Weekend Inspirations

I wish I could claim these exquisite morsels as my own. They are from The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook by Jennifer Graham. The book was published by Penguin in 2007 and you can see a little more of it if you follow the link. It's a book I have browsed a number of times in bookshops because it is delightful to look at. There is something about page after page of gorgeously decorated cupcakes that makes me smile. So when I spotted it on the shelves at Academic Remainders yesterday - at roughly half the RRP - I decided it was time to stop browsing and take it home. It is a 'feel-good' book if ever I read one and it doesn't really matter if I never make a single cupcake. I can dream.

The dream, though, appears not to have lasted long for The Crabapple Bakery. According to the book, the story begins like this:

Jennifer Graham started out making cupcakes to display on the range of old-fashioned cake stands she was selling at craft markets around Victoria, in a bid to encourage customers to buy her wares. After only a couple of weeks the customers were not coming to buy her cake stands but to buy her beautiful cupcakes.

Sound like a fairytale? Success followed success and Jennifer and her family opened a shop in a 'village'. After three years, they opened a factory, became a company in 2006 and opened a retail store in the Prahran Market. And why wouldn't they when their cupcakes look so cute?

But when I logged on this morning to look at the website and see how business was faring, I encountered a dose of harsh reality. The Crabapple Bakery is no more. It seems the receivers were brought in and, from what I could gather from the various comments I followed, the company was sold earlier this year and the doors were closed.

I now suspect that this little book that I find so uplifting is something of an embarrassment to its publishers. But it shouldn't be. Despite the sad ending of the Crabapple Bakery, the book is a joy to look at and read. And it still brings a smile to my face - although the joy is tempered by the fairytale's sad ending.

Hibernating

It's been two weeks since I posted! Shame on me. But I have to confess that winter has got the better of all my good intentions. On such chilly nights as we have been experiencing lately in Canberra, it's much more appealing to snuggle under the covers with a good book than it is to sit in the coldest part of the house staring at the laptop screen and wondering what to write. And blogging has been even less tempting when I know I could be in bed with a small boy snoring beside me (well, it's more like gentle snorts really) and heating the bed like a furnace. Tonight, at 9 pm, it's already icy and Mr M is in bed in his summer Buzz Lightyear pjs. Can you believe it? I even heard myself saying in my most 'motherly' voice: "If you must wear summer pjs, don't let me hear you complain about freezing."

I have, though, enjoyed a couple of really good books in my absence. I read Murray Bail's new novel, The Pages, which is a terrific, although somewhat slim, book. It doesn't matter that it's a slim book but I so wanted it to keep going for just a little bit longer. I have such fond memories of reading his previous novel Eucalyptus, that it doesn't feel like 10 years since it was released. In that book, I think he created a modern Australian fable. Reading The Pages I was alert to every single reference to eucalypts - and there were quite a few - while being thoroughly absorbed in the story of wanna be philosopher Wesley Antill. I enjoyed Bail's digs at psychotherapy. For a slim book, this is enormously wide-ranging, both in its geography, its timespan, and its ideas. When I reached the end, I felt I had only just begun to get my head around all the ideas Bail is exploring.

A less intellectually demanding but no less engaging book was The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. I gave this to Alice at Christmas having been intrigued by reading the first couple of pages in a bookshop. The Australian edition is also very pretty to look at. What a great read it turned out to be. A bit of romance, a bit of intrigue, a lot of China and brimming with the most amazing food. Now I am inspired to try Eight Treasure Dongpo Pork or perhaps Beggar's Chicken should I ever find them on a restaurant menu. I romped through through the book over the space of a few days, reading late into the night and early in the morning only to reach the end too soon. Ah well, I have ordered Mones' two earlier books from the local library so I can satsify my craving. But although both are set in China, I don't think either is about food.