What a Very Productive couple of days

Sunday 11th February 2018
Looking after my body
I woke up aching. These old muscles need recuperation time from activities such as lugging sacks of potatoes about.

So I chose gentle jobs for the day. First up was creosoting all the wood in the polytunnel for I suspect that is where the red spider mites hide away to overwinter. The metal frame has already been nuked with disinfectant and blasted with water but a multifaceted chemical attack is clearly what is needed.

All I need to do now is to clean the polythene. Most of the algae is on the inside and the outside is just grimy. I have ordered a long handled squeegee / soft broom affair for the job. The reason it is not here yet is another story.
This is a great job to do, as the light floods in afterwards.

We are not exactly having many beautiful clear winter days at the moment, so again it was not a day for outdoor jobs.

Instead I potted up some of the tomato seedlings. I've started a few varieties off early this year just to see how they do compared to the others. My hope is that the conservatory proves to be the ultimate plant rearing facility and I can start everything off that bit earlier so that harvests come sooner. I don't normally rush things, but the sooner I get a harvest the more tomatoes I will get if blight strikes later on.
I have sown some lemongrass as well and it has already germinated as has my first sowing of coriander.
I potted up the chilli seedlings too. I am still waiting for a couple of varieties to come through, but old chilli seed often loses its viability.

Finally I sowed my leek seeds for the year. I have changed variety this year as last year's suffered terribly from rust and have not stood the frosts well. I just feel it is time for a swap, so I've gone for Porbella which claims to have good rust resistance. By the way, this is not the same rust that cars suffer from!

With the sowing of this year's leeks, I harvested the last of last year's for a leek and potato soup. I harvested the last of the carrots too. They should have been harvested before the winter to save them from the slugs, but we got plenty this year so I left some standing in the ground.
The last ones left were Autumn King and had grown to a good size.
There was a fair amount of slug damage and a few millipedes and woodlice had been munching too, but I still got a good bowl full even after sorting. The geese got the rest and spent the next few days doing orange poo!
As I harvested the carrots, the chickens pecked up the baby keel slugs which had moved in. One I'm particular waited for me to hold up each newly dug carrot. The fate of this carrot harvest was a carrot and ginger soup which came out very nicely. In addition, any spare carrots, leeks and a few other bits and bobs were used to make two big pans of stock to add depth of flavour to the soups.

The evening was spent cooking. I am still keeping to my New Year's resolution of cooking more with our produce. The two aforementioned soups plus a big pot of roast sweet potato and pumpkin soup.
These soups will feed the first meeting of the Fenland Smallholders Club committee that I am chairing this weekend.

Monday 12th February 2018
Cooking and Preserving

Beef Goulash with roast Salsify and Scorzonera.

Portuguese Corn bread and very British Lardy Cake.

What a very productive day. After three batches of soup yesterday evening, I took on a Beef Goulash with Roast Salsify and Scorzonera with Ginger, Lemon and Honey. Yummy!

Then onto bread making. with a Portuguese Corn Bread (thanks to finding somewhere to buy corn meal) and a soda Pumpkin Bread (courtesy of the buttermilk I found in the same shop)

While I was doing all this, Sue was processing a ton of blackcurrants from the freezer, juicing them ready to make a jelly. She mad 30 jars of delicious damson jam too.

Next up for me was Lardy Cake. I make this wicked favourite every year, using some of the very best lard we saved from Daisy when she went to the great pigsty in the sky. 

Then biscuits for the committee meeting. Orange Biscuits, Walnut and Chocolate Slices and Prune and Peel Rock Buns.

It's a good job I am trying to lose a bit of weight at the moment!

A Turkey is not just for Christmas

Monday 1st January 2018!
New Year Resolutions

I don't really do New Year's Resolutions, but if I am making one this year I guess it will be to cook a lot more from scratch. And I never thought I would ever say this, but I would quite like to shed a few pounds too. Hopefully one will help the other.

