Rice Flour Cake with Strawberries

This was an experiment because I bought a bunch of weird kinds of flour to try to bring more healthy stuff into our lives. I feared of failing but disturbingly enough my family liked it. Those rigid dinosaurs who like the old-school stuff and cringe when I say "tofu" or other nasty words like that liked it. That's something. 

This cake has very interesting texture. It's moist and heavy and holds together just fine but once you get it on your tongue you feel like it's falling apart into tiny sand-sized pieces. So funky. 

You'll need:

• 1 1/2 cups rice flour
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tea spoon baking soda
• 2 tea spoons vanilla extract
• 2 eggs

• strawberry jam
•  100g cream cheese with some sugar 
• strawberries

1) Mix everything for the batter together and bake for about 45 minutes at 180°C. Have the cake pan covered for the first 30 minutes or so so that it doesn't get too brown.

2) When cooled down, cut in half and smear it with jam. Use the cream and strawberries to decorate the top.

Peanut Butter Cheesecake

I'm not a fan of peanut butter to say the least. It's a foreign substance my taste buds can't figure out and no, the taste cannot be acquired. However, when in moderation it can actually be very good. Just like cilantro. I hate it and try to put it in my guac to get used to it but it will never work, I just know it. So peanut butter is something similar. It only works in small doses. This cake is proof of it. Cheesecakes rock and PB can't ruin the impression. On the contrary - it makes it less sweet which is great.

You'll need:

• 180g biscuits
• 1 large table spoon melted peanut butter

• 200g cream cheese
• 200g sour cream
• 1 egg
• 150g peanut butter
•  1/2 cup sugar

• 100g dark chocolate
• 2 table spoons peanut butter
• a handful of chopped peanuts

1) Make crumbs from the biscuits and wet them with melted peanut butter. Press onto the bottom of your cake pan and bake for 10 minutes at 180°C.

2) Mix the cheese, cream, peanut butter and sugar. If you like the taste, add the egg. If not, add what you miss first and then add the egg. Pour onto the cooled crust and bake for 30minutes at 180°C.

3) Melt the chocolate over boiling water and add the peanut butter. Pour over the cooled cake and decorate with peanuts. 

Emily McKay: The Farm

You know I hate trilogies because the plot which is usually OK enough to fit into one book gets diluted into three or more books to keep the readers going and money flowing. 

But I also hate unfinished stories. Some series are good in a way that nothing ends on a cliffhanger and it's up to you to read on or not. But other series, especially those with the planned exact number of sequels are just a money trap. No, I don't want the authors to starve but I also don't want to be disappointed as a reader. This trilogy shouted Cronin's Passage for younger audience with a little twist - an autistic character in it. So I grabbed all three books and hoped it would be worth my time. 

What do you want me to start with? The good or the bad stuff? OK, let's start on a positive note. I like the structure of the books. In the first and the second book it's two ich-forms and just one er-form and the third books is all first person narratives. Neat, I know. 

The story flows fast, there are interesting twists to keep you awake at night for "just one more chapter" and if you like post-apocalyptic world and vampires this is for you. Also, there is romance (hormones, duh!) but it's kept at a bearable level. Since the couples are kept separated there is not much space for puppy looks and boring scenes full of stupid dialogues.

But why teenagers? I mean, adults (I by that I mean anyone older than 19) should be capable of greater things than hormone-powered teens. It's not that I don't believe in children but I work with them and I know how fragile they can be. Which would send everything flying. But let's leave the unlikely heroes alone and focus on my bullshit-o-meter. 

It kept giving me signals throughout the books. The first book was basically about finding a girl who has "magical" powers to make people believe what she wants. The background for it was so unstable I couldn't shake off the feeling this was wild goose chase. Which was nothing compared to the abundance of such people at the end. I just didn't like it. The story would go differently if all the character had such power. 

Then there was this smart-at-survival character who kept plants with him on the road in case he had to sleep in a freezer (no electricity) so that he wouldn't suffocate. Ever heard of plants TAKING your oxygen at night? So I kept expecting him to die one day in a confined space with his plants but it never came. 

It was full of really weird moments in which every sensible person would guess a different development but overall it was a good read. The way it was written and how fast the story flowed somehow made me overlook the mistakes and just keep reading.

GENRE: post-apocalyptic teenage whatever

FANGS OUT: good pace, nice twists
FANGS RETRACTING: the author should have done better research
TOTAL SCORE:

3 Ingredient Cookies with 3 Ingredient Filling

In my struggle to find healthier alternatives to snacks (because I just can't imagine living without sweet dishes) I browsed the organic isle in a supermarket and found a lot of types of flour which are not so typical. So this time I'm using rice flour because why not...

Ingredients (for 10 filled cookies):

cookies

• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1/4 cup cranberry maple syrup

filling 

• 125g curd cheese
• 3 table spoons chopped dry cranberries (but if you have fresh one, then go ahead)
• 2 table spoons cranberry maple syrup

1) Mix everything for the cookie dough. It will become less and less sticky so that you can roll the dough into small balls which you put onto a baking tray and flatten with something so that they are disc-shaped.

2) Bake at 180°C for about 13 minutes.

3) Chop the cranberries into tiny pieces, mix with the cheese and syrup. Taste it and if you think it's not sweet enough, just our in some more syrup.

