Getting my cookery mojo back

Made a chocolate cake yesterday. 

It was (and what remains, still is) delicious.

The only reason this is important is that I needed a confidence boost. 

I enjoy cooking and I'm good at it.  So, when I made some vegetable soup last week and it turned out to be as interesting as dishwater, I panicked.  It also looked like dishwater.  This is not how it works.  I can make vegetable soup - done it many, many times with uniformly great results until this one epic failure.

Instant crash of confidence.  If I could not make vegetable soup, using the same ingredients and whatnot that I've always used, who knows what else might fail?  Possibly I would no longer be able to make cake.  This was a tormenting thought.  Cake has ALWAYS been my thing.  Failing with cake would be unthinkable.

When confronted by a crisis of this nature, I did what I always do.  I procrastinated and let my inner self nag me.  Surely it was better not to make cake than make cake and fail? 

"We're talking about cake here.  You've been making cake and cooking regularly since you were 10 years old.  And let me remind you, that is now a very long time."

"Gee.  Thanks, inner self.  You really know how to give a person a boost."

"It's not meant to give you a boost, moron.  It's a reality check.  Get that butter out of the fridge and BAKE."

My inner self has these dictatorial tendencies.  I cringed away and whimpered.  And got the butter out of the fridge and baked.  In a blur.  On auto-pilot.  In exactly the same way that I'd made the failed soup that started this whole confidence crisis.

It worked.  I feel better now.  I still don't know what went wrong with the soup, mind.

This probably has wider applications, but I'll take being able to cook again for now.

Bakery revisted

The great baking projects are complete.  I have the stained fingers and bizarre facebook statuses to prove it.

Operation Gingerbread went surprisingly well.  Once baked, the slabs behaved reasonably and responded to the application of icing-as-glue.  Well, one of them did.  The other admittedly suffered a structural collapse at a crucial stage, but imagination came to the rescue.  We decided that building a gothic ruin was a perfectly acceptable adaptation of the gingerbread theme.  The swift addition of a fallen body, several Christmas trees, a dusting of snow and fake blood and lo - a seasonal ghost story was born in bakery.  The other dwelling looked rather dull in comparison and I think next year I shall focus on ruins from the outset.

Christmas cake (i.e. chocolate laced with plum brandy confection) assembled and ready to be consumed whenever seems like a good idea.

Birthday cake also assembled.  It looks vile - and I say this with true feeling.  I spent the afternoon attempting to coat tentacles in buttercream and moulding demon eyes out of royal icing.  Just for the record, neither task is easy.  I would have been better off going for royal icing, but it doesn't taste as good.  In honesty, I'm not quite sure that the finished product looks like, but it does verge on the nightmarish which is the point after all.  I've stabbed it in one grotesque eye with a symbolic candle and shall take another poke at it tomorrow when I've got the food dye off my hands.

"It's not a sheep, it's a tup."

I've spent most of the day working on the nativity play and many things collided - which amused me a lot.

The children playing the shepherds are a mixed bag.  One of them is a new boy who is thrilled to be a shepherd, because he is one.  He's 8 and has been working with sheep since he could toddle.  One of the other boys produced a toy sheep which Shepherd Kid looked at critically for half a second and announced it was a tup.  General nodding all around as they agreed, it was a tup.  For the uninitiated, that's a ram.  Shepherd Kid pointed to the rear end and said firmly, "Got to be a yearling tup, the balls will drop reet soon."  It's a tiny rural school - of course they know this stuff.  He wasn't being anything other than informative and will be making an appearance in Mikelmerck. 

Sheep crop up a lot teaching drama in the Dales.  I hold outdoor rehearsals during the summer if possible, but have had them interrupted by oncoming flocks of sheep. 

"They's me dad's.  They've got green bums."
"Great.  Now get back to the rehearsal."
"My dad's using blue this year."
"My dad won't use that, says it's unlucky."
"Tisn't.  Only numptys think that."
"Don't call me dad a numpty."
"ENOUGH.  Go from the start of the scene."