It's not a question of not having time, more about planning ahead and using my time wisely. So gone is slumping on the sofa tucking into a supermarket pizza while watching TV.
And in is baking, cooking and developing other hobbies.
We'll see how it all goes.

I don't intend to turn this into yet another food blog, but I have long held the position that using your produce properly needs just as much focus as growing or rearing it in the first place.

Even at this time of year there is fresh produce for the picking in the veg plot.

So what better way to spend New Year's Day than knocking up a couple of curries. The luck did not last for one of Christmas's survivor turkeys as it got caught up in the New Year's Eve cull. Turkey is an excellent meat and should not just be consumed once a year. In fact this annual massacre leads to turkeys being kept in terrible conditions as the industry tries to produce 10 million birds all to be oven ready on the same day.
We split the turkey into 2 breasts, 2 drumsticks and 2 wings. Each breast and drumstick is enough to cook up one big pan of food. The drumsticks are difficult to get the meat off raw, so I roast them up and then pick off the meat to be added last minute to dishes such as curries or stir fries. The tasty dark meat makes a perfect addition. The breast meat is easier to cut into steaks, to cube or cut into strips and gives endless opportunities.
Todays recipes were both taken from the internet.  Turkey and Potato Curry and Spiced Turkey Curry with Spinach (substitute Chard or Kale)

The first of these called for using 'a curry paste of your choice'. We always have plenty of spices in the store cupboard and I prefer not to purchase ready made concoctions. I found in one of my many cookery books a page for whipping up 5 quick curry pastes. It was in Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food but can be found online too.
I opted for the Jalfrezi version and was very impressed with the result. At least as good as any I've tasted in a restaurant.

Tuesday 2nd January 2018
Rain stopped play
I had a weird dream last night. A class of 5 year olds were lined up at my classroom door with their parents ready to come in and I had no plans for what to do with them, nothing set up and no idea how to actually teach them.
This is a sure sign that the holidays are coming to an end.
We had one last lye in, with the intention of getting up and worming the sheep, planting garlic and pruning fruit trees. But as has happened so may times this holiday, rain stopped play. I am not just a fair weather smallholder, but none of these jobs was suitable for a wet day.
Instead it was blogging and baking so my time was not wasted.

The pumpkins and squashes were very late to fruit this year

so are not storing well. But we still have a good selection and enough for our needs.

Today I was making a Galette of Butternut Squash, Bacon and Parmesan, something for our packed lunches when we are back at work. I knocked up a loaf of bread too. Fresh bread is so good.

Galette of Butternut Squash.

You CAN have your cake and eat it.

Friday 24th November 2017

Black Friday.

I don't often get political on this blog, but I am actually a person with very strong beliefs.

Here's my tweet about Black Friday.

Black Friday is so depressing. Is the whole world now indoctrinated to consume endlessly until the earth is completely screwed? Exponential 'growth' is not sustainable.

As I write this, I'm still getting promotional emails informing me Black Friday isn't over yet. It's Wednesday now!!! As if the concept wasn't bad enough in the first place.

Saturday 25th November

A Sliding Carrot Cake
Finally got round to making my solstice cake today. I don't do Christmas. Solstice is pretty much where it all came from anyway and seems a much more relevant celebration given my lifestyle.
The cake is a spiced orange rich fruit cake.
While in baking mode I made a carrot cake with some carrots freshly harvested from the veg plot.
For tomorrow is the Grow Your Own group get-together and I need something to take along for bring and share food.

During the day news came through of an interesting bird at Staines Reservoirs in West London. I decided to go for it first thing in the morning 'on the way to Lakenheath' where I was due at the get-together at noon.
So in freezing temperatures and a cold northerly wind I gingerly carried the carrot cake to the car, hoping it would survive the extended journey. It didn't even survive the walk to the car as the top layer insisted on sliding off the lower one.
There was only one solution to this. Just take one layer and keep the other for myself!
Seems you can have your cake and eat it.

