Mothers Day = Baking Day

Sunday was when the real baking happened - a combination of Mother’s Day and the Monday morning expectations. To go with the already made Butterscotch I decided that it was necessary to make a few baked treats.

I started with Chocolate Coconut Clusters – Edmonds seems to be quite big on sandwiching two biscuits together and we wonder why we have an obesity epidemic! These were chocolate and coconut biscuits, helpfully spooned onto a tray by the husband I might add, sandwiched together with chocolate butter-cream icing. I do think that biscuits sandwiched together do look nice but they are damn hard to eat.

Knowing my Step Mother is partial to the odd date – of the edible variety, I’m not about to blog on her social life here – I decided to make caramel date fingers – these were dates cooked with brown sugar and water until they were a paste like consistency, sandwiched between two biscuity/pastry layers. They were pretty good although due to some oven overcrowding with the fruit cake I had to cook it on a much lower temperature than recommended – it came out fine. No one complains anymore anyway.

Sorry about the spoiler in the previous paragraph but yes, I also cooked fruit cake. I decided my grandmother would quite like fruit cake. More fruit cake that is. Due to my need to get to my grandmothers by 3pm, so I could get out by 4.30pm, so I get home to make (spoiler alert) Butterscotch pie to get to my stepmothers by 7pm I had a few issues with oven timing.

It was not helped by the fact that I also needed to sterilise the jars for my (spoiler alert) Tree Tomato jam. I was a little nervous about putting the jars in at 150 degrees. That doesn’t mean I didn’t do it. It was only later that I realised that wet jars would have been dripping onto cooking fruit cake. Good think one didn’t explode with the extreme temperature though.

The tree tomato – I have a need to call it Tamarillo that I am finding hard to suppress – jam came about because it is tree tomato season. I saw them at the Parnell markets - $4 a kilo – a bargain. I had gone quite early because I have issues around not liking to pay for parking which meant that I was almost the only customer there. Not that that stopped me from virtually raping and pillaging the Kaimai cheese stand. Good cheese. Damn good cheese, particularly the washed rind. Unfortunately my cursedly logical brain – the same one which refuses to allow me to pay for parking – balked at paying $10 for something that I didn’t strictly need that was also extremely fattening. *sigh*

Anyway, back to the jam. I made it while watching the Shortland Street omnibus – nice little bit of telly that but 2 hours of back to back shorters with no ads is almost a form of torture. It helped to have something to take my mind off peeling the tree tomatoes – I don’t like real tomatoes in their raw state and I think my prejudice may have rubbed off. I then ended up watching a Western with Matt Damon – watching may have been a slightly strong term in reality. Mostly I watched my tamarillo (it just slipped out, I couldn’t help it) jam. It was a very pretty colour with lots of seeds. I have no idea, however, what the hell I am going to do with it.

Now after the mornings’ baking and the trip to the Grandparents I rushed home to make butterscotch pie. Not bad but possibly not entirely deserving of the title of butterscotch – it was a brown sugar and cornstarch filling topped with meringue – made from a miserly 1 egg white. This was not helped by the fact that I beat the egg white to early and when I went to put it on the pie it became somewhat sad and deflated. It was enough meringue in the end and as I say people have learnt not to complain. I have trained them well.