This never happened in London.

Also made cake for lovely gaming group friend with random ingredients.  Plan A was to bake a chocolate diner cake which has gone down well in the past, but lack of time, lack of chocolate and lack of castor sugar all conspired against me.  Instead I ended up using soft brown sugar and baking a thin sheet of sponge.  This was later split into three, sandwiched with buttercream and homemade raspberry jam and pronounced a success.  The way ahead is clear for further experimentation with this recipe.  The thin-ness of the sponge meant that the sugar dissolved properly - which was the worry as it isn't as fine as castor.  It cooked fast, but was still light and spongey.  Not flexible enough to roll I suspect, but I may try it anyway. 

Farewell my lovely (October 2011)

October finishes today, and with it NaBloWriMo.

Despite my failure to post every day during the month, I did manage 47 (48 with this) posts overall, so I'm prepared to concede success to some extent.

It's been an interesting month.  I suppose they all are, but this is the first time I've had the opportunity to look back with documentation - which for me at least, has a certain novelty value.

Breaking it down into the relevant bits, here's what we get:

Drama - fairly quiet due to half term, although things are about to hot up again as classes re-start today.  The shows all seem in reasonable shape and the gates of nativity hell are about to swing open.  That alone will keep me busy until early December.  I'll just have to see how the line learning has gone. 

Dice - enforced finger hiatus has slowed all my online games, but they're picking up speed again now and I'm enjoying them a lot.  Whether the players are is another story.  Home gaming saw my first character kill, of which I am slightly proud, although sorry for the character who copped it.  Played some entertaining board games as well and there are a few more in the pipeline.

As well, of course, and near and dear to my heart, the evolution of Mikelmerck.  This has all the signs of a fun on-going project.  When working on this kind of thing, I have a white space approach - i.e. I have no idea what will be where or why until I need it to be there.  The general shape is coming along nicely with some small details.  In any case,  I can see it keeping me amused for a long time to come.

Damsons - for which read general cookery and fruit reduction as well as gardening.  Well, gardening did not happen at all.  We have some early onions and garlic to plant, but luckily they are reslient and patient and as long as they hit the ground before the heavy frosts, should be fine.

Cake played a fairly major part in the month.  Birthday cake for Mr Rev, frankly sublime dark chocolate cake for wedding and "invention" of crumble cake in the last two days.  More cake pending as the days draw in even more and the Christmas stockpile starts.

I also need to mention my own birthday cake - which I did not make.  This was a majestic creation made by a dear friend and shaped like a black dragon.  It was also delicious.  As soon as she sends me the pictures, I'll post them because it was quite simply one of the most awesome birthday cakes I've ever seen or eaten.

NaBloWriMo - the first dip into the communal blogging water.  A very positive experience.  Discovering that despite myself, I do enjoy writing is a great thing.  Discovering that I do this much better online is an amazing one.  The blogging community is extremely supportive - which is just as well as I suspect most of us are fragile in the confidence department.

Other stuff - the car crisis, the strange bug and the finger fracas all featured.  These things count as the roadbumps I think.  The unplanned and unplannable events that just happen.  Speaking of unplanned and unplannable, I've got a hugely busy month ahead of me and 50,000 words to produce by 30 November 2011.  But that's next month's problem.

Goodbye October 2011.

Crumble cake

Due to my inability to work out how many apples make a crumble, I was forced - yes, forced I tell you - to compromise and invent something.

I suspect it wasn't that much of an invention, but for what it's worth, I share it with the world. 

The deal was this.  Apples sitting in fridge, wind blowing outside, need of hot pudding.  Crumble.  Sorted out the apples, but realised that once I'd finished removing the inedible bits, there really weren't enough to fill the bottom of the dish.  And crumble should be at least half about the fruit.  As I poked at the pan, hoping against hope that adding a little spice and brown sugar would add to the bulk, an image floated across my mind.