Sunday 26th November

Lakenheath, via Staines!
Grow Your Own Group at midday in Lakenheath.

Just time to nip to London first to see a Horned Lark at the oh so salubrious Staines Reservoirs

and then Santon Downham in Breckland to see a flock of Parrot Crossbills.
At Staines we had to peer through the railings as the Horned Lark grovelled around quite distantly on the concrete bank of the reservoir. In the UK these are known as Shorelarks, a bird which appears in small flocks on our sandy shores every winter. They are a delightful bird worth a special trip to see every winter. But this individual was one of the North American races, a solitary bird on an inland reservoir. It is a potential tick in the future in the rapidly developing world of DNA and species assignment. But for now it was just a very nice bird to see. Apologies for the photo quality. It never came very close.



Then it was on towards Lakenheath for the Grow Your Own group get-together. I just had time for a short diversion into Breckland to Santon Downham where a flock of Parrot Crossbills had been seen a couple of times. I only had half an hour to spare so was lucky when, just a couple minutes after arriving, the whole flock flew noisily over my head. It was several hours since they had been reported.

They just carried on going over a clearing and disappearing over the trees, but fortunately three birds had split from the group and were perched at the top of some pines. They are like a cross between a Crossbill and a Parrot, hence the name. They snip whole cones off the trees to extract the seed with their secateurs like bills.

Then it was on to the get together and a very pleasant afternoon with friends. I started the group four years ago and it has proved most successful, but today I handed over the reins. I will still be part of the group but I have a couple of new ventures in development. More later.

Monday 27th November 2017

I can do cold.

I'm not a great fan of wet.

I've learned to quite like the wind - I think putting on a few stone in weight has helped with this one as it makes me more stable.

But I don't do cold, wet and windy.

So today I mostly stayed in and caught up with stuff on the computer, like my blog posts!

The chicks we got are still going strong. They have survived a few frosty nights now, so fingers crossed for them. They eat ravenously and make a lot of mess, so I think at the weekend I will let them out of their pen to wander more widely.

Where's Dave?

28th January 2017
A little twitching, a committee meeting and a bit more of the sharp end of smallholding

Even living in The Fens, it's not every day I open the curtains and find myself face to face with a barn owl. In one way or another, birds were certainly the theme of the day.

It started with a trip further up into Lincolnshire where a White-billed Diver had taken up temporary residence on the River Witham near Woodhall Spa. By rights it should be plying its trade in the Arctic seas, so how it had quite got itself here is a mystery. But it was a huge and uncanny coincidence, for the most famous previous inland record was on the very same stretch of river 21 years ago.
The diver had been commuting up and down a 5 mile stretch of river with just a few access points, so it was just a case of picking a starting point and walking. I thought that if I waited till the weekend I would get more up to date news and save my legs a little. I also had a plan to drag Sue and the dogs along for a nice long walk in a new place. And so we parked up at the old Stixwould Station, where the bird had drifted past earlier in the morning, and started walking south... and south... and south until eventually we caught up with the bird and the crowd of birders just a couple of hundred yards north of Kirkstead bridge, where we could have parked! If only one of the fifty or so birders there had bothered to broadcast its whereabouts.
Never mind. We enjoyed great views of a rarely seen bird and I bumped into some old birding friends along the way. I was slightly disappointed that Boris and Arthur seemed to take little interest in the bird, though better that than they jump in the water after it!
But they had a most exciting walk, with new smells everywhere and quite a few doggy encounters. They were slightly confused by the metal sheep they met along the way though.

This was the longest walk Arthur's little legs had ever been on and he slept all the way home.

Sue and I on the other hand headed off to Upwell for the Fenland Smallholders Club AGM. I have to admit, this is hardly the highlight of my year. Unfortunately, although club membership is doing pretty well, getting people involved is becoming increasingly difficult. Anyway, there were just enough people to coerce into filling the spare spaces on the committee. I myself have come off the committee as I find committees exceedingly frustrating and the FSC is certainly no exception. Democracy seems to favour talkers and not doers. I do however continue to do plenty to help out as the club is well worth supporting.

