Cakes, bagels, scrolls, slices

There are some great, simple, no-fail recipes for cakes, bagels, pastries, scrolls and slices in Baba Schwartz’s book: The lost art of baking with yeast.

Here are my first attempts at chocolate scrolls, cinnamon scrolls, boiled bagels (New York style), Gerbaud slice and mini chocolate kugelhoupf.

Some autologues

sta_lact_ltes

sta^lagm^ltes

ic_ic_les

Candles

And now for something a bit softer than that hypnotic pinwheel …

Much more relaxing.

An almost painful optical illusion

Instructions:

1. Stare at the centre of the image for at least 10 seconds

2. Look at something else.

3. Enjoy!

4. Please don’t do this if you are driving a car.

Via TED via speigl.org via verylowsodium:

A few more for @zmkc‘s collection

Tasmania

This is what Tasmania looked like in December:

Tasmania – like New Zealand, only tastier!

Mobody’s home

I feel bad about not joining in the spirit of Movember this year and failing to raise any money for prostate cancer or depression, so next year I shall redeem myself with Cocktober.

Trussworthy

“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
- H. Lecter

Knot-o-rama

Apparently Ian’s Shoelace Site – one of the original links in the robskee.com sidebar – is the world’s number 1 shoelace-related web site. Not bad for a local. He was recently profiled in the Moorabool Leader newspaper. The article also links to a video showing how to tie the world’s fastest shoelace knot: the Ian knot.

The winds of change – or not

People in our neighbourhood are very politically switched on. Within days of the federal election being called, the placards began to appear:

Obviously these people are somewhat sheltered from the gusty winds of politics and, what’s more, they don’t care who knows it.

Apple cake

Mmmmm…