A thin layer of sponge into which these apples could go.  A ten minute bake in a medium oven while I rustled up the crumble - it was ready to mix, and there's no going back once you've chopped butter into flour, ground almonds and sugar.  Two eggs of sponge mix later and this plan was sitting in the oven.  Added the crumble to the top of the half baked tray, thrust the whole thing into a blast furnace for another 10 minutes and lo and behold - crumble cake.

It was extremely good.  So good in fact that I repeated it today with blackcurrants.  And that was extremely good too.  So I have another handy dandy way to use up the fruit mountain.

Birthday success

I'm proud of myself this morning.  Mr Rev is happy with his presents.  I love him to bits and have done for a long, long time now, but I have to admit he's not the easiest person to buy for.  I do find that odd.  This is the man I know better than practically anyone, so present-buying should be a snap.  Right?  Wrong.  I love making and buying gifts for people.  It's something I take quite a bit of pride in and it feeds the smug earth mother lurking very close to the surface of my soul.  Oh, I do like being right.

That's the problem of course.  Mr Rev's has to be really right.  I did all the usual things.  Casual questioning, full frontal demands for lists and furtive squirrelling away of half-remembered conversations.  The results of this process were the following.


Woolly jumpers.  Well he got those early because I spotted a sale and it seemed silly to let the man freeze.  More to the point, he might have just gone out and got them himself, and I'd have felt a twit offering up gift wrapped jumpers when he was wearing one already.

iTunes vouchers.  These are duller than ditchwater in terms of imagination, but are never a bad thing to give a music nut.

Aga oven mitt.  Just one.  They turned out to be vastly expensive.  For those not in the know, an Aga is a heavenly piece of kitchen kit.  We'd craved one for years and when we bought the house here, it had one.  The trick with an Aga is that it needs special oven gloves as the ovens are huge and go back a long way.  You need not gloves, but gauntlets.

Witness the aweome power of the +3 Aga Oven Gauntlet.  Protection from fire and careless application of fingers to cake tins.  +2 to saving throws from random application of pan handles to flesh.

Ipad keyboard.  This is the bit I'm really proud of.  I asked around some technologically minded male friends and they all came up with "get a keyboard for that ipad".  So I did.  And it works.   And Mr Rev is a happy penguin today.

Not a book in sight.  That's almost unheard of.

And now to make the toffee apple spice cake in vast quantities.

The gamers are coming around this evening and we'll eat a lot, chat a lot and roll more than a few dice.  It should be a good day.

Cake

I have a couple of cakes to make in the next few days.  Mr Rev's birthday cake and a cake for a dear friend who weds his partner next week in Edinburgh Castle.

The end of September sees the start of the birthday season in our primary social circle, with everyone born at one end of the year.  Our gaming group are a cheerfully social bunch, so in the past we've done a lot of celebrating with themed cakes.  My usual partner in crime for these events is hors de combat due to the recent arrival of her son, and the gaming as a whole has dropped off a little, but we continue to go to some trouble to celebrate birthdays.  Go us.

Not the right wedding cake.  This was a white chocolate monster made last year for two of the gaming group who got married to each other.  Or rather, the first of the two pairs of gaming group members who married each other.  Shutting up now.  The caption is practically longer than the post.

Sunday is Mr Rev's mumblety-mumblety birthday.  I'm being cautious about this not because he's paranoid about his age, but because I can't remember how old he is.  For that matter I mostly can't remember how old I am either without serious thought.  Anyway, the gamers are coming around on Sunday evening and we'll let him try to kill us as a treat.

The cakes in question will both be fun to make.  Mr Rev wants a toffee apple spice cake and the wedding thing is going to be the darkest of dark chocolate sloshed through with homemade plum brandy.  I need, therefore, to do some shopping.

Coxes apples - the sort that disintegrate gently on cooking
Bag of Werhter's toffees
85% dark chocolate
Edible gold leaf or similar


This is a good list.  Every item is absolutely needful and all of them look indulgent.  Well, maybe not the apples.