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  • Raet, that's mighty fancy pumpkin cake! Mine is a pretty standard quick-and-dirty version.

    Then there's things like metric conversions, muscovado sugar (whut?), sultanas (raisins?) and actually having fresh pumpkin available. :P
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Muscovado sugar - basically, loose-grained brown sugar with a strong molasses flavor.  The name comes from early sugar refining in this country, when it meant "low grade."  Substitute your favorite brown sugar.  The key, however, is the "molasses" flavor.  You can approximate it by buying a jug of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup and replacing some of the brown sugar with it - though you'll have to experiment to get the ratios right.

    Sultanas - raisins, basically.  It's a specific type of raisins and around here costs more than the ordinary brands, but I've eaten them before, the flavor isn't that much different from ordinary raisins to justify the price, in my opinion.
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Nanobot said:

    Raet, that's mighty fancy pumpkin cake! Mine is a pretty standard quick-and-dirty version.

    Then there's things like metric conversions, muscovado sugar (whut?), sultanas (raisins?) and actually having fresh pumpkin available. :P




    nan, seriously, that ain't fancy. The most involved part is peeling the squash, after that get a grater or whack it in one of those helpful kitchen gadgets and Bob's your uncle. Nothing but a glorified carrot cake with squash instead of carrot.

    Muscovado is just soft brown sugar and yeah use raisins by all means...as for metrics, FFS time you lot joined the rest of the world and gave up on your (post) colonial measurements.
  • Lol, Wayii
  • <HUMOR>

    Ah, yes, the Metric System.  The pet project of Antoine Lavoisier, one of the most brilliant scientists of his day, a system that won the near-immediate approval of the French Government of his time.  Naturally, being as it was the days of the French Revolution, they rewarded Lavosier for his dedication to science and his important contributions to the nation and to the world by cutting off his head.

    Strangely, the intellectual and political community here in the US looked dimly upon this reward, and the notion of the US converting to the metric system has pretty much been a dead issue ever since.

    </HUMOR>
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • LOL!

    Also
    .........
    .....................
    ...............................'Murica!

    ROTFLMAO




  • Dead issue. Arr, humor!
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Muscovado = dark brown sugar, hereabouts.

    Metric: See, I had to learn both and use both English and Metric in Engineering School. We were waiting with bated breath for the switch! Which never ever came, of course. :/


    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Hah! I'm still converting and re-converting from metric to American and back. Oh, and there was that period when I had to get used to English Imperial... before metric made its way into the UK. Not to mention that pre-XX century Russian literature uses entirely different systems of measurements. Obsolete, but still familiar -- because of beloved sayings and proverbs!

    Now if you think that means I make a lot of calculations... nah. I'm very good at remembering approximate quantities.
    Suspiro ergo sum.
  • Oh, and I take notes. Lots and lots of marginalia in my cookbooks.
    Suspiro ergo sum.
  • I like that word. Marginalia. Kind of edgy.
    Suspiro ergo sum.
  • Marginalia is a Good Word.
  • Dark brown sugar is close to muscavado. It's not exactly the same, but I use it in a pinch.  Both recipes sound great! I'll have to give them a whirl.

    Do you have SunMaid down in the States? Those are sultana raisins. You can use most raisins interchangeably. The only exception (in my books) is golden raisins. They have quite a different flavour and don't usually substitute that well. I suppose that depends on your tastes, though.

    Thanks for sharing folks.
  • Do you have SunMaid down in the States? Those are sultana raisins.



    So, I went and looked it up.  And you're right - SunMaid uses (and always has used) Thompson's Seedless - which is just the US name for Sultanas.  Which makes me being charged extra for "exotic" raisins back in the eighties when the same damn thing is in a box of Sunmaid raisins both annoying and highly amusing.
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Well, who'd have thought that this turns into a cooking/baking forum. I'm totally down with that.image

    Made this yoghurt and buttermilk cheese cake topped with fruits of the forest in elderflower cordial flavoured jelly over the summer. I shall look out the recipe if anybody is interested.
    image.jpg
    1536 x 2048 - 910K
  • Anything's fair game here. :)  Food included! Especially before lunch.
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Recipes sound good. I love carrot cake so a pumpkin version sounds like a nice variation; and I like the sound of a ginger pumpkin cake.
    We have only fresh pumpkin here, no tinned, which I usually (rather boring) just make soup with.
    Greengrocer sells slices so it's possible to just buy what you need, rather than wrestle with a whole large pumpkin. Which I have done in the past when we grew our own and ended up with a freezer full of the stuff!

