A couple of my favourite baking recipes

 After an early start to my Saturday morning I arrived home ready to do some baking... Not that this doesn't happen often, I just thought I'd share two of my (from two great books!) most trusted recipes. I did the quick item first: Nigella Lawson's fairy cakes. I bought How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking with a voucher someone gave me for my 21st birthday and it's one of my most prized kitchen posessions. With recipes like this one you can understand why it's got pride of place in my kitchen :-)

Fairy cakes:

125g butter

125g castor sugar

2 large eggs

125g self-raising flour

1/2 tsp vanilla extract (much, much better than vanilla essence - I've tried both)

2-3 Tbsp milk

2-bun muffin tin lined with muffin papers. Preheat oven to 180 deg C

Put all the ingredients except the milk in a food processor and blend until smooth. Add the milk through the funnel, makind a soft dropping consistency - I never measure this I just add it bit by bit until I'm happy with the consistency.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases (one heaped tablespoon is all that goes into each case - yes, it looks tiny but works out perfect). Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cakes are golden. Cool on a wire rack.

I never bother to cut the tops flat to decorate them properly, I merely make a very basic icing of icing sugar and water and a little lemon juice, coloured according to the occasion. They are so popular in our house that I make a double batch and unless they're hidden away, they're all gone within hours :-)

There's another book I probably couldn't live without: Biscuits and Breads by Lynn Bedford Hall. I make the banana loaf, muffins, breads, scones, etc and they're all wondeful. Today's choice was the buttermilk rusks with are also a real hit. Rusks get dunked in coffee, tea and hot chocolate depending on the season and there are absolutely always rusks of some description in the kitchen :-)

Buttermilk Rusks 

1.5kg self raising flour

10ml salt

250ml sugar

375g butter

500ml buttermilk

3 eggs

The original recipe says combine the dry ingredients and rub in the butter. I cheat a little bit and melt the butter and then use an electric beater to turn the mixture into bread crumb consistency which you would have achieved through the rubbing. This is because the recipe takes long enough as it is and I prefer to enjoy my baking experience, not loath it because of unnecessary work!

Next, beat the eggs into the buttermilk and in turn knead this into the flour mixture. This requires a very large bowl and some proper elbow grease! The more you knead, the higher the rusks will rise. If the mixture seems too dry put a little water into the buttermilk carton and add to the dough (I have never had to do this but in the beginning it looks like you'll nneed to for sure - be patient!) Knead until the dough forms a ball and comes away from the sides of the bowl. Roll it into managable sized sausages and cut into golf-ball sized chunks. Roll into balls and pack into an oiled baking tin (I use one big one but two bread tins will work perfectly too).

Bake at 200 deg C for 30 minutes, reduce the heat to 180 deg C and bake for a further 30min. Turn out, break apart the balls and return them to the oven at 120 deg C. remove them once they're completely dried out. If your balls turned out a little big, cut them in half lenthways before drying.

Fun at School

Mom and little boet volunteer at a little school on a Friday (which means I get roped in to do cutting, designing, shopping, etc on a Thursday afternoon! and taken along whenever I'm free). It has been great fun coming up with educational art or craft projects for the kids. We're dealing with kids who come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds most of whom have alcohol foetal syndrome to contend with which makes most of the crafty stuff we've done at home way too difficult.

We've made pompoms which they loved but unfortunately there is no real use for a pompom other than the skills learned making it... The kids also get distracted really quickly which means getting them to finish anything is a real challenge!

