INSIDE INFORMATION
Katherine Sabbath
Images and text from Bake Australia Great by Katherine Sabbath, Murdoch Books, $39.99.
What are your pantry staples?
I am addicted to couverture dark chocolate (70 per cent or above) and eat through one or two blocks per week, self-raising cake flour, dark brown sugar, vanilla bean paste, mixed nuts.
What is your favourite cheat/shortcut?
I always use carton, free-range pasteurised egg whites for my Swiss meringue buttercream, which saves me mess and time spent pasteurising egg whites over the stove.
What are your top three tips for bakers?
Bake with ingredients you enjoy eating, make more than what you need and freeze leftovers (especially mud cakes and high-fat buttercreams or frostings) and, as always, remember that PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.
Which utensil or appliance can you not live without?
My kitchen mixer (especially for whipping anything to do with meringue), kitchen scales, my lazy Susan which I use as a cake turntable for decorating, and my many rubber spatulas.
Redback spider cupcakes
Our great southern land is home to one of the world’s most notoriously dangerous spiders, the redback. It’s an infamous Aussie icon (along with sharks, snakes, crocodiles and Pauline Hanson) that’s highly venomous and instantly recognisable. These
