Baking fail

With a freezer full of bananas, I made some cakes - yum...ee; they're back in the freezer now, three of them. I also made mince scrolls and mince pies; not so great.

This morning, for the first time in weeks, the sun is shining, the lorikeets are gossiping and the kookaburras are giggling and chuckling. I thought I'd make some banana muffins for breakfast.

Epic... fail. They didn't rise, they stuck to the paper thingies and they turned into nuggety, ah, nuggets. Tasted okay, but not what I expected or had ambitions for. I'll have to hunt around for another recipe. I'm a better cook than baker, but I think the more I practice, the better I'll become - I hope. Pastry is the bane of my existence, so hallelujah for pre-packaged stuff.

I'm wondering what else I can fail at in the kitchen? Time to dip into more cook books. At least, if these less than perfect results happen now, I can be reasonably assured Christmas won't be too much of a disaster...

Spiced wine-ing

Hypocras making day today. The spiced wine needs to mature before Christmas and I'll be busy next month.

I have a nice, mellow Cabernet Merlot, with berry and plum overtones, that I'll heat to steaming and to which I shall add cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, cloves, honey, brown sugar and cardamom pods. Then I let it cool, strain out the debris and bottle.

By Christmas, it will have a full-bodied, syrupy and subtly spiced flavour - just the thing for toasting. And it's good for you: red wine has anti-oxidants to hunt down and absorb free radicals.

Henry VIII had a glass or two to help with his digestion. His breakfast lasted two hours and he tasted every dish laid before him. The 'left overs' were given to the lords and ladies, then any remains went to the staff who prepared his meals. They, at least, preferred to survive on pottage - a dish made of grains soaked in hot water - and had more roughage in it than Henry's meals. The king became obese and suffered for it, probably causing his death, although he also suffered from a continually festering leg wound.

Henry's hypocras contained goldleaf flakes, mine does not. Some recipes also call for ambegris - icky stuff from the intestine of a whale that's been regurgitate. All I can say is: "Oh, the horror!!"

Bubbling away

Beavering away at edits; see? See the counter? I'm getting that sneaky feeling of running out of time - nerves, I think. WorldCon is when it all happens and I must be ready.

There's lots going on in Real Life, too, for the next fortnight. I think the Universe is throwing things at me to test my commitment. I'd like to say failure is not an option, but it's always an option - it's a matter of how we deal with it.

So. Books simmering away nicely, a short story sauteing in the frying pan and a nicely marinated batch of stress roasting in the oven.

Back to work before a meeting I have this morning, then it's cake baking for my M.'s birthday - a nice meringue layer cake with chocolate ganache, Chantilly cream and dark cherries. Mmmm... chocolate....

Big Oops, there

Family is staying the weekend and last night, we sat down to watch Julie & Julia. All I knew about Julia Childs was that she cooked with an awful lot of butter and yet lived into her nineties - not a bad innings.

The movie was great, without Norah Ephron's usual saccharine sweetness. Meryl Streep is a marvel at characterisation and expressed Julia's exuberance for life and French cuisine wonderfully. Amy Adams, too, was excellent as the woman who decides to complete all of the recipes in Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year and blog about her efforts. Not the kind of thing I'd do given the amount of butter used in the recipes.

So it was with interest that I read the headline Cook-book misprint costs Australian publishers dear. Unwilling to take the BBC's word for it (I'm such a charlatan), I headed to the Sydney Morning Herald site where the news item came from. Sure enough, Penguin reprints book, peppered with an error, wants it taken with grain of salt. (Terrible heading I think.)

Head of publishing, Mr Bob Sessions, said: "In one particular recipe [a] misprint occurs which obviously came from a spell checker. When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should have picked it up, but proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable [sic]."

Um... no, not forgiveable. Laughable, absolutely, forgiveable, not on your life. The problem? A line in a tagliatelle recipe that called for salt and freshly ground black people - instead of 'pepper'. I don't know about you, but I think there are two letters wrong here, not something a spellchecker or proofreader would miss unless they were lazy. And the excuse that the correct line is in many recipes and that cook-books are hard to check, is no excuse at all.

I doubt Penguin will be so sanguine in the future, since it cost them $20,000.

The lesson today is to really check your work lest some unfortunate words cause dismay, or finanicial loss.

Oh, and Bon Appetit!

Summer fare

There are certain times of the year when writing or editing are virtually impossible. When visitors come, big birthdays, Easter and... Christmas.

I have decided I cannot catch up on my reading pile, edit, do housework and everything associated with Christmas all at the same time; so I'm not going to try.

The tree is up, the prezzos bought, wrapped and the delivery near completed, hypocras made and distributed. I also whipped up a batch of Chocolate Crackles. For the first time. Like Vegemite, Australians grow up with Chocolate Crackles, they're an icon of home for those living and working overseas.