When we got home the barn owl was still in the tree though slightly more alert. It soon headed off to hunt along the dyke and over the veg patch.

It may be getting dark now, but a long and eventful day was certainly not finished. There were two sheep to be loaded into the trailer... don't ask where they were going!
Loading up went very smoothly. These were the two commercial sheep which we had brought in to fatten up. Their departure would be quite welcome as they had stayed a little longer than expected and sheep food does not grow free in the winter months.

With that operation successfully completed, it was into the kitchen to gut and prep the birds which we had dispatched the other day - a turkey, a goose and a cockerel which had been hanging (colloquially and then literally!) in the stables.
No pictures, you'll be glad to hear.

And that was that. An end to a very eventful and varied day.

29th January 2017
Where's Dave?
A very early start to drop the sheep off at the abattoir. We like to get there early - it saves waiting in a queue and means we can be back on the farm by 8.
We usually have to wait for Dave and his son to arrive in the Land Rover, but today the gates were already open. We were greeted by two new faces, though I recognised one of them as the butcher who had helped me load Daisy into the back of the car a couple of years back (for those new to the blog, Daisy used to be our breeding sow.)
I presumed that Dave was on holiday, but then received the shocking news that he had moved on - not in a bad way, but to new ventures. I liked Dave. He was straightforward. He would stand back and let you struggle to get your animals out of the trailer (particularly pigs) but would step in if really needed and proceed to make it look ridiculously easy. He had a way of just tickling the pigs or sheep off the trailer, down the ramp and into their new temporary pen.
It'll probably be another forty or so years before I can call myself an established fen-dweller, but I don't like change as much as I used to, so I am on my way!!!
I just hope al the abattoir arrangements stay the same, as we have become rather efficient at it now.

Now I don't like to moan (no, really, I don't), but I coughed and spluttered my way through most of last night and really am not on top form at the moment so I decided to spend the rest of the day indoors. A day in a warm kitchen would surely help matters, so I set about baking and cooking.
Even kneading the bread felt like hard work, but I knocked up a good dough for my multigrain bread.

While I left it to rise, I started on a Lardy Cake. This is one of my favourite recipes, full of fruit and the lard is a permissible sin.
More kneading and rolling, more waiting to rise, so a quick Leek and Potato soup was on the cards. Leeks are a brilliant crop, for they come good when not much else is around and they stand outside whatever the weather. And while that was boiling up, I put the old cockerel in to a large stock pot to boil up for a few hours.

Come the evening I had to try to keep myself lively as we had been invited over to the new neighbours for dinner. It was fascinating to find out more about them and their plans for their cottage and land. The food went down well too. Beef. One of the few meats we don't produce on the smallholding.
I managed not to fall to sleep (not the company, the man flu).







30th January 2017
I needed to take care of myself today so I didn't get up till nearly 11! After that I took it easy.
I picked the meat off the bones of the old cockerel and turned him into a most nutritious chicken broth with potato and pearl barley.
And then something more adventurous. Jerusalem artichokes are a bit of a novelty crop and I grow them as much for a windbreak and for an attractive patch of dense greenery as for the harvest of their roots. But during the winter the roots are always there in the ground should I fancy something slightly more unusual in my diet.
I had found a recipe for Zesty Roasted Jerusalem Artichoke Salad which used blood oranges which just happen to be available at the moment. It wasn't my usual sort of recipe but would make a change from Artichoke Soup. As it turned out, artichokes roasted and glazed with blood oranges, then mixed with watercress and topped with crunchy breadcrumbs and goats cheese, well it turned out to be rather tasty. Sue loved it. I made just one change to the recipe, incorporating thin slices of raw artichoke root, for this adds a fresh crunchy texture similar to water chestnuts.

