Walnut and Coconut Bourbon Salted Caramel Slice

We've come home recently from the most amazing camping trip in the Hawkes Bay. Gorgeous sunny weather, hours of tramping in breathtaking scenery, lots of clean green living.  Got home relaxed, refreshed, rejuvenated and feeling super fit and super motivated to be healthier.

I even started on the cardiology run as a trainee intern, which one would think would provide you with plenty of incentive to be good for a while.

{sunset at lake waikaremoana. no filter needed.}

But alas, a few weeks back and I've already slid into a trash food rebound. I'm talking curly fries, fried chicken, peanut butter pie and weekday merlots kinda rebound. The best kind.

So since I was following team cardio this weekend I thought I'd share the love - and the calories - with this gorgeous Walnut and Coconut Bourbon Salted Caramel Slice.  Might as well fall off the bandwagon in style I say.

Delicious expectations: mocha brownies

Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations. ~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

I love baking but I'm actually not that good a baker.
 
Dude, I've mistaken salt for sugar and made a very salty chocolate log and almost burnt our house down by using a plastic microwave muffin tin in the oven thinking it was silicon.  Being debilitatingly clumsy, baking with me is not a pretty sight.  It usually involves me burning myself on the oven, butter and sugar flying missiles because I've set the beaters on too high, and flour all over myself, the kitchen, and the dog.  Hurricane Nessie has arrived.

I'd never ever back myself to go on any of those "Hottest Home Baker" or Masterchef shows on telly (as much as I love watching them, dramatic pauses and all).  I'd just blush like a tomato, mumble to myself the whole time and probably drop my baking.  Or burn it.  Or start a fire.

What you see on the blog is after I've cleaned up the disaster zone that is a post-Nessie kitchen, after I've taken 100 photos just to get those few precious decent shots. So I am always surprised, relieved, and stoked when people actually like eating my baking or like things I blog about here.

But once you have a baking blog, you do get a rep as "The Baker" and people do expect you to be able to whip up something delicious.  So when it came to baking for my path tutorial group (Team Faed), I was actually really nervous.  What to bake in my little shared kitchen in Dunners that a) I had the ingredients for  b) I could walk down to Uni and c) was delicious.  What to bake for people who have great expectations,  delicious expectations.

In a situation like that, a girl has to do what a girl has to do.  Break out the big guns, one of those tried and true, trusted few recipes you've been baking for years: Mocha Brownies.

Super gingery ginger crunch and Hug-Your-Kitchen Day

I declare today to be Hug-Your-Kitchen Day.

Go on, give you kitchen a hug, polish the bench tops a little, give it a little loving, just to let it know you appreciate its hard work.

If my old kitchen could talk it would probably be a little grumpy with me and feeling just a little under-appreciated and used.

Not that I was ever rough with my kitchen, I would lovingly clean it when it got splattered with grease and diligently put things away so its benches were clear.  But it's only coming to live in a someone else's house and using someone else's kitchen that I realised I actually did take my old kitchen for granted.

You take for granted that the oven will cook at a certain temperature, that the pantry has certain things in it, that the elements on the stove would light up when you turn them on and that your baking pans are in a certain place.  It's only when you cook and bake in an unfamiliar kitchen that you realise that your own kitchen wasn't just a room you go into to make food - you and your kitchen are a partnership, working in synergistic harmony to make beautiful food together.

Dear Kitchen, 

Sorry old friend.  I do appreciate all the lovely meals and baking we made together as a team.  I miss you and I promise to make sure I take special care of you next time I'm up.  

Love Nessie.

I only came to this epiphany when one of my first baking forays down in Dunedin ended up being a bit of a disaster.  Half the pan turned out delicious Super Gingery Ginger Crunch and the other half ended up as Ginger Charcoal.  Cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen is a lot harder than it looks on Masterchef.