Or, Choux Part Two. See, I tried to make choux pastry back in 2010 and failed. But some clever spark at Playcentre inspired me to try again, by naming my future cooking show ‘Shoes and Choux’, so another attempt was long overdue. And it kinda worked, because when it came down to it I knew more or less what I had done wrong first time.

First, I let the flour get properly hot once I’d put it in the hot butter mix. Last time I had followed the instructions to the letter and found that this business of ‘forming a ball and coming away from the sides of the pot’ thing happened as soon as you stirred the flour in. Perhaps it is that I am using the Pams flour instead of a higher quality one, but regardless I kept the pot on the stove for a few minutes and let the mixture get hot before I beat in the eggs with my New. Red. Hand. Mixer. Oh my.

I don’t know if that is what is actually meant to happen with the recipe but it was a moderately educated guess. Things worked better this time, but as there is still room for improvement I may choose a different brand next time.

But then there is the matter of cooking the cream puffs and I think that’s really where my problem lies. I have a roasting dish and I have a baking tray but the two do not fit together seamlessly and thus the business of steaming the puffs to towering puffiness does not happen. These ones did rise nicely but not nearly enough. I do seem to remember some kind of roasting dish that can be purchased with a lid that fits nicely on top and is easily removed. Ta da!

Anyway, these were edible. I took them to a party with the brownies I made also, and nobody was complaining… though the brownies were, if I am allowed to say so, much nicer. And there were more of them! And I think I have worked out how to cook with this new oven so there is hope for us all! Hurrah!

Rata is pretty great at helping now. Sometimes she can be a bit bossy though – see the wooden spoon on the table? It was quickly demoted. It turned out we didn’t have enough oats for Anzac Biscuits but topped up the measurement with rice flakes (in a little green bag from Healtheries – like cornflakes really) and they were fine. Our new oven, which fails so miserably with cake (raw in the middle, burned on top) coped alright with trays of biscuits. It definitely runs too hot though. A thermometer may sort it out, but then I suspect it is a little wonkier than that. While cooking dinner I noticed it wasn’t as hot as I had expected it to be. I don’t think this is the oven for dizzying achievements.

We also made Date and Ginger Slice from Ladies, A Plate (the Anzac recipe came from there too) and it is really rather good. Frightening amounts of butter in it though. It’s a funny old-school kind of recipe with dates cooked in butter, sugar and ginger, cornflakes mixed through and chilled and topped with chocolate. Nanaimo Bars are still my favourite uncooked slice, but this slice has something about it. It’s fruity and spicy but not in a Christmas cake kind of way.

p.s. I have finished my dress! I will have to take some pictures! Good thing I have had my hair did!

Like, pulling up all my garlic in the rain. When I got home from doing this I read that you should pull your garlic up on a dry day after a dry week… we had that dry week (a glorious, glorious week) but I managed to do this on Friday after a night of rain. So then my garlic (all forty decent-sized bulbs!) was subjected to a complicated, made up as I went along process of drying out. First I laid out a lot of newspaper on the garage floor and arranged the garlics so they didn’t touch each other. Then I pulled out a clotheshorse the next day and laid them over the top of that (the leaves were allowed to overlap).

Then when the sun came out today I got Rata to help me cut the roots off each bulb (she turned out to be VERY good at giving the garlic a haircut) and we pulled the clotheshorse out into the sunshine. At about 5pm I started to braid the garlic. It turns out I am not very good at this.

That is not the kind of garlic braid I remember from my childhood.

Then I made an effort to rescue the tomato plants in my new garden from their wild neighbours – this involved pulling out a lot of coriander and wild rocket I would have liked to let set seeds and digging up a few potatoes I am very much looking forward to eating.

There are some red skinned potato ‘volunteers’ as my landlord calls them (self-seeded, and in the ground for goodness knows how long) and two other varieties, one of which is probably Agria. I’m trying to sprout seven of the smaller of my ‘Tutae Kuri” purple potatoes on the windowsill in the hope that I can squeeze out another crop of them before winter. I am finding this potato growing business really quite exciting.

This is what Tutae Kuri potatoes look like as a Christmas potato salad. I had left staking my tomatoes so late that each plant had four or so stems in need of a prop – so things look very interesting with so many stakes and comparatively few plants. Oh well.

I planted a row of crinkly kale seedlings today, sowed some Mexican coriander and land cress, eyed up a courgette on the plant and watched the blackbirds dive bomb the cat like they thought they were magpies. Quite an exciting day, I must say.

You can make your own sponge cake and lemon curd: I made the lemon curd a while back, but purchased some sponge from the supermarket in a moment of practicality because there really was no time to bake a sponge for the party and I knew that I would go crazy if I tried to fit it in. Also my kitchen whizzy-wotsit doesn’t like being continuously on for 10 minutes at a stretch (nor does my thumb pressing the on switch for that long). Things may change because… tada!… I was given a flash new hand mixer for Christmas. All those hints I dropped about why I didn’t make the sponge landed on the right ears (my dad’s). Might I just add that I love my dad’s new hearing aids.

Nigel Slater’s Lemon Curd, with omissions and additions

100g sponge cake

100g lemon curd

3 Tbsp Limoncello

500ml cream

120g caster sugar

100ml lemon juice

To finish:

250ml cream

zest of one orange (or lemon)

and as Nigel says, ‘I regard the sugary crunch of chrystalised violets on top as essential’ – we did not have any and we lived to tell the tale.

