Category: Baking

Another hot one on the way – 23 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Blue sky and sunshine at 8am. Looks like it’s going to be warm again.

It was warm. We drove down to have a wee natter with Isobel in the Village. Scamp had promised her an Astilbe plant. The plant simply wants to take over the entire garden, so it had to be cut back every few years. Strangely, Isobel didn’t have a piece of it in her garden, so good luck to her keeping it in its place. However, if anyone can do it Isobel can. We sat in her little sun trap at the side of her house and chatted away. Before we’d noticed, an hour had passed and it was time for us to go.

Back home, and after lunch, I made a pizza dough and left it to rise while we went for a walk in St Mo’s. One circuit of the pond was enough for Scamp today. She headed off to the shops after that and I went for another circuit. There wasn’t much to see today, but the hawthorn bushes were pushing out their flower buds, not opened yet, but it won’t be long. PoD went to some Cladonia. Sprouting up like upturned trumpets. There are alien landscapes all around us if we take the time to look and to wonder.

Walked down to meet Scamp and walked back up the road with her. Sat in the garden for a while and finished off my first book from Audible (What Abigail Did That Summer). It’s supposed to be a young adult book, but this old adult enjoyed it tremendously. It’s encouraged me to try another one. I think I’ve bought two, years ago, and never started them. I also have another one that was awful and it was probably that experience that put me off audiobooks.

The pizzas I made from the dough were among the best I’ve ever made. Light and fluffy base but not heavy in the middle. I don’t know how I did it, but the remains of the dough are in the fridge, so I just might make a pizza to share tomorrow. As well as finishing off the book in the garden, I also finished off two wee cans of beer (to keep Scamp company with her Pimms!) and then a glass of wine with my pizza. Later in the evening we both had a G ’n’ T. I’m beginning to feel the effects now and maybe it’s time to get to bed before my eyes close.

Hoping for another warm day tomorrow before the weather breaks and the rain comes on Sunday.

 

Baking – 7 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Today I was making Cheese & Garlic Tear and Share.

First thing to do today was make the dough.

Kneading, for some reason is good for increasing your step count. I think it’s the constant rhythmic movement of the wrist when kneading the dough that makes the Fitbit think you’re walking, when you’re actually standing on the spot. Ten minutes of kneading for the dough then an hour and a bit of rest for the dough and the baker. That gave me enough time to get the majority of today’s Sudoku done.

By lunchtime it looked as if the dough was about to burst out of its clingfilm covered bowl, but I let it stay there until I’d finished my French Toast or Eggy Bread to some. Scamp was off to meet Veronica and go for a walk with her round Broadwood Loch. I was keeping up my virtual step count with an extra bit of kneading. The next bit was a bit dull. The big ball of dough had to be divided into 24 equal balls and each one was to be filled with some mozzarella. Actually it was quite relaxing once I got into the zone. Packed twelve of my cheese stuffed balls into two round tins, left one to rise and put the other one in the fridge for tomorrow. Baked the tin of doughballs that had now risen and merged together after drizzling them with melted butter, garlic and parsley. This is definitely not a low calorie bread. The bread looked exactly like the picture in the recipe. I was impressed. So was Scamp. The only thing wrong with it was that the cheese I’d so carefully hidden in the balls, had disappeared. Maybe tomorrow’s will be better. Still it was a tasty tear and share. Thanks again JIC and Sim.

Just as it was coming out of the oven, Scamp appeared. I guessed I’d have time for a photo expedition to St Mo’s, so with a newly cleaned sensor and a single lens I went off to seek some subjects. There wasn’t much directional light and you know how much I like Light! I did however find today’s PoD on my weary plod home. It’s a Horse Chestnut bud recognisable by the scar just beneath the smaller buds. Seen from the front it looks like a horses hoof print with little nail holes too. Hence the name Horse Chestnut.

Dinner tonight was fish ’n’ chips. Fish on a Wednesday is a tradition in the house and tonight was no exception. Scamp has cleverly found a way to reduce the smell of the cooking oil, by lighting a scented candle in the kitchen. It works wonders.

