Sunday saw the first day of the football season and quite naturally following on from that was my first injury of the season. I’m not entirely sure of how it happened but my chin managed to connect with an opposition players forehead. At speed. Well at as much speed as I am capable of. Now I possess quite a substantial jaw, which is probably fortunate for me if not for my opponent. The lack of basic first aid supplies also left me pressing a bag of frozen bread rolls to my jaw on the sideline. It is fortunate I am a big fan of mashed potato and custard (not mixed together) as a week later I am still in pain, especially when chewing or sneezing.
So come Sunday night I was looking for something that required little or no chewing – Enter lemon and orange pudding. This was another jelly and eggs affair – not bad actually although as always my egg whites separated out a little while the pudding was setting in the fridge resulting in a foamy layer on top.
I have now built up expectations to a stage where it is inconceivable that I would turn up to work on a Monday without baking. I whipped up a chocolate meringue shortcake – a shortcake base with raspberry jam and walnuts covered in chocolate flavoured meringue. Not bad but did not manage to top the popularity of the marshmallow shortcake of the previous week.
As Monday was going to be the only night of the week which I was going to be able to devote to baking I decided to go large. I had been neglecting the pasty section of the Edmonds, it was time to make amends. I have made Edmonds pastry using their subscribed method already so I will now revert to using the food processor. I made a bulk lot of flaky pastry – measuring it out into 4 and 6oz lumps and freezing them for future baking.
I felt it necessary to use some of my flaky pastry straight away – Macaroon tarts and bakewell tarts were on the menu. Both require pastry to be cut out and put into muffin tins and jam to be added. Macaroon tarts have a topping of coconut meringue and bakewell tarts a cakey topping. Both were well received.
Given the price of butter these days I found a way of reducing the price of my pastry. The recipe says use either butter or lard so I used a combination of both. Now I was quite careful not to tell anyone about the lard inclusion until after they had eaten and complimented…
Now for dessert I decided to make something quite special – Pineapple Marshmallow Cup. This was crushed pineapple, cold boiled rice, whipped cream and marshmallows. It was surprisingly good. The addition of rice sounds odd but it was necessary to bulk things out, in fact the husband didn’t even notice the inclusion of the rice until he had finished and was highly confused to find a rouge grain of rice still in the glass.
I felt that the two sets of tarts were not necessarily going to be enough so I whipped up a quick batch of walnut brownies. This was a slice, like a softish peanut brownie but with walnuts instead of peanuts. Not bad but not ground breaking.
For some reason I also felt the need to make lamingtons. Before one makes lamingtons one must make sponge. Now I can bake most things but I haven’t had great experiences with sponges in the past. They always seem to be a little flatter than expected and slightly disappointing. So it was with some trepidation that I approached the 3 minute sponge.
My fears were completely unfounded – this sponge is a dream. You basically beat everything apart from the baking powder for 3 minutes (exactly) and then add in the baking powder, put in the tin and bake. I thought this was far to easy to work well but I was wrong – this was fantastic. I am in sponge love.
Now in order to make the lamingtons the sponge has to be left for a while to stale up. So Tuesday night before we headed out pub quizzing I made Lamingtons – this is a 10 minute job thankfully. Dunk the sponge square in watery chocolate icing and then roll in coconut. Slightly messy but still easy. They were stunningly beautiful – just, as they say, like a bought one.
So come Sunday night I was looking for something that required little or no chewing – Enter lemon and orange pudding. This was another jelly and eggs affair – not bad actually although as always my egg whites separated out a little while the pudding was setting in the fridge resulting in a foamy layer on top.
I have now built up expectations to a stage where it is inconceivable that I would turn up to work on a Monday without baking. I whipped up a chocolate meringue shortcake – a shortcake base with raspberry jam and walnuts covered in chocolate flavoured meringue. Not bad but did not manage to top the popularity of the marshmallow shortcake of the previous week.
As Monday was going to be the only night of the week which I was going to be able to devote to baking I decided to go large. I had been neglecting the pasty section of the Edmonds, it was time to make amends. I have made Edmonds pastry using their subscribed method already so I will now revert to using the food processor. I made a bulk lot of flaky pastry – measuring it out into 4 and 6oz lumps and freezing them for future baking.
I felt it necessary to use some of my flaky pastry straight away – Macaroon tarts and bakewell tarts were on the menu. Both require pastry to be cut out and put into muffin tins and jam to be added. Macaroon tarts have a topping of coconut meringue and bakewell tarts a cakey topping. Both were well received.
Given the price of butter these days I found a way of reducing the price of my pastry. The recipe says use either butter or lard so I used a combination of both. Now I was quite careful not to tell anyone about the lard inclusion until after they had eaten and complimented…
Now for dessert I decided to make something quite special – Pineapple Marshmallow Cup. This was crushed pineapple, cold boiled rice, whipped cream and marshmallows. It was surprisingly good. The addition of rice sounds odd but it was necessary to bulk things out, in fact the husband didn’t even notice the inclusion of the rice until he had finished and was highly confused to find a rouge grain of rice still in the glass.
I felt that the two sets of tarts were not necessarily going to be enough so I whipped up a quick batch of walnut brownies. This was a slice, like a softish peanut brownie but with walnuts instead of peanuts. Not bad but not ground breaking.
For some reason I also felt the need to make lamingtons. Before one makes lamingtons one must make sponge. Now I can bake most things but I haven’t had great experiences with sponges in the past. They always seem to be a little flatter than expected and slightly disappointing. So it was with some trepidation that I approached the 3 minute sponge.
My fears were completely unfounded – this sponge is a dream. You basically beat everything apart from the baking powder for 3 minutes (exactly) and then add in the baking powder, put in the tin and bake. I thought this was far to easy to work well but I was wrong – this was fantastic. I am in sponge love.
Now in order to make the lamingtons the sponge has to be left for a while to stale up. So Tuesday night before we headed out pub quizzing I made Lamingtons – this is a 10 minute job thankfully. Dunk the sponge square in watery chocolate icing and then roll in coconut. Slightly messy but still easy. They were stunningly beautiful – just, as they say, like a bought one.
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