Author: EstoricRealms

Love is Fire

One spark a flame grows consuming everything in its path. Soon you will be consumed by the enormity and ferocity of it’s flames, an intensity and heat you’ve never known before. It can destroy everything around you or it can cleanse you and create new life in you. It is passion and energy, it can be a warming fire that glows, a simple light that shines the way in times of darkness or it can burn with the intensity of the sun, it can be inhabitable and total destruction.

Love is Water

One drop can cause a ripple in a body of water, though it flows so soft through the fingers it can wreak havoc when a combined force and cause the greatest destruction. It can be gentle and soft flowing quietly through the streams and valleys or it can be the most savage ocean turning ships and destroying shores. It is cleansing and strength, constant in giving. It can be purification or stagnation.

Love is Air

It is the beginning and the end, our giver of life in our first breath and leaves our body in the last. It is light enough to move past us and provide a cooling breeze yet strong enough to uproot ancient trees whose roots go deep into the ground. It is can be a carrier of sweet incense or putrid offerings. It is harmonious and imaginative, to lose yourself in thought and let your mind wander as the wind does. It is also strong and destructive becoming a terrible force that pushes us down.

Love is Earth

It is predictable and dependable, season after season we know that changes are to come, we can see them and feel them as they happen around us. Giver of life and provider of sustenance, we can always depend on it to fill our needs. It can also rage and destroy, it can dry up the ground and cause famine, it can unleash every known power to destroy man. Yet it continues to nurture and starve, it causes growth and death and in all it’s joy and pain it knows what it needs to do, that death is necessary for life and life to give for a time.

In all this opposition and struggle to seem as sweet as it is perceived. We forget that love is what you make it. That if it is fire let it be for warmth and light, if it is water let it wash away our sins, let it cleanse our self, if it is air let it carry us like a small bird in its delicate grasp so that we may soar and it if is earth let it be a fertile place where we can plant the seeds of love in others that they too may share in springs bountiful harvest.

Let love be seen as it is, it is a two sided coin with a purpose. Let it be known that can be destructive, don’t let it’s power be underestimated. It will go through a season of change just as leaves fall and winter comes, so must love go through these changes. That old things may die and new life may come, that love may be enjoyed in every season, in every strength and weakness and in every time know that it is working in perfect harmony within itself.

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This flavour combination was inspired by Canadian bacon and maple syrup.

Cinnamon Cupcakes

Makes 12

Ingredients:

110g butter

230 mls xylitol or monk fruit sweetener

2 medium eggs

1 cup almond meal

1 pinch ground cinnamon

1/4 cup of milk of choice.

Note: because of the almond meal, you will need to add liquid to the mixture. Water or your milk of choice will work.

Method:

pre heat your oven to 180 degrees celcius

Using a whisk beat butter and sweetener until the colour changes and it becomes light and fluffy. You can use an electric hand held whisk or stand mixer.

Break the eggs into a cup and pre whisk with a fork.

Beat the eggs into the butter and sweetener until completely mixed. If you’re using a stand mixer you will want to change the whisk into the beater attachment, if mixing by hand use a spatula.

Slowly beat the flour and cinnamon until they have been mixed into the sweetener and butter, then increase the speed and continue to beat it until the mixture is has changed into a smooth fluffy consistency and everything has been blended. When you increase the speed you can decide if you want to use the electric hand whisk or continue with a spatula.

Prepare cupcake tray with patty pans or place silicone cupcake molds onto a baking tray, fill them just above half way with batter and bake for 20 minutes. Take out of the oven and let them cool on a tray, they can also be kept overnight in the fridge.

Maple Buttercream

Ingredients:

1/2 cup unsalted butter – its essential to leave it to soften to room temperature

1/4 xylitol or monk fruit sweetener

1/2 tsp maple flavoured liquid stevia. I found the best one to be from iHerb

optional: 1 tbsp of heavy cream, it’s only to be added if your frosting is too thick.

Method:

In a stand mixer or handheld beater, beat the butter on medium to high speed until it turns into a lighter colour and becomes fluffier.

Add in the sweetener gradually until it is completely dissolved into the butter. You may need to stop the beater and use a spatula to just stir the butter from the bottom of the mixing bowl to ensure no sweetener has been sitting and not being mixed in.

Once the buttercream has been made add in the flavouring and mix it in.

This can also be kept overnight if you don’t need to pipe immediately. The piping tip I used was a large star or Ateco 823 or Wilton 1M. I experimented with other tips but I found the large star to be the best for what I wanted.

Three Variations:

The first buttercream batched I crushed up maple flavoured crackling and piped it through.

The next batch I just sprinkled the crushed crackling over the buttercream

The third batch I used larger pieces to sit in the middle of the buttercream.

