aqua profunda

I have a friend who loves superb fairy wrens. I am always on the lookout for wren paraphernalia to supply her with. This year for her birthday I thought I'd make something of my own.

I designed the wren myself, so I can share the chart for that, yay! The blackwork border is from Blackwork Made Easy and the lettering is from... um... somewhere on the internet. ETA: Subversive Cross stitch!

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This one is known colloquially amongst friends as “crackberry jam", and I have to say it definitely is the best in my repertoire of preserves. Often people seem very impressed with the fact that I make my own jam, and express awe as if it’s a great effort - it isn’t! It’s enormously easy. Easier than cooking most meals. And the recipe basically comes off the back of the pectin packet. Here’s my version of it.

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Another re-post from doublejoint. Keeping the commentary this time :)

Dear anatsuno,

I hear you have some overripe bananas, so I'm sharing my banana cake recipe. It hales from my childhood--I think I had some at my friend's house (age 5? 6?), and Mum made sure to get the recipe, and it's been made hundreds of times since.

I made another one of my own last night, after finally purchasing a thermometer for my increasingly decrepit oven. The first time I tried to use the oven after I moved into this house, the temperature knob came off in my hand; another time when I opened the door the glass panel on the front fell right off (it's since been repaired).

At one point a few months ago I tried to cook a honey and spice cake, but within about 15 minutes of being in there the top had started to burn while the bottom remained liquid; by the time it was no longer raw I had to saw 2 inches of charcoal off the top of it.

So, upon installing the oven thermometer, I discovered that ~160°C on the thermometer = ~120° on the dial. Thus I was able to set it accordingly, and lo and behold, my banana cake turned out awesome. I forsee more baking in my future.

At any rate, here's the banana cake recipe. Measurements are Australian (I believe there's a slight difference in US/Aus cup & spoon sizes, I'm not sure how we compare to European measurements).

The cake itself is rather 'mild' for a cake, I suppose--leaning towards banana bread, but I think a bit too soft and sweet for that. But not too sweet for my tastes! It doesn't need to be iced--the browned top sort of caramelises deliciously, it really is just perfect as it is. But don't make the same mistake I did and take it out of the pan too soon--I ended up peeling the top and the bottom of the cake off because I didn't let it cool for long enough. (On plus side, it meant I got to eat all those delicious scrapings aaall at once.)

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Hullo gentle readers, anatsuno and I have decided that though we gave it a good go, we're terrible at keeping up with joint projects so we're (sniff!) quietly shutting down doublejoint. I am, however, going to migrate my recipes slowly over here, and hopefully continue to post more on aquaprofunda in future.

Here's the first:

Chai Pear Cake (with bonus Pear Chai!)

Oh my goodness. I just improvised the most amazing cake.


This is based on my banana cake recipe - I figured that if I kept all the quantities in the right place, I could add different flavouring and just switch out the type of mushy-cooked-fruit.

Pears are in season right now, so pears it is! Most pear recipes I found were all about keeping the pears whole (and stewed), or layering them for an upside-down cake, or leaving whole chunks in. But I needed a mushy mass of them, so I decided to stew them and make a puree to go into the cake. And what better to stew them in than CHAI?

The cake I wound up with is so amazingly delicious. Somehow moist and fluffy at the same time, with the perfect amount of richness with the brown sugar and spices to offset the freshness of the pears. I am so very pleased with it!

There are a few steps to this, but it's totally worth it.

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