The Birthday cake recipe had insisted upon Royal icing so now that I had left it to cook overnight it was ready to ice. In the cold light of day there was a definite black crust on the sides and bottom. Nothing a vat full of white icing couldn’t adequately disguise.
I’ve made royal icing before – in fact once I, along with a very good friend of mine who is an engineer, made a full gingerbread village complete with sugar glass paned windows and working lights and the whole thing was “glued” together with royal icing. This wasn’t royal icing as I remember it. For one it was runny – it all ran off the cake and pooled. Not good when you are trying to disguise a burnt exterior!
Thinking about it it’s probably the fact that I used massive eggs so there would have been too much egg white to icing sugar. I had more icing sugar that I could have used – the rabbit had broken into the cupboard where the overflow of baking supplies is kept and eaten her way into a bag of icing sugar and scattered icing sugar everywhere. The bag was in no state to be kept so what wasn’t used in the royal icing was thrown out.
I’ve made royal icing before – in fact once I, along with a very good friend of mine who is an engineer, made a full gingerbread village complete with sugar glass paned windows and working lights and the whole thing was “glued” together with royal icing. This wasn’t royal icing as I remember it. For one it was runny – it all ran off the cake and pooled. Not good when you are trying to disguise a burnt exterior!Thinking about it it’s probably the fact that I used massive eggs so there would have been too much egg white to icing sugar. I had more icing sugar that I could have used – the rabbit had broken into the cupboard where the overflow of baking supplies is kept and eaten her way into a bag of icing sugar and scattered icing sugar everywhere. The bag was in no state to be kept so what wasn’t used in the royal icing was thrown out.
The Rabbit regularly gets into places where she shouldn't. The attached video is of the recent Special K boxes with the hole in the front for the excercise DVD's. Feel free to turn the sound down or you will hear me calling the rabbit Horseface. Her real name is Matilda but we call her horseface for short. Because she has a face like a horse (of course)
Eventually the royal icing did set but when I cut into it, all of the icing cracked and fell off exposing the burnt crust. I must have bad baking karma.
I also made a quick bowl of soup for the husband’s return. It was pea and bacon, which I keep desperately wanting to call pea and ham. Pea and bacon just sounds wrong. I am over pushing soups through sieves, it is not doing the sieve any good and whenever I want to use it for sieving flour etc it is always wet so I can’t use it. Also the soup isn’t completely smooth the way it is when you use a blender – it has all these tiny little sieve sized grainy bits. Not good, not good at all.
I mortgaged the house and bought some oxtail. Why is it so cripplingly expensive? Doesn’t each cow have a tail? Or are they normally docked? Each cow only has one heart and they’re cheap as chips. Perhaps there is a huge export market. I remember Nigella Lawson waxing lyrical about oxtail during the BSE days when they were banned from selling meat on the bone in the UK. Perhaps all the tails are going there?
Sorry, rant aborted. The recipe for oxtail said to joint the tail – I was somewhat glad that mine came pre-jointed. I’m not up for that sort of palaver. I cooked it on the stovetop until it was a sticky glutinous mess. I love a bit of oxtail and this was very nice, I will admit that I left it until the next day so I could remove all the hunks of solidified fat out. Definitely better out than in, I’m not sure my arteries need any more animal fats this year.
Eventually the royal icing did set but when I cut into it, all of the icing cracked and fell off exposing the burnt crust. I must have bad baking karma.
I also made a quick bowl of soup for the husband’s return. It was pea and bacon, which I keep desperately wanting to call pea and ham. Pea and bacon just sounds wrong. I am over pushing soups through sieves, it is not doing the sieve any good and whenever I want to use it for sieving flour etc it is always wet so I can’t use it. Also the soup isn’t completely smooth the way it is when you use a blender – it has all these tiny little sieve sized grainy bits. Not good, not good at all.
I mortgaged the house and bought some oxtail. Why is it so cripplingly expensive? Doesn’t each cow have a tail? Or are they normally docked? Each cow only has one heart and they’re cheap as chips. Perhaps there is a huge export market. I remember Nigella Lawson waxing lyrical about oxtail during the BSE days when they were banned from selling meat on the bone in the UK. Perhaps all the tails are going there?
Sorry, rant aborted. The recipe for oxtail said to joint the tail – I was somewhat glad that mine came pre-jointed. I’m not up for that sort of palaver. I cooked it on the stovetop until it was a sticky glutinous mess. I love a bit of oxtail and this was very nice, I will admit that I left it until the next day so I could remove all the hunks of solidified fat out. Definitely better out than in, I’m not sure my arteries need any more animal fats this year.
1 comment:
You are funny,in a good way...love your writing style and enjoyed the vid of Horseface.
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