Channeling Elvis 3

School holidays started on the weekend and the town's already awash with "No Vacancies" signs.
I love all the tourist seasons but especially winter when you can wander down the main street and play Spot the Visiting Sullen Teenagers.
These are the ones who'll be making their way through the horizontal rain that's hammering the pavements, pretending they're not related to the man and woman walking directly in front of them.
They will be mobile phone-less because their dads will have said, "We didn't drive 400kms so you could spend all day texting your mates."
Shortly they'll be herded into family cars and driven off to look at The Gap and The Natural Bridge, where they'll consider throwing themselves off.
But before that, Mum's going to make them go into every single gift shop on York Street.
When they get to Wombat Lodge, which is total kitsch heaven, they will find the Dog Rock snowdome pictured above.
I love this snowdome so much, I've bought it many times for family and friends. It costs $10 and was made in Sydney. The "snow" is glitter. It's breathtaking.

Above is a picture of the real Dog Rock, which comes courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
I had every intention of driving down Middleton Rd and taking a picture myself but it's pouring down at the moment, plus it's also blowing a gale and the temp is 12C.
The real Dog Rock is a huge granite outcrop in the shape of a bloodhound's head. See the cute collar someone's painted on it? I think that's what probably did it for the Sydney snowdome-maker. I think he saw that and couldn't contain himself any longer.
Luckily, his loss of control was our gain. I don't think you could find a finer souvenir.

How the President will harvest his home-grown spinach

OK, maybe not. You'll find out what it's really all about here.

Channeling Elvis 2

I decided to forgo the french toast cut into bunny rabbit shapes and do this magnificent creation for Easter instead.
Granted, it looked better in the magazine, but even then they had to use blurry soft-focus photography to get away from that "I lost control of my bowels while skiing" look.
It's called Choc Coconut Ice Cream Cake and I got the recipe from a New Idea mag, as in I was allowed to rip the recipe out of the magazine when I was at the hairdresser last week (thank you, Shelley).
This cake is a mixture of vanilla ice cream, crushed Choc Ripple biscuits, toasted coconut, mini marshmallows, strawberry-flavoured dessert topping, Ice Magic and M&Ms Speckled Eggs.
So delicious. So Elvis.

Channeling Elvis

The photos probably speak for themselves but then I thought, what the hell, here's your chance to explain your kitsch food fetish once and for all.
My husband's always put it down to an early adulthood of too much Cinzano and lemonade (yes, in the same glass). But seeing as I haven't touched Cinzano since I drank a whole bottle at a hockey cabaret in Manjimup in 1974, I think it's more deep-seated than that.
I think some people are born with a kitsch gene and even if they struggle against it for years and years, they one day end up making, say, a dozen Rudolph cupcakes.
For some reason this kitsch food fetish only surfaces on holiday-type occasions. As in, Christmas or Easter looms and I get really excited and go into a frenzy of searching through recipes for something suitably naff.
The Rudolph cupcakes are a bastard to make because you have to pipe 24 melted-chocolate antlers on to baking paper. Which means you (as in, I) pipe 37 crap antlers before you get the hang of it, then you have to go out and buy more chocolate and melt it down and pipe 24 more.
The melted chocolate goes everywhere. I found some in my belly button and also behind my ears. I didn't tell my family this, of course, and they quite happily ate the lot.

The snowman cupcakes were less successful, mainly because I couldn't be bothered making the cupcakes. By this time it was 10pm on Christmas Eve, I was full of Yellow Glen and my family made an executive decision involving vanilla ice cream and Ice Magic.
Even so, I managed to breathe new life into a Martha Stewart concept: two marshmallows and a fruit-jube hat threaded on a toothpick, with coloured sprinkle thingies for eyes and nose.
Result: Chucky Snowman. Not my finest moment.

This echidna pav was made for Australia Day. I was toying with the idea of Kylie Minogue but realised she was probably a pav too far.
Dead easy to make: bake your meringue in a pointy oval shape, cover with whipped cream, add dried cranberries for eyes and after-dinner mint sticks for spines.
Serve on a turkey platter (echidna platters being hard to come by).
Now it's nearly Easter and I'm on the hunt again. Nigella Lawson has a recipe for rabbit curry called Hot Cross Bunny, which appeals on many levels.
But if you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.