    Here's a recipe for banana pancakes which is a quick and easy breakfast (or desert):
    Mash 1 banana and mix with a beaten egg. Flavour with cinnamon/vanilla extract or whatever else suits, then cook as per normal pancakes. Serves 1 and is delicious!
    I serve with fresh berries and yoghurt or add some dried fruit into the pancake mix and serve with maple syrup.


  • Ooooh, nice. If only I had a banana for the morning...
  • Dylazuna, I was doing this every morning for a while. I was doing a paleo diet and it was so easy! I loved it and a healthy way to start the day!
  • Hi LT, I did actually originally find this on a paleo website. We were looking into a lot of different diets back in the summer and mixing them up with the knowledge I gained from my therapy nutrition course 10+ years ago.
    Being demi vegetarian already, we ended up not making a lot of changes. Increased the green veggies, cut down on the wheat products and practically gave up all processed foods, other than ginger nuts (hubby's too fond of them). By processed I mean food products that have a long list of synthesised ingredients. So I still make an occasional pie but using my own pastry. We still eat pasta (rice not wheat) and noodles (the ones that are just flour and water) and I use things like tinned beans, tomatoes and frozen berries. We replaced spread with grass fed butter, use full fat greek yoghurt etc.
    Neither of us changed our exercise, but we've both lost weight (in my case 4kg) and more importantly inches!


  • Raetjor said:

    Well, who'd have thought that this turns into a cooking/baking forum. I'm totally down with that.image

    Made this yoghurt and buttermilk cheese cake topped with fruits of the forest in elderflower cordial flavoured jelly over the summer. I shall look out the recipe if anybody is interested.



    I could so roll around in a bathtub full of this.............

    .....or I'm really, really hungry. 
    "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it. " Mark Twain.
  • OK, eating the 2-ingredient paleo pancakes. A little research suggested a pinch of baking powder in addition, and I gave it a faint grind of salt. Not bad! Not actual pancakes, but pretty good!  Then I went and ruined it with coconut syrup. image
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • I often add just a bit of coconut flour or regular flour, but keep it far less. They give them just a bit more body. I also add a dash of vanilla and cinnamon. I have done a touch of baking powder at times. I didn't find that it did that much to them, so I stopped. I'll do a bit of maple syrup on them sometimes, but I find them pretty sweet to begin with. And no, they aren't like real pancakes. More like little banana omelettes. :)
  • Soooo.... why would I ruin my perfectly good omelettes with bananas? 
    #-o
    Suspiro ergo sum.
  • They aren't really an omelette either. Somewhere between?  They are flatter than pancakes and not fluffy. But they taste good and make for an easy breakfast.
  • Good morning. :)
  • Hmm. I know american pancakes are different from what we call a pancake in UK. Similar, I think to what we call a scotch pancake, or griddle cake. Anyway, the banana pancakes usually turn out quite fluffy and 'thick'. I make 2 out of each mix and fry them in butter.

    Good morning Terre. Although it's late afternoon here now :D
  • Griddle cake is another name used here as well.
  • All this talk of pancakes and griddle cakes... *stomach rumble* :P
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • I like my lunch with more... meat.

    :D


  • Ayep.  And I don't have a choice.  Diabetes.  Carbs shoot my blood sugar up.  So, no carbs.
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Looks like ShareCG has temporarily taken a dump.  >.<

    Meh.
  • Yeah, looks like Google is spidering them at the moment.  That damn well kills their server every time, usually for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes.
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Xaa said:

    Yeah, looks like Google is spidering them at the moment.  That damn well kills their server every time, usually for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes.



    How can you tell that it's the Google spider that's doing that?
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Because the google search results for the site will change - and frequently several times over the course of just a few minutes. 

    The first time I figured this out was when ShareCG was totally dead, and so I decided to just do a google search to find what I wanted, then go there later once the site was working again.  Got zero results.  Which I knew HAD to be wrong.  Then hit the button again and got several thousand, with one set of images coming up.  Curious, I hit the button again, and got a couple hundred results, and completely different images.  Conclusion:  The site was unpresponsive because Google was spidering them.
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Xaa said:

    Because the google search results for the site will change - and frequently several times over the course of just a few minutes. 

    The first time I figured this out was when ShareCG was totally dead, and so I decided to just do a google search to find what I wanted, then go there later once the site was working again.  Got zero results.  Then hit the button again and got several thousand, with one set of images coming up.  Curious, I hit the button again, and got a couple hundred results, and completely different images.  Conclusion:  The site was unpresponsive because Google was spidering them.



