It’s been a grumbly sort of week.
A week of coughs and sore teeth, thrashing children in my bed, of forgotten phones, cheesecakes oozing out of their tins in the oven, sore shoulders, last kid collecteds, I’m hungry but not for thats and I’m sorry for shoutings.
I think I’ll just creep quietly into this corner and hope that the universe doesn’t notice me until things are looking a little more cheerful.
March has come in with Little Lion’s first Nursery Plague which rapidly swept through the family.
There is nothing like the zombie-film aura which surrounds you as poorly parents of poorly children. Even the cat joined in after indulging in a sumptuous floor-feast because we couldn’t face tidying up around the high chair.
When we emerged, I discovered that I had 10 days to make Little Lion’s birthday bunting, a jumper which has been haunting me for two years was complete and I’d read War and Peace.
Readjusting to life on land has been unexpectedly tricky. I’m still looking for my concentration, I’ve lost the ability to tell time and if anyone wants to do my invoices for February, I’d pay you in plum tart!
(Not shown – Welsh cakes and brownies.)
I was sitting on the (very crumb-covered) kitchen floor (because it’s better than sitting in a chair), trying to document the 25 minutes (using my new productivity app*) I’ve spent this week on the Ark Project, when the radio intruded on my internal monologue and presented me with the title of the post.
I have a few sketchbook pages of notes and a little swatch of stiffened silk which really represents me coming to realise that I’m going to be cutting hundreds of leaves out of silk very shortly, and I don’t really want to hem them. I also have to get a handle on properly 3D rouleaux which use the minimum of silk, more on that when I get it to work.
*I’m using the Pomodoro Technique which times you working for 25 minute blocks. It’s been quite helpful for taming my distractible nature, even though the free app I have keeps demoting me to Unrepentant Slacker!
And now it’s time for …Cake of the Week, iced buns!
I’m very pleased with these, they’re hitting the not-too-sweet spot nicely. (I didn’t fill them because the first iced bun I ever ate didn’t have filling so I have grown to love them as oddly sweet bread rolls.) I can only show you the elegant pale yellow icing. After the first four were iced the colour scheme descended rapidly into the lurid and sludgy spectrum. I’m thinking about making half-sized ones for Little Lion’s upcoming first birthday celebrations (which is a bewildered post for another day).
It’s half term, and we’ve reached maximum entropy.
I have very little to show for myself since last week apart from a small but significant gusset for LYM’s jumper, some rather decadent cake and a half-written blog post about flapjacks.
We are a broad-shouldered family, so I suspect that the adding of gussets will become a useful skill for me. I have a small pile of bought clothes which could do with the addition of a little more room in the oxter department, so this will be the first of many. I used this TECHknitting tutorial, which was quite helpful and also provided a chance to learn a few more decreasing and i cord-making skills.
Have you noticed that all of my cake photography is half-eaten?
This was one of those dinner party desserts that look desperately complicated but really aren’t. Blind bake a shortcrust case (I added a little sugar to Delia’s recipe), when cool pour over some salted caramel sauce. (I had a jar of caramel sauce left over from Shrove Tuesday, but it had the same ingredients as most of the recipes I’ve seen online). Allow to cool and make ganache. Allow to cool and pour over while still just runny. I had some leakage where my pastry case wasn’t quite chocolate-tight, but no one seemed to mind!
Sprinkle with a little more sea salt if desired and serve in very small slivers with blood oranges.
If you’re crawling to the end of half-term, I wish you the best of luck.
If anyone out there is undecided about having children, allow me to recommend it wholeheartedly (but not necessarily for the reasons you might expect).
Children are absolutely the quickest path to self-knowledge. Why waste time on introspection and self-help books when you could learn just as much by watching the flesh of your flesh stand for 10 minutes naked and wailing about how cold he is rather than getting some sodding clothes on? The latter will neatly demonstrate to you your own proclivity towards speaking about, rather than doing, the things that trouble you.
As a result of my newly-found understanding of my faults, here’s the start of the Ark Project’s bimah cover. I’ve been pondering various methods of edge finishing for far too long, but I’ve decided to bag line it (with large gaps at both sides so I can applique and embroider on the wrong side of the top only) and move on with my life.
In cake news, it’s chocolate chip muffins this week. The funny thing is that with all of this cake about, I’m finding a lot of recipes too sweet. Any favourite not-too-sweet cake recipes (maybe vintage recipes aren’t as sweet?) would be much appreciated!
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