Down to Business

Right – I’ve been quite productive on the baking front if not the blogging one so none of the idle chit-chat – let’s get into it.

Date bars and Chocolate icing– when we left off last time I had made the bars but not iced them. I did the Edmonds chocolate icing which uses actual chocolate plus butter and icing sugar (a waste of chocolate if you ask me). Date bars were not bad – not many dates and the almonds didn’t add much but they were pleasantly cakey and chocolate icing was pretty tasty too – but then when is chocolate icing bad?

Irish stew - Yes I know it’s summer, yes I know it has been a bit overly hot but sometimes you just want stew. Found some very nice lamb neck chops and cooked it on the stove. I did cook it a little longer than suggested as we had impromptu visitors but the meat was meltingly tender. In my personal opinion it would have benefited from some herbs but that is not the Edmonds way!

Lemon soufflé – Not so successful. Cornflour, water and sugar boiled to make a paste. Cool. Add lemon juice and fold in beaten egg whites. Tasted a little bit like the glue they used at school- I’m guessing I must have eaten that at some stage because the recollection was quite strong!

Baked fruit roll – Scone dough rolled around fruit and baked in syrup. Not bad actually – I made this to take to a family gathering was told it tasted like strudel. Strudel sounds much better than baked fruit roll. I served this with crème anglaise or Boiled Custard (2) as Edmonds so lyrically labels it. It was custard so it was good even if it takes infuriatingly long to thicken.

And that’s it – it seemed like more in my head but then things so often do! I might even do some baking tonight – who knows.