I wish I am more excited. The countdown is on before my long flight to Sydney Australia but I haven’t even started packing yet. My fridge is mostly empty, as is my laundry basket. I exchanged some currency and my passport is at the ready. I have a wish list of e-books to purchase so I will be reasonably entertained when I’m not sleeping on the plane. I have a reservation at Tetsuya’s and I want to eat lots of lamingtons. I got in touch with some skaters in Sydney and will join them for Wednesday night skate. Beyond that, I made no plans at all and will play it by ear. I’m happy to relax instead of filling my schedule to the brim.
These lemon poppy seed muffins are probably the last thing I bake in a while. The recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home To Yours was one of the few muffin recipes I had not tried from that cookbook. It was predictably good and I was particularly happy with the good balance of flavours. One of my pet peeves with muffin recipes is butter overload. It bothers me when I lift the baked muffins and see a pool of butter left behind in the pan. Thankfully, this was not an issue at all with Greenspan’s recipe.
These muffins were no trick and all treat (can’t believe it’s already November 1). The batter was thick. I imagine it would be a great base with blueberries folded in. I made the recipes as is, supplementing sour cream with a bit of plain yogurt. I even made the lemon water icing for drizzling. It just felt so nice to have something pretty enough for photographs after my week of rustic baking.
I will be staying at a condo in Darling Harbour with access to a kitchen. Twelve days is a very long break from cooking! My guess is that I will cook some simple things to take advantage of the local ingredients…assuming that my hosts do not mind. We’ll see. I have a feeling I will spend ridiculous amount of time browsing at markets and grocery stores. It will be super difficult to walk away without buying something.
I will see you from the other hemisphere next week.