31st January 2017
13 magpies!
Yes. That's right. I stared bleary-eyed out of the kitchen window to see THIRTEEN magpies in a bush. Now that can't be lucky.
Still struggling against man flu, I decided that a blast of South Lincolnshire's icy wind might do the trick today, so I took Boris and Arthur to see a Great Grey Shrike and a Great White Egret nearby but they didn't even look. They did introduce themselves to a few local twitchers though.

This was along the banks of the River Welland which flows through Spalding and out to The Wash. I discovered today that I can follow the country lanes from my house and they lead me to what is known as Deeping High Bank, the East side of the river.

Back at home and the postie brought me a delivery of seeds for this year's crops. The growing season really is almost upon us. Exciting times.

Herb breads and a doughnut experiment.

Rosemary Herb Bread

As you'll probably already know, I belong to an excellent little group known as The Fenland Smallholders Club.
As part of this, I run a couple of offshoots, one being the Blokes Baking Group, who normally get together once a month. Inspired by this, I've now started baking every Friday evening and I must say I've been enjoying it. However, for the first time in my life I have now gone 1lb officially OVERWEIGHT for my height (though it may just be that I need to recheck how tall I am). So if I am going to enjoy the products of all my baking, I'm going to have to work even harder in the garden to burn it all off.

Anyway, yesterday evening, over a few bottles of real ale, Blokes Baking Group tackled herb breads. I'd planned to use rosemary and sage, as these are about the only two herbs which have not completely died back at this time of year. The rosemary bread was a double rise, which takes about 4 hours from start to finish. Fortunately Sue had the fire on in the living room, which was duly designated as our proving room.

So we mixed and we kneaded and we set the dough aside for its first rise, leaving time to start our great doughnut experiment! This was a project which got missed out previously, but I was keen to have a go. The doughnut dough was soft and gloopy, somewhere between a pancake batter and a pastry mix, so I really wasn't sure if we had it right. It contained yeast, so needed to be set to one side to prove. The book said 20 minutes.

Onto project number three then - sage soda bread.
A soda bread does not contain yeast so is much quicker to make. Traditionally it is made with buttermilk and we usually make one when Sue makes butter. But on this occasion there was no buttermilk in the house so I had to buy some. A hint here - look in the Polish section of the supermarket. You are looking for maslanka. It's £1 for a litre, which works out much cheaper than the other alternative.
The soda bread simply involves mixing all the ingredients into a dough, shaping into a ball, slashing the top and baking. So into the oven it went and we returned to those rising doughballs. To be honest, they didn't seem to have changed much, but we tried one in the fryer. It sank to the bottom, the outside fried nicely and the inside was still mushy! It did, however, taste something like a doughnut should. I reckoned that the dough needed longer to rise, but we also weren't sure about the oil temperature. The book simple said 'very hot'.

We consulted the oracle (www) to be hit with all sorts of contradictory advice. For the proving, we read to prove at 90 - 100F - much warmer than you would for bread. This might explain why the doughnuts didn't seem to have risen. We moved the trays closer to the fire. As for the oil, most people said 190C, but one said 160C. The dough hadn't floated to the surface, indicating the oil was not hot enough. But it had cooked too quickly on the outside, indicating the oil was too hot.
My hunch was to lower the oil temperature and leave the doughnuts to rise properly to make them, well, less dense.
Impatience got the better of us and we tried another batch in the fryer. The result was better, but still not quite there. Jam in the middle might hide some of the problem, but this had seemed a step too far when I was at the planning process.

It was now time for the sage soda bread to come out of the oven. It looked amazing.
The rosemary bread still needed a wee while to rise further and the decision was made to leave the doughnuts to develop too, so we took a while to concentrate on the ales! A new member of the Old Hen family, Old Hoppy Hen, was the subject of much approval.

Some time later and it was time to knock back the rosemary bread dough and shape it ready for its second rise in the loaf tin. While the tins went back into the proving room, we revisited the doughnuts, frying them one batch at a time. Fortunately I'd decided not to triple the mix quantities, for we ended up with 31 mini doughnuts anyway! The more we cooked the better they got. We finally got close to the real thing with the last batch, which floated high in the oil and expanded almost to a state of fluffiness!

