In a rare bout of ‘homeliness’ I have been baking today.
A couple of weeks ago, we were invited to some friends’ house unexpectedly and I wanted to show how thrilled we were to be asked so I baked a cake to take with me and we turned up on the doorstep with a warm home-made cake and a box of eggs for our friends.
As you know, I don’t eat sweet food myself so I watched as other people ate the cake and as I did so, I noticed that it was obviously very dry because it was crumbling badly. I checked with DM on the way home and sure enough, it was dry! Then I had last weekend’s biscuit disaster so I needed to give myself some confidence that I could actually bake!
It’s been years since I had a baking day but that’s what I’ve just done. I baked a batch of orange and almond biscuits – see above and a bran loaf. The bran loaf is from a recipe off the side of a pack of all-bran from about 1970 I reckon. My Mum used to make it and it was so delicious that I asked for the recipe many years ago and used to make it quite often once-upon-a-time.
These days, I hardly ever bake anything sweet so today’s foray into such was quite a thrill for me (see how easily pleased I am). The orange and almond biscuits were an invention, off the cuff today, based on a plain shortcake recipe and bastardised as I am fond of doing.
While cooking, I’ve had my kitchen-fi on very loud and have been getting a great work-out dancing up and down the kitchen bellowing out songs accompanying the CDs I’ve been playing. Nicely aerobic I reckon! Despite singing in a voice that could curdle eggs, all of my efforts turned out exactly as they were supposed to - phew - I've not totally lost my touch then!
DM came into the kitchen grumbling at having been woken up by Take That. He was very affronted. Now here is where our views are diametrically opposed. You see, I can think of very few better ways to be woken up than by Take That – and you can take that in any connotation you like and it’d still be true……now is that taking the biscuit or what?
Last year I was saying goodbye to Jean - a lovely lady if ever I met one.
