city perched precariously on cliff faces, with never ending stairs to climb, and the most stunning views. It’s relatively cut off from the rest of the world, therefore prices for almost everything are a lot higher than they should be, but it doesn’t seem to stop the tourist hoards from taking over in summer.

We visited just after winter, in early 2014, and it was still beautiful. The cold left only the locals; we were two of the very few visitors to the city, which made me very thankful for the ability to speak Italian – no one much seemed to be bothered with foreigners and their languages. Every day we walked until we couldn’t take another step, and would then spot a tiny little greengrocers up another flight of stairs. We’d find our second wind and take off to buy more food. There were “picnics” on our hotel room balcony, rugged up against the biting cold, giggling away as we ate our prosciutto and Parmigiano cheese, sipping Italian wine, and playing an Italian card game I quickly taught my husband. That’s living.

Melbourne ♥, Photo Journals

Photo Journal: Streets of Fitzroy, Melbourne (2014)

I’m a huge advocate for living in Melbourne, despite our woeful public transport and ridiculously high cost of living; it hasn’t had the honour of world’s most livable city bestowed upon it for nothing!

But what I love the most, is the Fitzroy/Collingwood/Smith St/Brunswick St area. It’s a place where there are no norms and no rules. It’s now inhabited by a lot of hipsters, but that’s ok. You can understand why, with the insane amount of cool new restaurants and bars opening on what feels like a weekly basis, endless second hand, vintage and pre-loved books, clothes, jewellery and all the rest of it on every second corner, great beer gardens, and all manner of people strolling around. Young hipsters, older couples, families with young kids, try-hard cool teens, crazy cat ladies, ranting hobos, camera-clad tourists and people like me harmoniously share the footpaths and cafes without a second thought.

It’s the kind of are where you can wear whatever you want, be any body shape, listen to any music, and read any book you want out the front of any establishment without fear of being judged. It’s an area where it’s cool not to be cool. And in a society where we, particularly young women, feel like their every breath and movement is being judged against impossible standards, it’s something special. It’s my happy place, my safe space, the area I feel most at home. It’s dynamic and ever changing, yet it always comfortable and familiar. It’s kind of like wearing your favourite, old pair of shoes with a new outfit every time.

Anyway, I recently got onto the VSCO Cam bandwagon, and I took these snaps over the weekend while I was out strolling the streets with the husband… welcome to my favourite place in the world!

Markets, Photo Journals, Travels, Travels: Asia

Photo Journal: Bangkok’s Chinatown

If there’s one certainty (or as close to as possible) in life, it’s this: no matter what country or city you go to, Chinatown will always be there for you. Chinatown is a constant in most big cities across the globe, which is really quite phenomenal when you think about it. I always love checking out a city’s Chinatown as well, because you’re guaranteed to find some seedy looking little places with the most incredible food, as well as some real hole-in-the-wall shops that sell stuff you didn’t even realise you needed until you found it there.

Bangkok’s Chinatown is no exception to the rule – a quick and scenic boat ride down the river from the main tourist hub, it’s everything your mind conjures up when you hear the word “Chinatown;” it’s colourful, noisy, busy, constantly moving and bumping into you. It smells amazing and foreign, there’s stuff absolutely everywhere, with shops not merely contained to their physical stores, but with their wares spilling out onto the side walk. It’s tuk tuks and motorbikes masterfully dodging and weaving down the narrowest alleys possible, and making it look as simple as pushing a supermarket trolley through a wide open parking lot.

It’s people + craziness + market + food, which equals my heaven.

Here are some of my favourite shots from my visit in January…

What’s the Chinatown in your city like? Always looking for recommendations to add to my travel bucket list!

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