![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
suenicornI'm an over enthusiastic blogger. My Blogger blog, The Great Raven, is about books, mostly children's and YA books, which I review, writer interviews and guest posts. I love speculative fiction, especially space opera, but sometimes hard SF, and light fantasy like Terry Pratchett's rather than deep and meaningful heroic fantasy. It all turns up on my book blog. As I write this, I'm using it for the A to Z Challenge; my theme is "Spies and Spying". My other Blogger blog is "Sue Bursztynski's Page" which people tend to stumble across and comment on now and then, but I set it up as an experiment and these days mostly use it for my thoughts on my teaching.
My Livejournal is my general blog, for everything else going on in my life. This will be a bit of everything. Sometimes I'll copy and paste posts from here to The Great Raven and vice versa.
My first post will be about baking.
I have a passion for baking, though I'm just a decent amateur cook. You'll never see me in The Great Australian Bake-Off, or My Kitchen Rules. My philosophy is to get the maximum result for the minimum of effort. I will try a recipe that interests me, but if it takes too long or involves too many steps, I won't make it again. If it is something I'm willing to try again, I'll type it into my recipe files. That way I can get back to it and I can share it with anyone who asks.
Until recently I had no oven, my old one having died on me. For a long time I was working out how to avoid baking by using sort-of-baking recipes that you could make on the stove top or the microwave - and you'd be surprised how many those are! You can make pita bread in a frypan, for example, and crumpets.
Then I started to look for a convection oven - and a friend who had recently moved house to somewhere with a new kitchen said, "Here's one I bought on an impulse and never even opened the box. Have it."
I was back in business. I've been making bread, cake, biscuits(recently macaroons and amaretti for Passover), pizza. I have had to work out temperatures and how high the shelf should be. A convection oven has to be cooler than a regular one and my first few attempts were either burnt or soggy(my honey cake, dammit! An expensive cake, so it will be a while before I try again). But I think I've more or less got the hang of it. I will try muffins soon - haven't done those in years! And when I finish this post I'm going to make some Anzac biscuits, with Anzac Day tomorrow. If they work out, I'll make some more for my Year 7 students.
If you've followed me here from Livejournal, let me know and I'll make sure I follow you too.
Cheers!
Sue
My Livejournal is my general blog, for everything else going on in my life. This will be a bit of everything. Sometimes I'll copy and paste posts from here to The Great Raven and vice versa.
My first post will be about baking.
I have a passion for baking, though I'm just a decent amateur cook. You'll never see me in The Great Australian Bake-Off, or My Kitchen Rules. My philosophy is to get the maximum result for the minimum of effort. I will try a recipe that interests me, but if it takes too long or involves too many steps, I won't make it again. If it is something I'm willing to try again, I'll type it into my recipe files. That way I can get back to it and I can share it with anyone who asks.
Until recently I had no oven, my old one having died on me. For a long time I was working out how to avoid baking by using sort-of-baking recipes that you could make on the stove top or the microwave - and you'd be surprised how many those are! You can make pita bread in a frypan, for example, and crumpets.
Then I started to look for a convection oven - and a friend who had recently moved house to somewhere with a new kitchen said, "Here's one I bought on an impulse and never even opened the box. Have it."
I was back in business. I've been making bread, cake, biscuits(recently macaroons and amaretti for Passover), pizza. I have had to work out temperatures and how high the shelf should be. A convection oven has to be cooler than a regular one and my first few attempts were either burnt or soggy(my honey cake, dammit! An expensive cake, so it will be a while before I try again). But I think I've more or less got the hang of it. I will try muffins soon - haven't done those in years! And when I finish this post I'm going to make some Anzac biscuits, with Anzac Day tomorrow. If they work out, I'll make some more for my Year 7 students.
If you've followed me here from Livejournal, let me know and I'll make sure I follow you too.
Cheers!
Sue
