Nougat Nightmare

There are some things that can't or shouldn't be made at home, some things where "homemade" isn't a selling point. And I found one of these last Sunday. As you know I had success with my marshmallows and was really looking forward to my next sweet-making treat, Nougat was the next project. The picture in the book looks yum and who doesn't love Nougat? Right? Well, after a half an hour hacking away at a slab of white nutty stickiness I was changing my mind. To begin at the beginning, I started making it on Saturday. You make a sugar syrup (with a lot of sugar, really a lot of sugar) once it's up to a certain temperature add half of it into egg whites (already stiffened in my lovely stand mixer) the other half goes back on the heat and is brought up to an even higher temperature. All the time the mixer is going mixing the sugar syrup and the egg whites, then add the rest of the syrup and keep mixing. Then the first problem occurred, the mixture was SO sticky the mixer stopped after five minutes (it needed to mix for ten minutes) but I wasn't going to give up so I folded in the nuts and cherries, although fold in doesn't really cover it,think stirring cement and you are about there. Then I transferred it to the waiting tin (lined with rice paper, well potato paper but that's another story!). I left it for the requisite overnight period and Sunday morning, in preparation for lunch with friends for which the Nougat was to be a present, I started the hacking. A half an hour and a bruised hand later I had enough Nougat to bring along to lunch but the prospect of cutting up the rest made me blanch. As my mother would say, it was as hard as the hob of hell (don't ask, one of Maud's many words of "wisdom", but in this case it fits perfectly). I have to say I gave up, maybe that was defeatist of me but I want to keep the use of my hands, they do come in useful! I think from now on Nougat will be bought from the lovely Hope and Greenwood shop and I will leave them to the hacking. The picture above shows my Nougat compared to the picture of what it should look like, slight difference. I have to say, though, it tasted really good and there was no major dental damage.

Valentine Schmalentine (or not)

I am divided about Valentine's Day. On the one hand I know this is a hallmark holiday and commercialism gone mad. Just walking around London in the lead up to the day there were all sorts of shops with Valentine windows (pen shops, Alessi, shoe shops etc) and, as far as I'm concerned, only flower and chocolate emporia have the the right to these windows (under Valentine's Day Law). Who wants to get a pen for Valentine's Day? Really? I guess they are practical.... anyway I digress. The other half of me, the "I was single for the majority of my life" half can't help wanting to celebrate it now that I have a boyfriend (I know, an old fashioned term, but I'm an old fashioned gal at heart). You can see my dilemma. All those years when I was single I had to ignore it, dismiss it, rail against it but secretly wishing I was the one in the restaurant eating the Valentine's Day special menu (£30 for 4 courses plus fizz, or some such). So having said all that I organised a weekend away in Camber at The Place at the Beach (really great hotel, lovely people and food) and went for the Valentine package (two nights, 4 course dinner on one of the nights with fizz and cocktails and, my favourite bit, tea lights and rose petals in the room, see picture above!!). And you know it was great. We got there Friday afternoon and went for a walk along the beach (covered in snow), Camber beach is beautiful, then dinner. Saturday was a bracing two hour walk around Rye followed by knick-knackery shopping and the above mentioned rosemantic dinner in the evening. I'm not saying that we were all rosemantic all the time (that would be silly, frankly) but it was just a really lovely way to spend a weekend and the chocolate soup wasn't half bad either. So I guess I'm saying that it's alright to use the day as a way of "spending time" but that shouldn't stop us from doing it any other day of the year. Here endeth my Valentine thoughts, next time we will be back to cakes and cardies, but thanks for indulging my digression.