I reckon that one more go at these and we'll be ready to unveil to the public.

Our schedule now took us back to the Rosemary Bread. As usual, Phil's had risen the most. I swear he carries a magic powder around with him which he secretly sprinkles into his mix. Into the oven they went and all we had to do now was to wait... and eat doughnuts... and drink beer.

Finally the breads were ready. I was somewhat smug as mine had overtaken Phil's in the oven. Clearly the product of a skilled kneader!!

So here's the final results. Another triumphant evening for Blokes Baking Group.

I don't know what happened to the rest of the doughnuts, but this photo might explain it.

Friday Night is Bake Night

Back in 2012 I resolved to see every sunrise of the year. It was hard work at times but worth every bit of effort. It is an experience which I shall never forget. And if you're wondering, I missed one!

I still sometimes see the sunrise, especially at this time of year. It is after all a very special time and every sunrise brings something new with it.

Sometimes we need to push ourselves to develop. I'm not one for tradition, but it does seem that the New Year Resolution is a good way to do this.

So, for 2015, I've decided to do more baking. I already run a Blokes Baking Group once a month, but I've decided that every Friday evening is for baking. I won't go mad about it. If something else comes up, then so be it. (Particularly if it is a rare bird which could have me heading off to any far-flung part of the country at a moment's notice!)
But the principle is that I plan to bake most Fridays.

So today was my first Friday Bake and here's what I made:

A traditional wholemeal Cottage Loaf and a batch of Orange Biscuits.

Usually I post up links to websites where my recipes come from, but I've decided this year to make more use of the ranks of cookery books I've accumulated.
I really don't want to copy out all the recipes, but if you're desperate then please do get in touch.


The recipe for Orange Biscuits can be found
in this book, one which I go to often
for my baking inspiration.

The Cottage Loaf comes from this delightfully
old-fashioned book, available used on Amazon
for 1p (+ postage)

On the subject of New Year Resolutions, I also made all of the Veg Group commit to promises (veg related) at our gathering the other night. They are written down and will be revisited at the end of 2015! My gardening resolution was to keep up the succession of my carrots and beetroots all year. There were plenty of others I could have made and I'm not sure that I haven't made the succession resolution once before!

Soggy Sponge Cakes and Nine New Chicks

As the plane landed us back in good old Blighty, my mind was already working on what I would choose to bake on Friday night.
For Blokes Baking night had come round again and I had promised sponge cakes. I have never made sponge cakes, so it is a good job that the baking group is all about learning together. Sue makes sponge cakes by the dozen, whenever we have an accumulation of eggs, just simple loaf cakes with various ingredients added, sultanas, date and walnut, almond and cherry, lemon.... eating them all can be a real chore!

I eventually chose two recipes which seemed very simple. The all-in-one method seemed the most appropriate for the Blokes Baking Group, basically concrete mixing but with different ingredients! So we would try a basic sultana sponge in a loaf tin, followed by a coffee and walnut cake made from two rounds sandwiched together.

It all seemed very quick and simple compared to some of our bread-making efforts, but I was aware that sinking sponges would be a potential pitfall. Luckily, Sue would be on hand to help out if we got stuck... or so I thought. Little did I know that the Widows of Blokes Baking Group had arranged to go down the pub for the evening!!!

Sunken, soggy and sorry.

Well, I'm pleased to report that we had our first major failure. All three sponge cakes sunk in the middle, to varying degrees, but one of them went even more drastically wrong!!!


A post mortem left us puzzled, but upon the advice of experts (no less than the revered catering secretary of the Fenland Smallholders Club), we decided that it was all Mary Berry's fault!

But in the true spirit of Blokes Baking Group, we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves down and bounced back with a couple of rather delicious coffee and walnut cakes. Our success here was undoubtedly due to our newfound expertise and nothing to do with Mary Berry!








