Recipe: Safari Cupcakes Recipe »
"Oh look at that cat!" I said to my sister one day. We were outside in our front garden and I was about seven and she was six years old and as owners of goldfish, we desperately wanted a cat or dog.
Ignoring any superstitions that black cats should never cross our paths we cajoled him towards us.
"Heeere kitty kitty..." we beckoned, our fingers curling over.
Miraculously, he moved towards us with the confidence and sway of a catwalk model. I pulled off a corner of the sandwich I was eating and placed it in my palm. He ate it off my hand. It tickled unexpectedly and for the first time I felt how sandpapery a cat's tongue was. I pulled off more and he ate more until my sandwich was gone. We played with him for a few hours until my mother called the familiar dinner time call of "Makaaaaan!"
"Mummy, a cat wants to stay for dinner!" we called to my mother. "He's hungry" we pleaded.
"Don't be silly" she said and ushered us inside for dinner. Halfway during dinner we heard a plaintive meow coming from the other side of the screen door. His eyes glowed green and he sat there meowing loudly and insistently. Still, he was not allowed inside and as soon as we finished eating, we ran outside and played with him until it was time for bed.
The next day he was back. Curious at this startlingly beautiful and well groomed itinerant, I looked at his collar. "His name is Sabu and there's a phone number for him" I told my mother and sister. He surely wove his way into our lives -being undeniably social, gracious and beautiful, he walked into our house as if it were his and purred, ate and slept inside. That day, my mother rang the number on Sabu's collar and there was no answer. She tried again every day at different times -this was before the age of answering machines- and it would always ring out. My sister and I were excited. We finally had a cat! A beautiful long necked pure black cat with glowing green eyes called Sabu. "Maybe the owners have gone away and left him behind!" we said excitedly.
He stayed with us for three and a half weeks. Until one day my mother rang that number and someone picked up the phone. It was Sabu's owner. He had been away and was immensely relieved to hear that Sabu was ok as he had been away on holidays and the person that was supposed to feed Sabu had neglected to do so on a regular basis. He came by to pick him up the next day and we stroked Sabu for the last time.
We got our first cat quite a few years later and he wasn't as sweet natured as Sabu-actually he was so curmudgeonly and angry and scratched our arms and hands to pieces every single day until we got another cat Otto who was the apple of my eye. I still occasionally think of Sabu. I recently went on a game drive in South Africa and came across one of Sabu's distant relatives, a lion. Coincidentally, Julie from Gourmet Getaways posted about a cupcake making class at Stormie D's in Albury and when I saw the lion and monkey I immediately thought of the RSPCA cupcake day (http://www.rspcacupcakeday.com.au/).
I wanted to do make these cupcakes a little different and instead of making a cake cupcake, I decided to make it a pudding cupcake. That is, a sweet, syrupy moist cupcake called malva pudding which is drenched in a baked-in buttery, sweet vanilla syrup. The recipe was adapted from the Oprah site which I have used in the past many a time. An Afrikaner dessert named after Malvasia wine which it is typically served with, it is a fantastically spongey, moist pudding served warm from the oven. If you are a fan of sticky date pudding this is the pudding for you. What makes this lovely is the syrup that you pour into the cake after you've partially cooked it in the oven and poked it all over with holes. The pudding acts as a sponge holding in the vanilla infused syrup and when you take a bite into the pudding, the sweetness spreads through every bite.
Mr NQN has a dozen of these lions and monkeys to take to work to raise funds for the RSPCA Cupcake Day. The cupcakes will stay moist although I do challenge anyone to resist the smell and taste of one straight from the oven. In fact, I may have had to have baked a second lot because some seem to have disappeared somewhere....
So tell me Dear Reader, what was your favourite pet growing up? And what is the animal that you always wanted to have but never could? And do you prefer the monkey or the lion cupcake design? And is there something that you'd like to see me make as a cupcake?
P.S. If you're wondering where to find the best pho, baklava, laksa, fish & chips, kebab, cannoli and Peking Duck among other items, then the new Feast magazine has a liftout which features each category in each state of Australia. I helped to judge one section in Sydney and it was lots of fun (although I think it accounted for an increased dress size ;) ).
P.P.S. There is also a story on me in the latest Money magazine about blogging for a living. Although I know the column above mine on becoming the next E.L. James might have caught your eye too! ;).
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