Betty Crocker was not Australian

I'm guessing Betty Crocker was not Australian. And neither is Martha Stewart.

Now that I'm settling in, it was time to attempt to bring back one of my hobbies: baking. As some of you know, I enjoy baking. As fewer of you may know, I won the final, council-wide Girl Scout bake-off with my Grandma's lemon square. And I make some mean dissertation cupcakes (how else do you think I got a PhD?).

First, I had to get basic equipment. Luckily, working with a nutrition intervention, I got the leftover muffin tins, measuring cups and spoons and other miscellaneous kitchen supplies (thank you again to Kyla!) A few less things to buy and most importantly, less things to carry. Three shopping trips, and two sore arms from carrying bags across Perth later, I had enough supplies to attempt a baked good. Unfortunately, an electric mixer did not make make the "absolutely necessary and able to be carried" list, so it was sacrificed (for now).

The next step was deciding what treat to break the ice with. Something American? Something seasonal (American seasonal as in fall or Halloween)? I needed something easy to transport, as I would be taking it in to the office on my bicycle (which is a whole other issue), didn't absolutely require a mixer, and I wanted to use my new muffin tin. Since there is a lack of peanut butter and chocolate over here and they are the two most perfect flavor combinations, Martha Stewart peanut butter and chocolate muffins (they really are cupcakes) it was.

This is what they were supposed to look like. Delicious, right?

Now to find the ingredients.  First, there were no semi-sweet chocolate chips. Only little bags of dark or milk chocolate chips and melting chocolate. I went with a combination of the two.(In case you were wondering, they do both taste great right out of the bag!)

Instead of plain confectionary sugar, most of it was "icing mix". It was powdered sugar with some thickening agent. Luckilty after staring for awhile, I did see a little bag of plain icing sugar.

*Note that  have since been to a different grocery store with a slightly wider selection of baking supplies, but still no Stop and Shop, BiLo or even Walmart.

With the help of Google images, I picked an American recipe. This was probably a mistake. My new hand-me-down mesuring cups have both cups and milliliters on them, but a 500g stick of butter is not divided into tablespoons!

THank goodness for online measurement converters. A little estimating and mixing later, I had the batter in the tins and ready to go into the oven. First, the three ovens I have seen in this country have a billion settings with little pictures and no words. I don't know what they are. I assume one is broiling and one is convection. The rest is just a crap-shoot. So I picked one of those. Next it was time for the big Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion. 325 degrees Fahrenheit is approximately 162.78 degrees Celsius.

So in they went and I worked in the kitchen so I could glance over and make sure they were doing alright. I didn't pay close enough attention. With still 5 minutes to go, something didn't smell right. They were overcooked!

I was so disappointed, I threw them out. I've never thrown anything I've baked straight into the garbage can. I can't even bear to show you a picture of them. Then in my angry, disappointed state, I went straight down to the 24/7 grocery store on the corner to get butter and start all over again. THe second time, I may have put a little too much batter in the cups and undercooked them. I warned everyone not to judge them by appearance, they still tasted like a sweet treat.

From now on I think I'll stick to Australian recipes that look a little more like this.

Overall, it was not the "Erin, the baker, goes to Australia and wows everyone will her culinary skills" experience I had hoped for, but it was still a Sunday afternoon full of baking and that's what makes me happy.

Plus, on my extra trip to the corner store I found this! And who says there's no peanut butter and chocolate here?