Adventures
On the baking front I have discovered
- the oven in my new house runs at least ten if not twenty degrees higher than advertised.
- non-stick cake tins aren't actually non-stick; things will still stick, it just won't be as much of a disaster if you tried cooking without paper in a normal cake tin. You still need paper if you want your cake to come away clean from the bottom.
- hand whisks gathered second-hand from a friend of a friend are liable to break halfway through mixing your sponge batter, leaving you minutes of fun trying to get the sponge of them and trying to make sure that the butter is all unlumped.
All in all, I think this has produced the worst all-in-one Victoria sponges that I have made since I was nine years old. And I'm intending to serve it to
stultiloquentia tomorrow when she visits... :( (To be fair, I think it will taste OK in the middle where it rose properly, but the edges are all flat and crispy. Sigh! I'm meant to be good at sponges. I should have got a new baking tray and made brownies...)
Otherwise, on the ears front, over the last few months I've been finding it more and more difficult to hear people in crowds. And understand French when I can't see lips moving. This possibly requires a slightly larger sigh than the cake!fail, though as a start I apparently need to get them syringed again, so I'm on olive oil until Monday, before I have that done and a proper hearing test on Wednesday. Considering the amount of deafness on my dad's side of the family and the fact that my ears have already proved themselves quite shit, I'm not holding out much hope for an all clear, but we shall see. And, hey, apparently NHS hearing aids come in funky colours these days...
Otherotherwise, in case it got lost, Stulti's coming to visit tomorrow!!! I am excited. If unlikely to impress with my baking skills.
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- the oven in my new house runs at least ten if not twenty degrees higher than advertised.
- non-stick cake tins aren't actually non-stick; things will still stick, it just won't be as much of a disaster if you tried cooking without paper in a normal cake tin. You still need paper if you want your cake to come away clean from the bottom.
- hand whisks gathered second-hand from a friend of a friend are liable to break halfway through mixing your sponge batter, leaving you minutes of fun trying to get the sponge of them and trying to make sure that the butter is all unlumped.
All in all, I think this has produced the worst all-in-one Victoria sponges that I have made since I was nine years old. And I'm intending to serve it to
stultiloquentia tomorrow when she visits... :( (To be fair, I think it will taste OK in the middle where it rose properly, but the edges are all flat and crispy. Sigh! I'm meant to be good at sponges. I should have got a new baking tray and made brownies...)
Otherwise, on the ears front, over the last few months I've been finding it more and more difficult to hear people in crowds. And understand French when I can't see lips moving. This possibly requires a slightly larger sigh than the cake!fail, though as a start I apparently need to get them syringed again, so I'm on olive oil until Monday, before I have that done and a proper hearing test on Wednesday. Considering the amount of deafness on my dad's side of the family and the fact that my ears have already proved themselves quite shit, I'm not holding out much hope for an all clear, but we shall see. And, hey, apparently NHS hearing aids come in funky colours these days...
Otherotherwise, in case it got lost, Stulti's coming to visit tomorrow!!! I am excited. If unlikely to impress with my baking skills.
[There are
comments on Dreamwidth!]