I am a big fan of cake – but it has to be great cake…nothing out of a packet or covered in artificially coloured icing for me, oh no! It must be artisan-made or home-baked to sate my tastebuds. I’m fussy about cake, OK?

I am baking a cake tonight, actually. It’s in the oven as I type. And, it’s not just any cake – it’s Chocolate Mousse Cake! This is a cake that conjures up scenes from Like Water for Chocolate and Chocolat (not uncoincidentally!). It is a luscious, rich, seductive cake made with tonnes of Lindt chocolate, nearly a whole carton of eggs, a slab of butter, a whack of sugar and vanilla. It’s baked in a water bath and emerges from the oven with a crusty, sunken top and a molten, moist centre. It is mousse merged with cake and it’s to die for. In fact, I’ve watched people queue at parties for my Chocolate Mousse Cake and one man even told me he believed it was “better than sex”. Anyone who’s ever met a man will realise the superlative nature of that compliment!

This is indeed a very sexy cake. It comes from a Nigella Lawson cookbook – a woman whose lusty baking techniques require no further mention - and I always feel best making it while belting out ‘chick tunes’ to my ipod. Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”; the Dixie Chick’s “Earl”; Carole King’s “You Make Me Feel Like a Nat-U-ral Wom-An”; India Arie’s “Brown Skin" and "Video" - get the picture?

From sex to love. I realised tonight while baking this cake - with its edible batter and a mixing spoon that demands licking – that I must truly love the people I’m making it for. Why? Because I’m on a health kick – I’ve given up sugar and chocolate and wine and pretty much everything I love in the interests of cleansing and reviving this battered body. No, I’m not insane (well maybe a little) but I have gone 'cold turkey' after having had one of those conversion to healthy living moments in the doctor’s surgery that demanded an immediate and wholehearted response. And sure, I feel physically better for all the healthy living but how I miss cake and chocolate and…

So, my point is, I just tenderly melted and mixed and blended my way through this recipe but I couldn’t lick the spoon or scrape the bowl and now I can smell its heady scent wafting through the kitchen, as I blog at the dining table and watch the timer. But when it emerges it will be out of bounds. And tomorrow, when I serve it to my lunch guests, I’ll be denied a mouthful. That’s a definition of selfless love if ever I heard one!

I’m familiar with this definition. I had a Nanna who was a consummate cook but her complicated health problems meant she could never eat anything she baked for us. And she had a way with Melting Moments, Cream Puffs, Strawberry Patch Cheesecake, myriad Italian delicacies... (I could go on but it’s making me miss her and my stomach is protesting). She would sit there and soak up our praise, watching us devour her efforts with a satisfied smile on her face, while she munched on a dry cracker. I know now how much she loved us.

Ooh, there goes the buzzer!

Aftermath: I overcooked the cake. Misjudged the timing. It must have been the impact of denial. So now cake is more more mudcake than mousse. Oh well, that'll teach me to be smug about my baking skills! Maybe it was some subconscious attempt to curtail my lunch guests' enjoyment of the delight I'm denied?

A week later: So, here I am again, late on a Friday night with the Chocolate Mousse Cake in the oven, having yet again sacrificed licking the spoon and scraping the bowl in the interests of aforementioned health kick. This "kick" is really starting to hurt! I just hope tomorrow's lucky lunch guests appreciate my self-sacrifice! Next week's guests can bring their own bloody dessert! :)

Confession: I succumbed to temptation. I had a slice of my cake and I wish I could say I feel guilty and remorseful...but I don't! I savoured every morsel and it was more delicious than I remembered!! How am I going to resist that second piece?    [read more]

I don’t understand the Liberal Party.

Arrogance, backward social policy and a record characterised by lies, deceit and spin did the Howard Government in - in spectacular style - less than a week ago. So, when Peter Costello made the surprise announcement that he wouldn’t contest the party leadership and would soon retire from politics, Alexander Downer indicated he’d spare us another turn as Opposition Leader and Tony Abbott failed to get his campaign off the ground, I expected the party room to install Malcom Turnbull in the top job.

Turnbull is an eloquent, erudite, self-made millionaire with a social conscious. He possesses environmental awareness, republican tendencies and an accessible appeal – just what the doctor ordered for a fractured, out of touch, roundly defeated party, right? Well you’d think so. But instead of getting what the doctor ordered, the Liberal Party ordered a doctor – Dr Brendan Nelson to be precise.

Dr Nelson was a media pin-up boy in the 80’s and early 90’s when he was a doctors' advocate and rose to become president of the Australian Medical Association. In that guise, he sported a trendy hairdo, an earring and credentials as a solid Labor man. He grew up in a staunch Labor family - his dad was a trade unionist, his granfather a Communist - he’d been a Labor Party member and was even captured on film screaming into a loudspeaker at a rally “I’ve never voted Liberal in my life!!” That was 1993. The following year, he joined the Liberal Party. He was a turncoat then and, as his ascendancy to the Liberal Party leadership along with his manufactured conservatism in his first days in the job show us, nothing’s changed.

Dr Nelson defeated Mr Turnbull – the richest man in the Australian Parliament - by only two votes and his win was the product of a backroom deal which required him to sell out on social issues. He’s believed to have won the backing of a block of West Australian conservatives brought to the party by newly elected Deputy Leader, Julie Bishop. The price for his victory? A more conservative line on social issues and industrial relations. He's now publicly rejected the notion of a national apology to Indigenous Australians which Mr Turnbull had embraced as part of his pitch for a socially progressive new Liberal Party. He’s also hardened his stance on the new Labor Government’s plan to roll back ‘Workchoices’,indicating there may be trouble ahead in the Senate. This is stupid politics. The vast bulk of Australians forcefully repudiated Howard’s failed Industrial Revolution at last week’s poll but before the gloss has even begun to wear off the victory, Nelson’s lot are challenging Labor’s mandate for reform. It reeks of arrogance and is a major first misstep for the new Opposition.

Malcom Turnbull would have invigorated the Liberal Party leadership with life, freshness and new direction towards a more progressive conservative party. He’d have been a neat foil to Kevin Rudd’s moral high ground. Instead, the Party room elected a man who won the job on the back of a deal which denies his conscience. Not a good path to redemption for a party perceived by the electorate to be morally bankrupt and disingenuous. His discomfort with the deal he’d done was palpable during his first appearance on the 730 Report last night.

With a complete lack of conviction, he claimed a national apology to Indigenous people wasn’t necessary, arguing the Howard line – that the current generation of Australians has no responsibility for the “largely well intentioned” policies of the past. He later acknowledged that he’s shed tears about the violent history of white-black relations in Australia and spoke of his deep respect for and empathy with Aboriginal Australians. Incongruous. He looked and sounded like the formerly progressive Howard Minister, Phillip Ruddock, used to when trying to justify the government’s handling of issues like Tampa, Children Overboard and discriminatory immigration policies – grey and hollow, like he’d sold his soul.

The doctor has swallowed a bitter pill. His locum is waiting in the next wing – only two votes away and ready to prescribe Dr Nelson some of his own medicine.

Update: Nelson's already on notice from Turnbull. Read Sam Maiden's article here    [read more]