Lemon Drizzle cake
For: Design extraordinaire, Chris Browne

Murwillumbah!

For those of you who have just tuned in, this is actually the second time I have made this sweet and scrumptious classic. The first, for Miss McFuzzle (AKA Caroline. Ed.), was so well received that I had a special order placed by Chris to make it once more for his birthday. Although it was a day late (sorry!), it seemed to be worth the wait and pretty darn good!

The good: The lemon drizzle cake is super easy to make, and is fairly impossible to get wrong. It really is as easy as the old Aussie sunscreen saying ‘Slip, Slop, Slap’. You start with castor sugar and slip in some butter, slop in four eggs, flour, almonds and lemon juice, and finally, when it’s all done, slap on your icing sugar! TA-DA!

The bad: Lemon juice and paper cuts do not go well together – youch!

Delicious? In the words of David Teek, “That was very nice, Thank you”. Coming from the master of sugar n’ sweet himself (No idea. Ed.), I’d say that’s a pretty good review!

Lando x

With fresh blood comes fresh ideas. New traditions are born of new perspectives. Case in point: the arrival of Alanda at the beginning of the year. Our generous-spirited young Aussie has committed to creating a bespoke celebratory confection for every member of the team’s birthday. And we’ll be chronicling her efforts right here. With a carrot cake for Kate and a lemon drizzle cake for Caroline already under her increasingly constrictive belt, I’ll hand over to the lady herself to tell you about her latest bravura bake-foolery. Take it away, Lando. No, seriously. It’s incredibly rich.

As a new starter to the wonders of WMW late last year, I was stunned to find that amongst such amazing people there was a serious lack of birthday cheer. It was after one particular awkward moment where I found myself trying (and failing) to start a happy birthday song that I realised some immediate action was required!

Upon receiving a baking book for Christmas (thanks Santa), I knew that birthday cakes were the answer to the problem at hand.

And so now I proudly bring you ‘Lando’s Birthday Surprises’. Surprises, of course, because I can’t guarantee that what you get will be mouth-wateringly delicious! It could be burnt, not cooked, something missing, something extra… well you get the gist.

I will however promise to try my very best and, luck giving, it will all work out brilliantly! So far so good… read on for the good the bad and somewhat delicious details of my cakes to date…

Lando x

Baked vanilla cheesecake with plum topping
For: Grant Saunders

You little beaut!

I’ve never made cheesecake before, and after this result, I will definitely do so again! This little crowd pleaser came straight from the brilliance of Jamie Oliver – with some slight changes from yours truly.

The good: This was a super duper fun cake to make, and having never come across the complexity of a vanilla pod before, it made things even more of an adventure. Also, baking consistency was finger-lickin’ perfect.

The bad: With cherries out of season, and raspberries through the roof, I opted for plums for the topping – but turned out alright, I reckon! Slightly browner around the edges than I would have liked, but nothing to fret over.

Delicious? The votes are in… and I’m going to vote yes!

Like a whale, the web refuses to stop growing. Search engines have to wade through more and more flotsam and jetsam to find useful results. This makes it ever more challenging for them to complete searches quickly. Google’s ‘Caffeine’ update aims to redress the balance and get your search results to you faster – in roughly half the time. But that’s by no means the only change in this major update. Google are always very secretive about exactly how they rank websites and pages (i.e. what makes them likely to be returned from a Google search), but here’s a quick taste of some of the changes announced:

• Apart from looking through websites periodically, Google will search live feeds from social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. These ‘blended results’ will allow real-time searches of rapidly changing content  
• New ranking factors for websites and pages. For instance, the length of time a domain name has been registered will now affect the ranking, in favour of sites that have been live for longer
• Sites hosted on faster servers now have an extra advantage as Google will give a better ranking for pages being quickly delivered
• New methods for avoiding spam-like sites that pretend to be something they’re not to achieve a high search engine rank.

As Google is in the process of rolling out Caffeine, some people will be using it already, while others might have a few weeks to wait. If you’re eager to see how searches using Google Caffeine differ from the old Google, you can race them side-by-side at http://www.comparecaffeine.com 

Of course, we’re updating our own Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy to reflect these changes, but first I’m off for some real caffeine.

Just a quick note to provide proof of life.

It’s been a chocka few weeks here at the soaring glass, chrome and testosterone-fuelled testament to man’s hubris we call WMW Towers.  But normal service will be resumed shortly.

In fact, if you average out all our posts, we’re probably still just about meeting the SLA implicit in the title of B.L.O.G. (Learnt that trick from the rail companies).

TTFN. Got stuff to do ‘n’ that.