My personal preferences when it comes to baking this recipe are to use a stand mixer as I could change mixing attachment and adjust the speed accordingly. I use monk fruit as I prefer its flavour and tend to use less of it as it has a strong enough sweetness. I like to take my time making the buttercream and usually leave the butter out while I make the cupcakes, by then it should be soft enough. I always have a spatula handy for mixing batter and scraping the bowl clean of batter. I sourced the maple flavoured stevia and maple flavoured pork crackling from iHerb and have a discount code: ASU8680.

Take your time if you can allow the cupcakes and buttercream to cool in the fridge for even 30 minutes you’ll be able to have more control and less melting or crumbling.

I hope you enjoy this recipe and try different flavour combinations you enjoy, don’t be afraid to try new things.

Ask yourself when applying this logic to your life choices, will you take half cup, quarter cup, full cup or even settle for less when you need a full cup?

When making anything in life, the importance of measure twice cut once will always apply. When cooking, the importance of measuring out ingredients is so important the French have a term for it – Mis en Place, everything in its place. Yet when it comes to us, we seem to think we can suffice with just the minimum amount of something. Why is this? Why do long for something but will accept the smallest amount, maybe even half the amount? Why don’t we feel the need to take the full scoop?

When it comes to my own life I can make sure I give the full scoop to everyone and everything else, not skimping on even the slightest amount. The amount of time, love, affection, patience I have for others but when it’s comes to what I allow and accept it seems I’ll settle for less than the full scoop. The fullness I should be delving into, not settling for anything less than the whole hog but here I am, too afraid to speak out just in case the other person gets upset that I expected the fully complete saturation of dedication, emotion, love and commitment.

If I order a meal I expect the full meal even the extra side of sauce I ordered specifically and yet for some bizarre reason, I don’t expect this from the people of my life. In short, I’d say it was because I once did. I believed in the wholeness of what I knew I wanted and was to be expected from others, but the disappointment crept in and emotion after emotion, waves of disappointment deceit and anger slew at me throwing me off course into a place of fear. The fear was so debilitating I don’t dare ask for what I deserve or believe that I deserve that much at all and I should be grateful for what I get.

These are lies they want us to believe, that we can have what is ours, that the fullness of our life should be measured and decided by them and their hardened, greedy hearts stealing what is rightfully ours. in truth, we need to realise “you know what, why would I accept a love from someone who shows me none, they are actually not loving me at all.” We should no longer settle for their half-arsed attempts at satisfaction or false personifications and decide for ourselves with great ferocity who we are and what we accept and where that comes from. We decide the source of which our lives can be filled from, filling to be overflowed that we may flow into others lives and fill them up. We no longer should keep giving from an empty cup and sacrificing the little we have for so many others who will not do the same for us.

I hate the dark, I really do, with its lack of light and flexibility to stretch from physical to emotional and spiritual. It terrified me as a child on purpose to hurt me. To see things that were beyond evil, even now as an adult it tries to harm me in its own way.

I have learned though, it still causes me anxiety. I don’t like the lack of truth or ability to see. I don’t like the cold that follows or the absence of safety. I’m scared to close my eyes because I don’t know what awaits me.

The truth is, I hope for the light that shines brighter than sun to come set me free from the fear and terror that surrounds me in this darkness. To sleep with the safety of another and know I’m not abandoned in the dark.

I have everyone’s’ back but no one has mine, whenever you need support, love, encouragement I am there no questions asked, but when I need you, you have a reason, a reason why no is acceptable.

I am there for you no matter what and you are not there for me, no matter what.

Why are you like this? I don’t ask for help unless I’m desperate yet there is something less uncomfortable for you to attend. Don’t help me then l, that’s fine, alone I go and don’t come back. Don’t cry for me when I’m gone because you’ll learn the void I filled is larger than you expected and you’ll have no one to have to coexist in your mess and the cold that surrounds you is unforgiving. So you lay bare once like I did, alone, cold and empty. Maybe one day you listen or maybe you’ll never learn.

I wish I had someone closer than a sister, a best friend. Who I could share the world with and someone who loves me and looks out for me. I have this big hole where they should be but they were there for this glimmer of a second. Someone who really cared about me too and now, they’re gone back to their own lives, never am I going to see them again.

I feel like this hurts more than it should, yearning for friendship. Someone who is always by your side and ready for adventure, to take on life with you. To have someone who builds you up and defends you. Someone who makes promises they keep, someone to find your way through life with and navigate the hard times. To just have someone, who is so good, who completes you and you complete too. All I ever wanted was a faithful and true friend. That we would all be an Anne with a Diana, the bosom friend.