Our first day back from Rome was an exciting one for another reason. For we had put a dozen eggs under Elvis, timed to hatch on our arrival back in the country. Our plan worked perfectly with Elvis contentedly clucking and the distinctive sound of new-born chicks cheeping and the sight of tiny feet and beaks protruding from Elvis's protective feathers.
By this morning Elvis had moved off the nest and I could count nine healthy chicks.

Happy Valentine's!

I'd like to wish everybody out there a happy Valentine's Day.

And we all know that Valentine's Day means.... Goose eggs!

That's right. Forget chocolates. Forget flowers. Forget romance. For Valentine's Day is traditionally the date when geese start laying.
(At this point our broody hen, Elvis, takes a huge gulp, as I have threatened to give her some goose eggs to hatch out!)

Not all geese can read the calendar correctly and we have friends whose geese have, for the last three years, started laying some time in advance of this, even as early as late December.
But our geese are cleverer. They at least have waited for February and it was not really a surprise when I received a text last weekend which simple read 'Goose egg!'

The ganders have been slightly more macho of late, baring their teeth, honking and stomping, at each other and at humans! But in reality they are not too aggressive and have not yet started to defend the nest. Maybe this will change when one of the geese decides she wants to sit.

For the moment at least, we furtively remove each egg which is laid, however carefully the geese are to hide them deep under the straw in their nest. They really do make the most enormous omelette or boiled egg!

Blokes Baking

Now, you may be thinking that I shouldn't be talking about goose eggs on such a romantic day. Well, there is a little bit of romance left in these old bones. For last night was the second ever gathering of the Blokes Baking Group which I run. I had deliberately moved it forward a day so that we could all make romantic bakes for our loved ones.

Piping skills in action
- just like using decorators caulk and a cartridge gun!

It took quite some searching to find a couple of recipes which would be fitting for the occasion. I finally settled on Red Velvet Whoopie Pies and Chocolate Florentines. These recipes would test out our skills to the limit and quite possibly beyond. Piping bags were involved, as were electric hand whisks.
Never mind though, it was just like using a DIY cartridge gun and a plaster mixer! And trowelling the cream cheese icing between the whoopie biscuits was just like brick laying.

Well, actually, I did a run through the night before so that I could find all the pitfalls. This helped considerably with the Whoopie Pies, the second batch being a considerable improvement on the first.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies - suitably romantic!
(The beer bottles in the background are to keep the table cloth on)

The Chocolate Florentines though were a different story. On Wednesday's practice run, everything went smoothly until I spooned dollops onto oiled baking trays. It was immediately obvious that the toffee mix was going to spread everywhere, especially when it had to go in the oven for ten minutes. Less immediately obvious was the fact that there was an infinitecimally small time margin when it could be extricated from the baking sheets. On one side of this millisecond, it simply disintegrated. On the other side, it was hermetically sealed to the baking sheets. We ended up scraping it all off, reheating it and putting it into Yorkshire pudding trays, without much success. We did manage to bind some of them together using melted chocolate, but it was not a very successful salvage job.

So when it came to Thursday evening, when I was supposed to be the expert, I made a few tweaks and rather unwisely stuck to the same recipe. I substituted the margarine (cheapskate) for butter and tried silicone baking trays and others lined with oiled parchment.

Carefully spooning out the Florentine mixture!

Again, though they appeared better before going into the oven, again the toffee just melted into a sea! At least those in the silicone trays, after a quick blast in the freezer, did come out in one piece. The ones on the baking parchment, however, had inseparably bonded with the greaseproof paper.

Oh, how I wish that whoever compiles these cookery books would actually try out the recipes first, following their own instructions.

Anyway, enough was made for us all to make a fitting romantic gesture in the morning. Brownie points were definitely earned and we had a great evening into the deal!

If you want the recipes for these dishes, please visit the Blokes Baking Blog.