This sign is available to view on my street. I like it because it makes it quite clear that the footpath is closed. If the sign hadn't been there, I might have tried to slip through the gap to the left of the white board and walk along the footpath. I'm better with unambiguous instructions.
I tried to make cakes yesterday. The recipe wasn't really too ambiguous for a person who is used to following recipes but in the first bit of the recipe you put everything on the list in a bowl and mix it and in the second bit you don't. Well, if you're me, you do, but you aren't meant to. I've made the fudge topping for the chocolate tray bake four times now. The first time my friend watched over me and I did it right. The second time I went upstairs to do something while I waited for things to melt and when I came down they had melted and started to boil. They are allowed to boil but not til after you've added other stuff to what's melted. The third time I pretty much did it right except for trying to sift stuff together straight into a pan rather than sifting it into a bowl before putting it into a pan ready sifted. To be honest, that just made a mess on the cooker and the floor rather than ruining the recipe. This most recent time I forgot the fudge topping had to be made in two separate processes and I put everything in the pan together, melted it then ran out of time for it to boil because I have a Rayburn cooker and I was in a hurry to get to a Governor's meeting before going to serve coffee and cake at a corporate viewing of the England match. The result wasn't wholly successful on either count.
I was on baking duty at our local parent and toddler group this week. I can't bake but I thought a Red Velvet boxed mix should work OK. I have seen my daughter do it successfully and how hard can it be to add 205ml of water, 3 free range eggs, two and a half tablespoonfuls of oil and mix well? Well I don't have a measuring jug with millilitre divisions on so I measured 200ml and a tad more. I don't have half a tablespoon so I used a whole one and tipped about half of it off. I don't think the eggs were free range but they didn't say "from caged hens" on the box so that looked hopeful. I mixed them together.
If you do a whole cake for mother and baby groups it doesn't go far because most mothers with young children like a decent slice of cake, so you only get 10 servings.
I decided to pour the mixture into cake cases and do individual buns which I would ice with a swirl of glorious butter icing and top with some sparkling sugar I found at the back of the baking cupboard. (It was still in date -just.)
I poured the mixture into the first 8 cases, as I filled the ninth, the first case began to sag and the mixture began to sidle out. As I filled the tenth, the second began to sag and the mixture began to sidle out. By the time I had filled 16 cases, nine of them had disgorged themselves over the baking tray and the other seven were about to follow suit. I quickly grabbed 16 muffin cases and picking up the round fluted flat circles which had once been bun cases I squeezed what was left of the mixture into the muffin cases. (This step was not one of the three included on the "Three steps to cake heaven" advertised on the box.) The muffin cases began to sag and the mixture began to sidle out. I put them in the oven as quickly as I could before any more red velvety gunge could escape. After the requisite amount of time, give or take a few minutes, I took the cakes out of the oven. They were interesting shapes, sizes and colours. I made some butter icing, It isn't a great idea to try and whisk the icing sugar into the butter, but we live and learn. There are fifteen possible ways to assemble an icing bag with a three part nozzle. Fourteen of them don't work. (We live and learn) Eventually I put the butter icing in the large icing bag and squeezed, (see my last blog) not a lot of it came out of the nozzle.
I went to Tesco and bought some cakes for our parent and toddler group.
Draw whatever deep spiritual lesson you like from this blog. All I know is, God didn't give me the gift of baking.