We had a quick practise of the three dances we know and without a word of lie, we hardly put a foot wrong.  Why does it all go to pot when we’re dancing in (virtual) class on Sunday?  It must be the pressure of dancing for the teachers and knowing they are watching.

Watched Line of Duty tonight and am still looking for the User’s Manual to explain exactly what is going on!

A parcel seemed to arrive today but seems to have been spirited away. Also spirited away is the Fairy Garden. In my St Mo’s walk today I wondered if it had been vandalised, but no. Every single piece of the garden had disappeared, including the stars hanging from the trees, all the little doors and even the washing had been taken in! All gone back to fairyland I presume.

Must get this blog posted and get to bed. No plans for tomorrow, other than breakfast in bed.

 

 

Huntigowk – 1 April 2021

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Or April Fool’s day if you’re not Scottish.

We had a late rise today, because although the weather looked good, it might be trying to fool us into going out and getting wet. Just to be sure, we had an extra lazier morning than usual. However I did manage to get Thursday’s Sudoku completed. I also kneaded some dough for a loaf, so maybe not all that lazy after all.

As lunchtime approached Scamp volunteered to drive down to the shops to get some ‘messages’. While she was out I backed up the nearly five hundred photos I’d taken in March, and that was after I’d culled an extra three hundred! Belts and braces style, they are backed up twice in two different drives, so this took quite a while. When Scamp arrived home, in addition to the usual stuff, she also brought a chicken. So that was tonight’s dinner sorted.

After lunch, Scamp wanted to get started again in the garden. Especially she wanted to plant some flower seeds and chop out a chunk of the Astilbe plant that grows beside the kitchen steps. I like the plant, she doesn’t, but I allowed her to chop out a section to give to Isobel who doesn’t have one in her garden. It’s a pretty plant to my eyes, but I agree it does spread quite aggressively. I hope she warns Isobel about that.

While she was working on the planting table in the back garden potting up flowers I got ready to go for a walk. I’ve been waiting for weeks for Tiso to open because I really need a new, decent pair of boots. I checked on line to see when they would be allowed to open and found to my surprise they had been open since 1st March! Just to be sure I was right, I phoned the shop and sure enough, they were open from 9am to 5pm all week. I think there is a loophole here. Cycle shops have been allowed to open for some time and Tiso has a large bike shop in their building. Whatever the reason, I’m intending going in to visit them tomorrow to get the aforementioned new pair of boots.

Walked over to St Mo’s and expected to see the tribes of braves and squaws slugging their firewater and practising swearing at each other, BUT… Instead of tribes of marauding teenagers, I found a neatly stencilled sign announcing a Pop-Up Fairy Garden. Behind the sign, and around all the trees were fairies, fairy doors, magic treasure chests and even a fairy washing line. Absolutely gobsmackingly brilliant. It must have been a lot of work by someone. I had to take some photos of it, because it was a Pop-Up and because it was done by fairies, I knew it might not be there tomorrow. My favourite was the fairy washing line and it made PoD. Thank you, whoever you are.

After the photoshoot at the Fairy Garden I went for a short walk in the woods, found the Larch Pineapple and got a few shots of it in a gentle breeze. Much easier than trying to hold the branch still in a gale with one hand while operating the camera with the other. Happier with this photo. It’s on Flickr too.

The bread was baked in the oven and when it came out, the chicken replaced it. As usual, it was delicious served with broccoli and rustic chips.

A parcel arrived by DPD from Perth. I ordered coffee on Tuesday night and it arrived today. That is consistently good service and consistently great coffee.

Quick practise of the Telemark Turn in Tango. It took a few tries to get that spin to work again, but we haven’t practised for a few days. I have to keep working at these things otherwise the muscle memory fades.

Tomorrow, hopefully, a visit to a cycle shop for a new pair of walking boots.

 

 

 

Today was dull, just dull – 25 March 2021

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Not the most interesting of days. Dull grey morning with the promise of rain later.