Knitting Club Mark Two

Earlier in the year I was talking to friends about this blog and my plans to knit more etc. and two of the founder members said we should restart Knitting Club. One friend has been knitting and wanted to have our meetings again as a way of keeping it up and keeping projects on track. The other friend hasn't knitted for a while but wanted to get back into it (and she is surrounded by friends who are pregnant and what goes better with babies than knitted pressies?) So we made a plan, meet every second Wednesday at a venue yet to be decided. Now, venues for a knitting group are difficult to find. You need a place where there is good lighting, they serve both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks (food optional) and management that doesn't mind us taking up a table for a few hours knitting. We chose a great pub in Marylebone, Swan and Edgar. It has a bar made of books, the upstairs room is lined with books and the toilet floor is made up of scrabble tiles, a great pub. But not great for knitting club, mainly because the lighting was bad and one of our members was working with fine wool on small needles, a bad combination when starting a gift bootie. But we had weathered a snow storm to get there so we made the best of it and had fun. The bootie project was started, a baby blanket almost finished and my stripey jumper got a kickstart. I think the combination of bad light and a bottle of wine meant that mistakes were made and some ripping back had to be done but it didn't seem so bad when surrounded by likeminded knitters. So now the hunt is on for a new venue (any suggestions?) and we may also have some new members (all are welcome). All in all a good re-start to knitting club and I'm looking forward to our future meetings, adding to our number and getting some great projects started and (hopefully) finished.

Marshmallow Delights

I have been eyeing up the marshmallow recipe in my Hope and Greenwood book for a while and marvelling that you can make marshmallow. I mean everyone knows that you buy them in the local shop, they are pink and white and you you put them in hot chocolate or rocky road. You don't actually make them! But apparently you can and so having bought myself a new toy, a Breville Stand Mixer (it's no Kitchenaid but it does the trick and is a actually affordable), I set about the making of the marshmallow. It is fairly easy, you make a sugar syrup and add that to egg whites stiffened in the above mentioned mixer. Then you just turn the mixer to high and let it do it's stuff for about 15 minutes (I am loving the mixer, can you tell?), pour it into a prepared tin and wait..... two hours. That two hours was a bit difficult, I'm a bit impatient and want to have it now, but I managed it and then low and behold I had marshmallows. These were not anything like the ones you buy, these were soft pillows of vanilla loveliness. And the taste, well all I can say is, dreamy. Am I blowing my own trumpet? No I am blowing the trumpet of Ms Hope and Mr Greenwood, I just did what I was told. My friend was visiting me for lunch that day and took some pictures, one shows me sieving some icing sugar/cornflour over the lovely logs of mallow, mmmm. I need never buy marshmallows again. My friend was sent home with a bag and I'm rationing the rest. I'm already planning my next sweetmeat, roll on Easter!

Transmission Resumed

Sorry about the week of silence, I have had a very busy week at work (and it has to said, socially, out every night!) so no time to update you on my cakeyknitty activity. I'm sure you have all been checking daily! I know one friend who's cheese sandwich hasn't been the same all week.
Some of you, who have been with me from the start, will remember in my first post that I mentioned "dances danced" and promised more later. No? No memory of that? Well off you go and have a read and join me when you are ready....
A couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to learn Lindy Hop (stay with me, I will get to the present day, well, presently) and went to a class at the London Swing Society. I really enjoyed it and wanted to continue but circumstances prevented it. Jump forward two years and as part of my new year resolves to do more stuff I decided to go back. I managed to persuade a friend to come with me (he didn't need much persuasion really, he likes a bit of a boogie like me) and we went three weeks ago. Now, the nature of going to dance classes is that there will always (always) be more women than men. This class was no exception, however there were a lot more men than I expected. To get around this they organise it so that the men stay where they are and the women rotate and because of this I only got to dance about four times and with men of varying, shall we say, abilities. Despite that, we enjoyed it and resolved to continue. Due to injury (my partner) we couldn't go the next week but come this Tuesday there we were all hopped up to Lindy. This time, however, we made sure we were in the row that didn't rotate partners so got to dance together for the hour and it made such a difference. At the end, and I think I can speak for both of us here, we had really nailed the routine. I'm not saying we were perfect and that we haven't forgotten it all now but, you know, we felt like we had achieved something. And the other thing that was great about it was that I forgot all about the madness that is work at the moment, for that hour all I had to think about was where were my feet going, which way was I spinning and avoid stepping on my partners toes (ouch, sorry). In other words, a great way to relax, I would recommend it highly. I am looking forward to next week and will keep you up to date with our progress but if you want to see us practice you may just glimpse us on a Saturday night on the Southbank! And if you want to see what we will be like in a few weeks check out this video on youtube Hellzapoppin