cakes

Small one finishes nursery on Friday and has his forth birthday party on the Saturday. It is traditional for them to take sweets in for the remaining kids on the last day but I want to do something for the staff as well so plan to do chocolate brownies, which will be gluten free as they come out as good if not better than gluten ones.

I also have THE birthday cake to make. Sponge not fruit cake as he isn't keen on fruit cake which means I have less time to play with as I can't start days in advance. He wants pooh, piglet and tigger on it otherwise he hasn't specified so I could probably get away with the three figures on the top of a normal cake and it would be easier as he also said he wanted strawberries on it. However that seems rather boring to me so I am currently planning to do Pooh's house (which is a door in the roots of a tree stump on a mound) with the three of them standing or sitting on a log outside. Basic idea is round cake with a chuck of the side cut out and piled on top. shaped a bit so it looks like a tree stump on a mound then cover in icing, mould tree roots, door etc in more icing and cover the rest in spiky soft icing to look like grass. Make figures from fondant and log either from fondant or choc mini rolls. It may have strawberries round the base if he insists.

I used to do a lot of decorated cakes but that was 15-20 years ago so I'm a bit rusty. Keep fingers crossed it works. I'm fairly sure the figures will be fine so fall back is a new cake with strawberries. cream frosting and the figures on top.

New buys

Matalan - home of cheap but vaguely reasonable clothes and scoring surprisingly high on ethical issues.

They also do homeware.

Today we went to find me a new swimming costume and as well as finding one that fits we picked up a pink enamelled colander for a fiver and several Kilner jars, which are hard to get hold of and often expensive, at 2 pounds for a smallish one and 3 pounds for a large one we got several. We also got various other bits and pieces.

The colander doesn't match the units exactly, that would be amazing as they are un-usual colours but it does tone well which i hope you can see in the picture here. It is hard to get both unit colours together as this is the only area of the kitchen where they met. The pinky/purple is a more dusky, purpley colour than the colander but in the same range and the bluer colour has come out quite well in this picture.

Kitchen Cleaning

We spent a good half a day cleaning the kitchen today. One of those top of cupboards to floor type cleaning sessions. Which was very satisfying and also got rid of the bits and pieces that were threatening to stop me having any work surface left.

I even remembered to put the extractor fan filters in the dishwasher though we need to get bulbs for the lights built into that as they both blew recently. I think that is because they are on the same circuit as the socket the kettle was plugged into and that kept tripping the circuit breaker. We now have a new kettle too.

Re-organised a couple of drawers and moved all the biscuit cutters to a tin which now lives on top of a cupboard. We have a LOT of cutters though I seem to have lost most of my normal circular ones. Plenty of letters, numbers, dinosaurs, christmas shapes and ginger bread men though. Can you tell there is a small person in the house?

More worrying we seem to have lost most of our kitchen knives. We are guessing they got taken to a camping event recently and have either gone home with someone else or are packed in a box somewhere.

I think I want to rationalise the baking tins. I have some loose bottom tins which were my gran's and I really think it's time to get replacements however much sentimental attachment I have to them.

Plus a nice stand in the sink type colander. Time to see if Lakelands are still doing enamel ones in colours that will go with the kitchen.

Thai Duck Curry

Long time no posts but I am determined to cook better currently.

I have just joined www.myfooddiary.com to keep an eye on what I eat a bit better. I like it cos I can add the stuff I actually eat rather than having to guess the american and/or gluten filled versions.

Anyway on to the cooking. Made a very nice Thai duck curry from a magazine called Fresh, the September issue and it isn't even August yet!. Used green thai paste and it came out very mild and flavoursome. Did some baby corn, borocalli, and peppers with garlic, chilli, fish sauce and soy as an extra and I did a rice noodle, chicken, cucumber and seasame salad in case the smalllest one didn't like the curry. As it was he was too tired to really want to eat anything especially as he had eaten an apple earlier to keep him going. plus of course rice. Apart from the small one not being interested it went down well and there is plenty left for lunch tomorrow.. such a shame :)

Forgot to take pictures.

Macarons

First attempt at macarons. Used the recipe from Tartelette. Worked quite well. made a filling from creame fresh, sugar, a bit of lemon juice cos I put to much sugar in and some rose oil.. tasted like turkish delight. Think it was a good first attempt, possibly should have whipped the egg a touch more so they were a bit less flat. I want to experiment with other more stable fillings as I would like to make several batchs so we can fill the cake stand in the previous post and serve them at the next maelstrom event.

Yoink

Yoink - to aquire an item of friends or family that they had sitting around which you feel would be better off living with you.

In this case a cake stand which did belong to Tom's sister.

It is actually a lot closer to the colour of the kitchen units than it seems in the picture, possibly one shade different at most but the shiny cupboard compared to the matt finish on the cake stand combined with a flash changed the colour balance quite a lot. The colour of the cake stand is the more accurate one.

It will come on roleplaying events with us to hold biscuits and flapjack and the like and also be used at home i am sure. I think i need to get or make one to go with it which has flat layers too so we can have cupcakes and the like which would do less well in the basket style this one is..

Plum and Walnut bread

Got a couple of punnets of plums from the market at closing time so they were going cheap. I was going to make banana bread but the bananas were to far gone even for that so i decided to use Plums.

Found this recipe so tried it using Dove Farm gluten free flour.

Very nice. the texture was a bit crumbly and it's really a teabread/cake. cake itself is fairly sweet but the plums added a tartness to it and the walnuts added texture.