Slice the sponge cake into 1cm thick slices and spread thickly with lemon curd. Arrange in the bottom of a large glass bowl and sprinkle the Limoncello over the sponge.

In a heavy bottomed pot, bring the 500ml cream and sugar to the boil over a moderate heat, then turn it down and allow to simmer for 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat, stir in the lemon juice and then pour over the sponge. The sponge will probably start to float, but it doesn’t matter. When the mixture has cooled, refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight.

When the custard had set I spread some lemon curd over the top of it (Nigel didn’t say anything about doing that, but he also didn’t tell me not to). Whip the 250ml of cream and spread it loosely over the trifle. Sprinkle the zest (and chrystalised violets) over the cream, and return to the fridge until you are ready to serve it.

Hmmm… it’s so zingy and creamy and lemony and dreamy.

Ryan and Ying designed the invitation. (That’s not my address anymore, don’t worry). The invitation includes, among other grotesques, Ryan’s very own invention: baked beans with sausages and ice cream.

The party food was very tame by comparison (though if anyone arrived disappointed they could have eaten the table decoration).

We had three kinds of pudding: this chocolate cake filled with cream and strawberries (baked in two sponge tins)…

(it disappeared very quickly)

… this semolina and almond orange syrup cake (not very good)…

… and a lemon trifle, which launched a thousand Christmas lemon trifles (okay, three) and wasn’t much to photograph… you can sort of see the lemon curd in there, and that it also disappeared very quickly. It was so good it deserves its own post.

Louis made pizza. So much pizza.

And our guests made short work of the damsons from the damson gin (I did not like the damsons but I DO like the gin.) We also got through all my jars of “Moominpappa’s Summer Mead” aka Rhubarb Fizz. You can see it top right of this photo.

And then we packed everything we’d partied with into boxes and moved house three days later. You could say I am still recovering. Happy new!

Then I spent a lot of time turning the ‘laundry’ into the ‘pantry’. The washing machine is the only indicator that this room, viewed from the kitchen, might be a laundry. So a whole lot of preserves, appliances and cake tins suggest otherwise. In your face, whiteware.

The only thing about my new kitchen is its definite lack of bench space. Fortunately this little table fits neatly in front of the old hot water cupboard, next to the stove. Perfect for wooden spoons and teapots.
Then it was time to pick strawberries and my first courgette. Also this week I have dug up my first crop of Maori potatoes! When I find camera cord I can  demonstrate the power of the purple potato salad.

So I turned instead to the recipe for Belgium biscuits in Ladies, A Plate. I put in the speculaas spice mix from the speculaas recipe and reduced the butter and sugar to the levels allowed in the notes (it gets too greasy on a hot summer’s day). Then I made the almond paste from the speculaas and added a dash of rosewater instead of almond essence because that stuff is highly offensive to my nose and palate. And then I left both dough and paste in the fridge for two days for alas! out of time once again.

On Sunday night, I did this little thing called rolling out the dough, rolling out the almond paste over half of it, folding the dough in half and continuing to roll it until it was roughly what I considered to be ‘biscuit thickness’. With me this is always rather uneven as I am not terribly good at rolling out dough, even after all these years. Then I just whipped my pastry cutter along lines to make diamond shapes, baked them for about 15 minutes and presto!

They are wonderful – for starters I was impressed by how even that strip of paste is in the middle of (most of) them. The Belgium biscuit layer is crisp, while the almond is chewy, so it seems to me a winning combination.

Now I just need to keep them safe in the tin until Saturday… I should have kept to my word about staying off the sugar. Still, nine weeks sugar-free is nothing to sniff at.

*** P.S. I did play around a bit with the making of it and did a little experiment to see what this combination of dough was like layered as it is in the speculaas recipe, with the thicker layers. It was crap. Don’t do it.

Well, I said ‘what I coinky-dink!’

But then later, Charlotte (who reads my blog and knows the ins and outs of the haunted button jar) wrote me this lovely email:

I really think the brooch and the coaster are not just a weird coincidence or even just ‘Jesus loves you’ (although that is very true), but I really think that is something specific from God – he tells you that he hears your heart, that he hears not just the prayers you pray or the words you speak or the thoughts you think, but that he hears the heart from where it comes, he hears your real voice and hears the real you and he knows the heart you have for your family and he wants to talk with you more and be part of your life. And he cares about the things you care about it. He cares about your child and your relationship with Louis and baking and all of your creativity and craftsmanship and skills and he wants to help you choose buttons and show you things he knows you’ll like, the way you want to show Rata things you know she’ll like. He wants to be your daddy and your helpful friend and your go-to guy.

Like a human trying to get the attention of a sea monkey… it’s sometimes hard for him to talk to us without breaking us, and that’s why he speaks so quietly, but he works with whatever part of your life you let him into. Even if it’s only the craft room or the laundry!

The coaster came in its original packaging with a little typed note about the pattern:

“The rosette is a copy of the ancient messianic rose of Bible days. it has a long history and proves the strong relationship between religion and superstition. found on many hex signs, the rose has power over evil and strong Christian symbolism. The hearts differently coloured express love for all and kindness and gentility towards ones beloved.”

Now, my spiritual beliefs are on their lunch break at the best of times, but I do think that what Charlotte wrote is insanely beautiful and comforting and just, well, lovely. God is in my washing basket. Does he like folding?