We wracked our brains for days wondering what we could make with these precious little people that would be both beautiful and functional this is the project we came up with:

Mosaic Mirrors:


We had a piece of supawood cut into pieces 30cm X 20cm and bought ready cut mirror tiles which we stuck onto the boards using double sided tape. Next we went to Pudlo Tiles in Salt River and dug around in the scratch patch (which we've decided we'll take the kids along to do themselves as an outing). The kids were given carte blanche to choose their colours, designs and tile sizes - some of them were very systematic and others were just interested in filling the available space with little tiles :-)

We helped them stick the tiles down using a quick set tile adhesive (we finished the ones that they struggled with at home so everyone was on the same page by the next lesson...). The final touch was by far the most messy and the most fun: grouting! The pictures below are of the children's faces in their completed mirrors... Some of them have never seen themselves in a mirror before which was heart breaking. Some reacted with joy and smiles whilst others were absolutely terrified... it took much coaxing to get them to look at themselves. Some of them were brave enough to pull faces and identify their noses, teeth, etc... I think the mirrors are quite stunning! We're adding hanging paraphernalia and sending them home next week :-) We've cleaned off the excess grout so they can see their faces clearly in their pretty mirrors...

 

What happens when you leave a 25 year old unattended?

Most parents worry about leaving their kids unattended but you'd think that the house would be safe when you're leaving your 25 year old at home alone for the afternoon! I'll put money on the fact that my dad wasn't expecting me to tackle this one without him :-)

I needed to put up some hanging baskets that had already been planted with strawberries and since dad's been a little busy I tackled the project the moment he went out for lunch! He has the world's coolest garage filled with all sorts of amazing tools... Makes life much easier, especially when putting up the baskets in a hurry in the exact spot mom said not to! Lets hope they make some strawberries soon enough to make her forgive me :-)

Reducing the chicken numbers

So there's a post I've been delaying for weeks now... As you know I've got all the chickens - I ordered 20 little Rhode Island chicks, I ended up with some Rhode Island, Plymouth Rock and Australorps. Of the 20 chicks, 10 turned out to be hens (who are laying like champions I might add - please let me know if you'd like some fresh eggs, they're really yummy and with 8-10 new ones each morning I am totally unable to keep up with the consuming part!) and 10 cocks. I'm sure I have alluded to the terrible behaviour of cocks already but once they're mature it becomes impossible to keep too many together... The noise is a problem (I love hearing them but the neighbors aren't as keen on my organic journey!) but worse is the fighting. After a particularly violent day I realise that the time had come to reduce numbers...

I selected the three cocks we were to keep and separated the others out. The intention was always to slaughter some of the chickens (which is why I got 20 to start with rather than just getting 4-6 hens for laying). I researched the best way to do this and I will certainly not go into the details as I still feel completely traumatised. We set a day and fortunately I managed to arrange for someone to come and help (read: paid someone to do it for me...) as I could not manage to have anything to do with the process. My mom deserves all the credit as she was a real trooper. All in all we slaughtered and cleaned 7 rather large chickens and a few weeks down the line they're still in the freezer and we haven't had chicken in a meal since!

As for my part in the day? I cleaned and organised the kitchen, cooked dinner for the family, cleaned the kitchen again, set the table (who does that on a weekend night when it's just our family?!), sorted some old clothes out of my cupboard and felt generally miserable! I can admit that I watched the process (I felt I had to watch at least one) and the slaughtering process is quick and the chickens didn't suffer or get traumatised. 

Life in the chicken run has returned to complete normality although the 3 cocks are still making a little too much noise :-( Our vet has put me in touch with a bird specialist who is able to stop the roosters from crowing (without going to the extreme I had to with the other 7) and I will be taking them through to him next monday. This process doesn't solve the fighting problem so it doesn't mean I can keep more roosters but it'll placate the neighbour who has insomnia at night and only manages to sleep during the day...


I am glad the process  is over and hopefully some day I will manage to eat chicken again.


PS: I am sorry if this post has offended you. That was definitely not my intention and I have been struggling with writing it for a month already...

When I get really upset I................

So, at the end of a particularly challenging day, I slowed down to reflect on just how I'd dealt with the stress... I will not bore you with the details of my day as they're over dramatic and I have had enough drama for a lifetime already!