    Ah, deduction. I thought perhaps you had some Sekrit Code Ninja (tm) way of telling. Which I wouldn't put beyond you. ;)
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Heh.  I wish.  The up-side to google spidering them is you can search shareCG a lot more efficiently from google.  The downside is sometimes the server load gets so bad it messes up the scripts ShareCG serves up, and their own search buttons and a couple other scripted elements stop working for awhile.  I guess until someone resets the server or something.  The real problem is those little pictures that appear at the bottom of each page for "related items."  That means each page has no less than TEN links to other pages that are somehow related - and each of THOSE pages has ten links each, and so on, and so on, until you basically are having the spiders run around and around in circles.  For several minutes.  It's like a DOS attack - only it's freakin' google. =P
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Jim Farris, Author, Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Xaa said:

     It's like a DOS attack - only it's freakin' google. =P



    "Attack of the Google Spiders!" In Panovision!
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • LOL
    It occurs to me that some of the access problems that people have with the Daz forums may be due to the same thing.
  • i wandered back to find myself in a cyber kitchen? lol. sultanas, wow. huge enormous versions of a fruit the closest you could get to raisins when i visited england in 1978. there was no raisin bran there just sultana bran.  from the internet:

    'Definition:


    There is often great confusion on the difference between dried
    fruits used in British cooking - the 3 most popular being raisins,
    sultanas and currants. All three are used extensivley in some
    traditional British cakes and puddings including a Christmas Cake or a Christmas Pudding




    • Raisins are dried white grapes. They are dried to produce a dark, sweet fruit. The grapes used are usually Moscatel.
    • Sultanas are also dried white grapes but
      from seedless varieties. They are golden in color and tend to be
      plumper, sweeter and juicier than other raisins. Also referred to as
      Golden Raisins in the US.
    • Currants are dried, dark red, seedless
      grapes. They are dried to produce a black, tiny shrivelled,
      flavour-packed the grapes were originally cultivated in the south of
      Greece, and the name currant comes from the ancient city of 'Corinth'.
      These currants are known as Zante currants in the States.'

    muscovado:

    '

    While most of these sugars are classified as "raw," they're still
    typically refined to some extent in order to be used in cooking. Look
    for them in the natural foods section at your grocery store or in the
    baking section at natural foods markets. Also, keep your eyes open when
    traveling abroad. Other countries often have interesting kinds of sugars
    that we can't find here in the USA.



    Demerara - This is a type of cane sugar with a
    fairly large grain and a pale amber color. It has a pleasant toffee
    flavor and can be used in place of brown sugar.



    Sucanat - Made from crystallized pure cane sugar,
    this truly unrefined sugar retains a higher proportion of molasses than
    other types of cane sugars. It has an intense, rather burnt taste that
    can be jarring in lighter baking recipes but is fantastic in things like
    spice cakes and ginger cookies.



    Muscovado - Another cane sugar, this one has a
    very moist texture and a strong molasses flavor. It can be found in
    different strengths, as you can see visually in the image above and read about here. It's excellent in savory dishes like barbecue sauces and marinades.



    Jaggery - This sugar is typically made from palm,
    coconut, or java plants and comes compressed into a pattycake or cone.
    It has an earthy sweet flavor that we like over oatmeal and in some fruit crumbles.



    Piloncilo - Similar to jaggery, this uniquely
    Mexican sugar is the secret ingredient in many salsas, soups, and mole
    sauces. It has a strong and almost-smoky molasses flavor.



    Turbinado - Less processed than brown sugar, turbinado
    is made from the first pressing of sugar cane and retains some natural
    molasses. It has a light caramel flavor that makes it a good replacement
    for regular white sugar.'

    ~^..^~ ladyfur
  • ...to summarise, demerara is raw pale almost white sugar. it works in coffee and other things at about the same ratio as white sugar but is healthier.
    turbinado is raw golden, like light brown sugar.
    muscovado is raw very dark, darker than the darkest of brown sugar, hard to break up and mostly molasses.
    we get billingtons light muscovado on amazon. it comes from africa.
    we get zulka morena, which is demerara. it comes from mexico.
    no clue on the rest of that raw sugar list.

    sultanas are the huge raisin like things in cereal in england, sweeter than tiny raisins here in america. i liked them.
    ~^..^~ ladyfur
  • Golden raisins, huh? American golden raisins are about the same size as the black ones, but much plumper and more intensely flavored. I've always rather favored those.
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Drive-by kitten drop! (To distract us from further cooking...)

    image
    Nov8_2small.jpg
    600 x 800 - 209K
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • Cuteness!
  • The expressions are priceless.
  • They have great faces, I confess. :D
    * A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five!
    * Isn't it wonderful how cute weapons of mass distraction can be?
    * Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others.
  • those two are very funny. cute.
    ~^..^~ ladyfur

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