Truly Outrageous

I’d heard of gems before but never tried them. The friend of mine who kindly leant me the tin warned me that they were not terribly exciting. What she didn’t warn me was that it would take me half the night to get the gems out of the gem irons.

Gem irons, for those of you who have never seen them before look a little like a loaf tin, a muffin tray and a cast iron skillet had a baby. These are truly weighty things and given that you have to heat them red hot before filling them there scarity is most likely because they have probably been completely banned by OSH.

There are three Gem recipes in the Edmonds – Gems, Ginger Gems and Honey gems. It made sense to start with the straight gems and work up to the more fancy version. Unfortunately I could not get the theme tune for Jem the cartoon out of me head – “Jem truly truly truly outrageous oooohh ooo - Jem”. Some times a childhood in the eighties can be a curse.

So Gems. I think they may have been a step on the evolution of the muffin. They are muffin like in texture although they differ in method in that they require creaming rather than just mixing in wet/melted ingredients. For the “Gems” I quite clearly did not use enough oil and they stuck like the proverbial to the blanket. I did not get one out in good nick. I did howevever manage to fill up the ripped bottoms with some high quality blackcurrant jam. They were definitely at their best hot out of the oven, over time they dried out and became tough. I’m not sure whether it was baking them in scorching hot gems irons or not enough fat in the mix but they were a little under whelming.

I had planned to continue on my Gem making ways and get the whole lot done in one night. however after wrestling the gems out of the irons for a solid ten minutes – I was tempted to exaggerate and say half an hour or possibly and hour but we all know that wouldn’t be true – I did not feel like making more Gems. I re-adjourned a couple of days later for the Honey and Ginger variants.

They were not ground breaking alternatives but the healthy application of cooking spray at least ensured that they could be more easily evicted from the irons. I did save some until the next day but I think they were well and truly at their best straight out of the oven. Neither the honey nor the ginger was particularly strong but they were pleasant enough.

So you can probably guess I was not all that excited by the Gems. Not that they were bad but in the grand scheme of things that I’d like to buy but have no space for in the cupboards you can guarantee than Gem irons probably won’t be making the list anytime soon.