Nancy, let your hair down
So, we had a bank holiday. Yes, I know it's a while back.
I experimented with various things for a colleague's party.
Dan had advertised this party as "Tolkien-themed", with a concession that since it was on Star Wars Day you could do that instead if you wanted. Or not bother with a theme at all, if you prefered. He very much played down the dressing-up idea. And since I had to trundle home afterwards on the train, I thought I'd go for minimalist costuming. I'm not a big Tolkien fan (though if I'd been wanting to make Big Costume, I'd have gone as the Polar Bear from The Father Christmas Letters), and Tolkien isn't brilliant for female characters. Neither, if we're honest, is Lucas. However, I figured I had an easy escape: normal clothes, Princess Leia hair.
Done. So I busied myself in the morning making brownies to take with me. Having retrieved out of my memory at a critical moment that Ruth, Dan's wife, is coeliac I'd bought some coconut flour. And I really, really did mean to make some experimental coconut-flour brownies earlier in the week but life got in the way. So... how hard can it be?
According to the internet, very hard. Coconut flour is notoriously easy to get wrong (apparently) and very unlike regular wheat flour in its behaviour. Once upon a time my brownie recipe was an Antony Worral Thompson recipe. I've modified it quite a bit - my version has crushed ginger nuts instead of pecans, for example, and no white chocolate - and have been happily churning out brownies for years. Except the last time I made it, it went soggy. I know brownies are always a little soggy-looking when they come out of the oven (compared to proper cakes) but... like, really, really soggy. I've no idea why. So... dangerous experimentation with a recipe that failed last time? What could possibly go wrong?
Having skim-read the entire internet, I used half as much coconut flour as I would regular flour, and substituted a third of the sugar for honey. I also only made a half-quantity in case of irretrievable disaster (which required me to make a composite-monster cake tin out of my normal brownie tin, a loaf tin, and some baking beans).
And do you know what? It all came out fine. And the brownies were gooey, but that's hardly a bad thing. Coconut flour for the win.
So, while they cooled, I put my hair up. I'd found a YouTube tutorial on how to do it using socks as hair-rats, and one which didn't need rats and started off.
Forty minutes later, I had conclusively proved something that I knew already: if you want to put my hair up, you must (a) crimp it first, (b) plait it first, or (c) be a professional hair-dresser with a lot of patience. My hair is long (waist-length) but it's very thin. It's also very straight, very soft, and very slithery.
I tried the sock approach... the coils of hair slid gently down to neck level in seconds. I tried the twisty approach. It looked appalling (and - an aspect not covered in any tutorial I found - distressingly asymmetrical). I tried putting my hair in two plaits and coiling them up and I looked like an asymmetrical, deranged Heidi.
Eventually, I rolled my hair up into two sock-buns again, flipped them upside down and pinned them in place. It made a very vaguely plausible Leia from some angles...
... and a very implausible one from others...
Still asymmetrical, but it was the best I could manage. I think I must have bunked off Girl School to play with Matchbox cars the day they taught hair-styling.
There were several other Leias at the party, one of whom had taken the only truly sensible approach and elastic-banded two cinnamon whirls to a tiara :)
I experimented with various things for a colleague's party.
Dan had advertised this party as "Tolkien-themed", with a concession that since it was on Star Wars Day you could do that instead if you wanted. Or not bother with a theme at all, if you prefered. He very much played down the dressing-up idea. And since I had to trundle home afterwards on the train, I thought I'd go for minimalist costuming. I'm not a big Tolkien fan (though if I'd been wanting to make Big Costume, I'd have gone as the Polar Bear from The Father Christmas Letters), and Tolkien isn't brilliant for female characters. Neither, if we're honest, is Lucas. However, I figured I had an easy escape: normal clothes, Princess Leia hair.
Done. So I busied myself in the morning making brownies to take with me. Having retrieved out of my memory at a critical moment that Ruth, Dan's wife, is coeliac I'd bought some coconut flour. And I really, really did mean to make some experimental coconut-flour brownies earlier in the week but life got in the way. So... how hard can it be?
According to the internet, very hard. Coconut flour is notoriously easy to get wrong (apparently) and very unlike regular wheat flour in its behaviour. Once upon a time my brownie recipe was an Antony Worral Thompson recipe. I've modified it quite a bit - my version has crushed ginger nuts instead of pecans, for example, and no white chocolate - and have been happily churning out brownies for years. Except the last time I made it, it went soggy. I know brownies are always a little soggy-looking when they come out of the oven (compared to proper cakes) but... like, really, really soggy. I've no idea why. So... dangerous experimentation with a recipe that failed last time? What could possibly go wrong?
Having skim-read the entire internet, I used half as much coconut flour as I would regular flour, and substituted a third of the sugar for honey. I also only made a half-quantity in case of irretrievable disaster (which required me to make a composite-monster cake tin out of my normal brownie tin, a loaf tin, and some baking beans).
And do you know what? It all came out fine. And the brownies were gooey, but that's hardly a bad thing. Coconut flour for the win.
So, while they cooled, I put my hair up. I'd found a YouTube tutorial on how to do it using socks as hair-rats, and one which didn't need rats and started off.
Forty minutes later, I had conclusively proved something that I knew already: if you want to put my hair up, you must (a) crimp it first, (b) plait it first, or (c) be a professional hair-dresser with a lot of patience. My hair is long (waist-length) but it's very thin. It's also very straight, very soft, and very slithery.
I tried the sock approach... the coils of hair slid gently down to neck level in seconds. I tried the twisty approach. It looked appalling (and - an aspect not covered in any tutorial I found - distressingly asymmetrical). I tried putting my hair in two plaits and coiling them up and I looked like an asymmetrical, deranged Heidi.
Eventually, I rolled my hair up into two sock-buns again, flipped them upside down and pinned them in place. It made a very vaguely plausible Leia from some angles...
... and a very implausible one from others...
Still asymmetrical, but it was the best I could manage. I think I must have bunked off Girl School to play with Matchbox cars the day they taught hair-styling.
There were several other Leias at the party, one of whom had taken the only truly sensible approach and elastic-banded two cinnamon whirls to a tiara :)