Spent most of the morning searching for a paintbrush. Arty paintbrush, I don’t bother much with the decorating ones these days. Eventually found it in the last place I’d look, where it should be with a load of other brushes in a cup on the wardrobe. That’s the thing about putting stuff away after you’ve used it, you have to remember where ‘away’ is.

I eventually dragged myself out for a walk to the shops. Instead of going the direct route, I walked down the path Scamp and I had walked yesterday, hoping to get another view of the deer. Unfortunately the deer had other places to go today. What I did find was a whole tree’s worth of catkins. I’ve never seen so many all out together. A small section of that made PoD.

Back home I began baking. Yesterday we had panna cotta for pudding. It was meant to have a tuile on top. A round wafer thin biscuit curved into a cylinder. Tuiles need to be very thin, so I’d watched folk making them on Monsterchef and they scrape the mixture over a template to get the initial round biscuit batter onto the greaseproof paper. In the morning I’d made these templates. Now I was going to see if they worked. Surprisingly they did and although the baking process was a bit hit and miss, we had a tuile each with tonight’s panna cotta. I’ve learned what my mistakes were from Scamp and will try again soon. Ingredients were:
Soft Butter
Icing Sugar
Plain Flour
The whites of two eggs (sorry Hazy)
All the above in 50g quantities and mixed in that order. Bake for 4mins or so at 180ºc, just in case you fancy trying it.

Scamp had spent the afternoon and some of the morning making Carrot & Lentil Curry. It was very good too. We both agreed it was quite spicy hot, but Scamp was adamant that no chilli powder had been added, just Garam Masala which isn’t spicy. A mystery.

Spent the evening trying to work out how to get a video to play using chapter marks in any of Win 10’s video players. Eventually gave up, installed VLC which, although clumsy, did work. I hate Windoze.

It’s raining quite heavily now, but it’s forecast to be clear tomorrow for a while. We may go somewhere for a walk. If we leave it too late there is the chance of ‘wintry showers’. Brrrr!

Not going out – 12 March 2021

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My primary excuse was I was waiting for a DPD man to bring a parcel

Secondary excuse was it was pelting with rain for most of the day. Tertiary excuse was I simply couldn’t be bothered until the rain dried up, the sun shone and Scamp volunteered to stay and mind the fort. Then I went out.

I’d promised to make pizza for lunch. When we were on our clandestine visit to Waitrose on Wednesday, I’d added a poly bag of mozzarella to the trolley for exactly that purpose. So in the morning I rolled up my sleeves and kneaded the dough for the pizzas and set it to prove. By lunchtime the sudoku had been done and the dough had risen a fair bit, so I stretched and rolled the dough and baked two disappointing pizzas. Scamp was kind enough to say they were fine, but I felt they were a bit flat. Never mind, they didn’t taste too bad.

Yesterday I ordered sensor swabs to be delivered by the usually trustworthy DPD today. It’s amazing the price you pay for what is basically twelve little spade shaped pieces of plastic, similar to the little spoons they give you to eat ice cream from a cardboard tub, twelve folded pieces of paper and twelve tiny rubber bands. I won’t tell you how much I paid, but it was extortion. Then, the first company I checked with wanted to add on VAT plus postage. I found a more reputable provider and went with them. Their one-day delivery by DPD was cheaper than the first one for when-we-can-be-bothered by Royal Mail. Email from DPD said delivery would be between 3.30 and 4.30pm. All was good.

By mid afternoon we’d had sleet, hail and torrential rain and it didn’t look like drying up anytime soon. Scamp went upstairs to ‘sort out’ our two massive boxes of music CDs. After an hour or so, she proudly displayed the CDs arranged into alphabetical piles for my inspection. They all went in to the two massive boxes again in a much more organised way than they had been taken out.