I started a little knitting project about a week ago and it's gone surprisingly fast (That's when the stress really started, you see...) I used google to find a pattern and just dived straight in. I don't have anyone in mind for my little baby blanket and it looks like I certainly won't be producing any offspring for quite a while but this seemed manageable and I didn't have to run out and buy extra yarn as I had enough at home :-) I didn't put two and two together and realise why I'd started the knitting until this afternoon when I realised that my blood pressure had returned to normal and I wasn't even thinking about the drama anymore after just 5 minutes of the needles clicking! 

 The second thing I do is to organise and clean... Again, this is not something that happens consciously, I only realise afterwards what's just happened. I guess it's some sort of spring cleaning of my life thing. Historically, these major clean-ups coincide with big changes of direction in general... I found this amazing storage/organisation system in the plastics shop today

 it came in a surprisingly small box as all the pieces  pack together flat. You click them together and the instructions say you can cut them down to the size you want with a pair of scissors. They're designed to go inside drawers but since I don't have any drawers they're going onto one of the shelves in my cupboard :-)


Another thing I am known to do is cook, clean the kitchen and bake...  So far the self-prescribed therapy has worked and I'm ready to go searching for the perfect pair of shoes now!

Chickens again

So the chickens have decided to start laying eggs. At pace! We're getting 5 eggs a day from the ten hens and I've been monitoring the sizes. We started out with pullet or peewee eggs at just 30-something grams... I had a full-on panic! We've had bantams before and their eggs are about this size and pretty useless in my baking endeavours... getting the point? We're up to 58g as the record (which is classified as 'large' at Woolies and perfect for baking cakes!) and no more under 48g...

So, with so many eggs this weekend, I made some meringues:

In short you beat egg whites until white and stiff. Then add 1/4cup of fine Castor sugar per egg white used. Beat until shiny and keeping it's shape. Spoon this super-sticky mixture either into a piping bag (I just use a freezer bag and cut a small corner off when I'm ready to go) or directly onto grease proof baking paper into the sizes you want. Bake at 120 degrees C for about an hour. Watch to see that it's not too hot (they'll go brown). After the hour, turn off the oven and allow them to cool slowly (it makes them crispy)

Next was to use up the yolks:

As I told someone yesterday, if you have not yet eaten fresh, made from scratch, egg custard, you have not lived... it's a bit fiddly but oh so wonderful when you get it right! I've simplified the recipe (for myself as I adapt it to use the available eggs anyway). Here's the ratio I tested out this weekend:

1 egg yolk
15g Castor sugar
100ml milk
1ml vanilla essence or vanilla pod

Put the egg yolks into a double boiler over heat and beat in the castor sugar. It'll go lighter in color and texture. Whilst beating warm the milk in the microwave (adding warm milk is not essential but does prevent the custard from curdling). Add warm milk and vanilla whilst stirring continuously. It takes a while to thicken and if you take a break for too long lumps form on the sides. Should your custard curdle (you'll know if it does!) mix a little corn flour (maizena) and warm milk and whisk into the custard while you're still cooking it.

It'll keep in a sealed jar in the fridge for up to 2 weeks but in my house it lasts only a few hours before the male species find it and then it's gone! Serve hot over stewed fruit, malva pudding, with jelly, etc. You'll be impressed, every time :-)

Something Pretty

 

Even though the weather was summery and warm, I felt the need to make something beautiful inside today... I collected a bunch of tins, found some remnants of gorgeous fabric and set about making pencil holders / desk organisers.

Simple enough - I tried double sided tape and contact adhesive to stick the fabric strips onto the tins but neither worked all that well: the double sided tape came undone within a couple of hours whilst the contact adhesive went straight through the fabric and didn't look all that great. Time to take out the big guns! Enter the amazing glue gun... I'm sure it's already saved lives! Word of caution though is that the glue is HOT, very hot and if you get it on your fingers it sticks and continues to burn... but once I got that out of the way it was great fun!

Here are the results:

The makings of a fun afternoon

I covered all of the tins in fabric first

Then added embellishments and ribbons for a little sparkle!

So chuffed with the lovely results :-)