4) Since these are basically biscuits, spread the filling onto them and then let them be for a while (you can leave them in the fridge overnight so that they soak up the moisture and won't break your teeth) ;-)=

Mallory Crowe: Finding Fire

I'm still on the wild ride with e-books. I don't have much time to really sit and read for enjoyment of reading so I've downloaded a lot of stuff into my phone to steal a minute or two of reading whenever I can. I know that I can't really focus on it since I'm constantly interrupted but that's why I transferred all my free e-books into my phone. They are not brain-challenging. They are just reads. That pains me but what can we do. The internet made it possible. 

This week I bring you a not-so-bad novel. It revolves around a group of vampire seekers who have various reasons for trying to find vampires. Then there is a mysterious "puppet master" who sets everything in motion so that a young woman finds her vampire in order to find yet another vampire who she's been seeking all her life. 

The scheming unknown characters always hold potential. And you really don't know who that is till the last pages. But there isn't enough build-up leading to the revelation so it kinda sucks. It flows too fast. 

I'm becoming quite allergic to those sizzling romances in which the characters shoot daggers at one another in one moment and then dry hump in the next. I just don't buy it anymore. Just because someone is hot it doesn't make me want to jump his bones, does it?! Where's the self-control? Especially if you have a traumatic background as well as trust issues like the protagonist. 

GENRE: I guess it was just romance since the action part was lacking

FANGS OUT: it reads fast
FANGS RETRACTING: needs more build-up
TOTAL SCORE:

This week's rant:

Someone let out the breath he/she didn't know he/she was holding.

Ugh. Just stop it, okay?! It happens in every novel. I started noticing this a few years ago when I was studying literature and once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. Even Hemingway has it. It's like an illness. People who can't breathe. One would say since it's so essential to our well-being no one would be so stupid to try to stop breathing but here you go. Those women with curves in the right places probably suffer from this genetic anomaly. Really, it's mostly in romances so there is positive correlation between the two. I don't wanna have curves in the right places since it would doom me in the lung department. No, thank you, give me curves in the wrong places and healthy breathing habits.

Carrot Cake

There are gazillion recipes out there for the best carrot cake and I think I've found one which tops the list. It's so moist and the cream balances it out into smoothness. 

You'll need:

• 500g finely grated carrots
• 400g sugar
• 320g flour 
• 4 eggs
• 250ml sunflower oil
• 4 tea spoons baking soda
• 100g chopped walnuts
• 1 table spoon cinnamon
• 1/2 tea spoon ground nutmeg

• 250g curd cheese
• 200g ricotta
• 4 table spoons sugar (add more if you want it sweeter)
• 1 table spoon turmeric (I was going for yellow color but it didn't turn as yellow as I wanted)

1) Mix everything for the batter till incorporated well and pour into your baking pan.

2) Bake for about 1 hour at 180°C.

3) When it's cooled down, prepare your cheese mixture and slice the cake in half and put the cheese in and then onto the top.

4) To make it look fancier, use some of that shredded carrot to decorate.

Taniquelle Tulipano: Dead Beginnings

You know the drill. I download a free e-book and expect miracles from the read despite knowing that good quality reads are hardly given for free because they don't need that. Good reviews and recommendations come naturally to them and hence the lack of good free stuff. So I am naturally wary of these books but keep reading them anyway. 

This time, the book was 200 pages long so I assumed it wouldn't be too bad. Enough space to develop characters. Oh boy, was I wrong. Because there can be bad developing as well. You can actually make someone even worse than in a short story. 

Don't get me wrong, the writing isn't bad. But it's the story development I'm not a fan of. See, at the beginning we are given a deranged vampire who likes to play with girls and then erase their minds when he is finished with them so that they never remember they were played with. He is a lunatic who makes them swoon and cringe in terror right after. That's the good part of the story, the potential.

But unfortunately this 300-year-old vampire falls for his latest victim and can't erase her memory (any flashbacks?!) and even though he is a part of some kind of holier-than-thou vampire police, he still gets to go on feeding sprees and use young ladies. 

He is given three siblings who act unnaturally and instead of lightening the mood of the story as (probably) intended, they just make it more ridiculous. On the top of it all there is this whole Stockholm Syndrome girl who doesn't want to be let go even though she can see what a lunatic asylum she has gotten into. 

The story disappointed me because mad vampires hold so much potential. Unfortunately the dialogue and motives of action got more and more ridiculous as the story progressed. And there is a cliffhanger. You know my opinion on those. I hate unfinished stories but unlike normally I'm not compelled to buy the next instalment because even though the cliffhanger shows potential (a new mysterious evil vampire comes to play) I doubt it will be better than this.

GENRE: twisted romance

FANGS OUT: loonies are out there
FANGS RETRACTING: pathetic characters
TOTAL SCORE:

And now a rant about a certain trope I can't ignore any more since so many books (the one from today's review including) have it: She had curves in all the right places.

WTF? Where are those? And what happens to women who have curves in the wrong places or to those who don't posses these mythological features? It seems like every frickin' romance has a heroine who is curved just right. If, God forbid, she has the wrong curves she can't appear in a novel. That would be so gross and un-heroine-like.

Since I still don't know where the infamous curves are supposed to be and where not, I'm not sure what kind of women gets eliminated from being a novel protagonist but I feel like I must state that frickin' curves should not decide whether you become a heroine or not.