They're made with Rice Bubbles, cocoa (or melted chocolate), coconut and Copha. Only in Australia can you get Copha - it is made from hydrogenated coconut oil, 100% fat. Not so good.

It's used as the solidifying agent in Chocolate Crackles, but... I didn't have any and couldn't be bothered going up the street to get some. Surfing the 'net provided a solution: melted chocolate with butter with added caster sugar. It all worked so beautifully...

But next time, I think I'll use unsalted butter.

* * *

So Summer here brings out buzzing bush flies, whining mosquitoes, creaking cicadas and oblivious tourists sizzling under the sun. The flies, no problem. The cicadas, not much you can do about their noise. The tourists, well, nothing I can say will deter them from deep frying themselves. But... I've just encountered a near indestructible mosquito.

They make 'em tough these days. Twice I slapped that sucker between my hands and twice it looked at me as if to say, "Is that the best you can do?" And continued to dive bomb. I even smacked it when it landed. It snickered contemptuously and took off. I thought that, if nothing else, the shock wave of slapping a mozzy would kill the bugger. A hard hand and soft target usually does the trick - maybe I had around the other way.

It's dead now. Smeared on a rolled up newspaper. All twisted out of shape.

I expect the Mafia mozzies to call any time now for revenge: Probably Long-Nose Mo and Legs Malone.

Cakes Ahoy!

Gah... I think I'm all caked out. I know, I know. Is there such a thing as having too much cake?

Well, after two days of it - for morning and afternoon tea - yeah, I think so.

The overseas clan returned from Sydney to camp out here until Thursday when they fly back to Denmark. Over the weekend, S. and the boys came down and there was more cake: honey roll, honey-cream-and-custard cake, blueberry, apple and walnut. More sugar and calorie soaked fare than you can shake a whippy stick at.

And I will confess right now, right here, that I loved every sticky, sugar and cream rich piece. As a failure to reign in the rampant polite-company-must-have-snacks-accessible-at-all-times part of my upbringing, I have now made three banana cakes. Fortunately, they can be frozen, but I doubt any will make it into the freezer.

Sigh and not a chocolate confection in sight.

Still, Tuesday is my Godson/nephew's birthday. Does he want a chocolate cake? No. He's gotta have a big, fat-screaming, cholesterol-creamy, hip-wideningly luscious, roll-me-in-the-mud-and-call-me-a-pig, blueberry cheesecake.

Then there's this 'sharing' business. What's up with that?

Ah, well. I guess I'll have to man up and help him out in the eating, be more responsible in my eating habits... next week. I may even get some editing or writing done, but I don't count on it.

Surprise deaths

The last couple of days have been relaxing after the excitement of the weekend. Sigh. I should have paid more attention, not gone the quick and easy route for meals.

Last night, I figured I'd cook something nice and opened one of the cupboards.

DEAR GOD!!!

While away, a mouse had crawled into the cupboard... and died. So I spent some time clearing out the baking dishes and cake tins, the wok and electrical devices searching for the remains. Found 'em. I also spent some significant time washing and scrubbing and rubbing and wondering if I should just chuck the whole lot out.

Now, I have a sparkly clean and disinfected cupboard and stuff.

Once done, I noticed the dog at the back room door. It's been closed since we went away. I do that, you know: close every door, turn off as many appliances and power points as possible, close curtains, the works.

So, yeah, I opened that door, too.

DEAR GOD!!!

I shut the door. I'll look for the remains tomorrow.

My question is why now? Why are we being invaded like this? It's not Summer and it's not Winter. Never have we had so many! They have got to go! I'm thinking one of those electronic devices to shoo them out, otherwise, my Karma is going to take a beating.

Anyway. I've posted another story on The Takeaway. Have at it.

Trial and error

So I'm still trying out desserts for Christmas Day.

Today, I tried a recipe that looked delish from the beginning of construction to the very end: chocolate mousse.

The plan is to keep it in lined ramekins overnight, then pop the mousse out when it's set and place it in pre-baked brandy baskets and top it all with berry fruits and a Cointreau sauce.

Heating the cream went well, as did the blending of dark chocolate, a coupla egg yolks and butter into the slightly cooled cream. Folding in egg whites just made the stuff look ready to eat right out of the bowl.

sigh. The recipe didn't call for sugar; I'm guessing it - usually - doesn't need it. The problem? It said "70% dark chocolate or better." I chose the better... as in 85%. Yes, I see that wince. And you'd be right. A little too bitter.

Ice cream eased it, as did cream mixed with icing sugar and a small splash of vanilla, but nothing would save it for Christmas. Back to the drawing board and this time, I'll be using 50% or even milk chocolate...

Good thing I trialled it now rather than Christmas Day.