An hour or so later, it started to dry up and the sun was coming out again. With Scamp volunteering to mind the fort for a while, I went out with one camera, two lenses and no phone. I hadn’t noticed the lack of a phone when I left the house and I was half way to St Mo’s before I discovered my error. It’s strange how ’naked’ I feel now without a phone in my pocket. I feel vulnerable for some reason. For the few times I phone anyone and for the few times anyone phones me (apart from the lady from Amazon who tells me that my Prime account has been frozen), the only reason I carry one is to listen to music, but it’s a security blanket. That’s how I see it anyway.

It was dry for all the time I was out, but the sky was interesting and I did get a few photos. PoD became the view from the reeds and rushes beside the boardwalk looking into that late afternoon sun, taken with the Samyang 18mm lens. Quite a wide, wide-angle.

Got home to find that the parcel hadn’t arrived. Went to the DPD website to find that the order would be later arriving, between 6 and 7pm. Not a big problem. We hadn’t had a chance to go out anywhere anyway because of the weather. It arrived just after 6pm with an apology from the driver that the previous incumbent had had a break down and he was the replacement driver. Poor bloke, I wonder how many more parcels he had to deliver before his shift ended.

Dinner tonight was Salmon en Croûte by Charlie Bigham bought from Waitrose. Really delicious and served with Scamp’s shallow fried chips. Even better than my potato wedges and that’s saying something.

Tomorrow I’m waiting for an Amazon order. Hope they perform better than today’s DPD men. Weather looks similar to today’s.

 

 

Bakin’ Bagels – 28 February 2021

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That’s not all we did today, but probably the most interesting thing.

I actually got up earlier than usual to start to tidy up the dining table. It was a shocking mess of cables, external hard drives, papers and just junk. All of it mine. Once it was fairly clear and not just dumped in another place, but filed away properly for once, I could start on the dough for the bagels. But first, it was time for a Sunday fry-up. Some traditions must be adhered to.

The bagel kit was part of my Christmas present from my son and his wife. Every month for six months a blue box appears on the mat with the ingredients and instructions to make some bread related food. This month’s had been languishing for a good few weeks. I’ve only once eaten a bagel and that was in Starbucks. As my daughter commented, it might not have been the most representative of bagels. All I knew about them was that they were boiled before they were baked, which sounded strange. Still, the dough awaited me. Got it mixed and kneaded and transferred to the bowl to prove (rise).

It would take a good hour or so for the dough to double in size, so we went for a walk in St Mo’s. The sky had started of milky white this morning and kept promising to clear, but it had just remained white all day. We went twice round the pond with lots of other folk who were also waiting for the emergence of that bit white disk in the sky. It didn’t happen and we all went home disappointed. All except one little girl with pale blue wellies who was discovering the delights of puddles and also the brilliant way that bulrushes smash into a thousand pieces when you bash them on the ground. Such simple pleasures are wasted on children.

I couldn’t see anything worth photographing, even with my new macro lens. I eventually settled on a shot of a park bench sitting under a tree. I spent an hour at home covering up the berm bend of a BMX track with grass in Lightroom and eventually made it PoD.

Back at the bakehouse I chopped up the dough into ten pieces and made them into doughnut shapes before boiling them in water for 45secs on each side (they float, you see). Then I sprinkled most of them with poppy seeds and baked them. The came out looking like the picture, but were a bit chewy and in need of some salt. However, having only once tried a bagel, I didn’t know if that was what they should taste like. I don’t know where you’d find anyone in Cumbersheugh who could tell you what a bagel is, far less where to buy one. Do you think Amazon sells them?

While I was bagel boiling and baking, Scamp was creating a fish pie. It’s one of her sister’s masterpieces and something we look forward to when we visit Skye. Hers was almost as good as the Skye Pie but was a lot of work. First cook the fish in milk, then let it cool. Make a sauce with the milk. Boil the potatoes and mash them with butter before assembling everything, adding some peas and bunging it in the fridge for a while. Finally baking it in the oven to heat it up and also to crisp up the potato topping. I thought it tasted fine, but Scamp, the perfectionist wasn’t sure. More investigation needed I think.

Dancing menu tonight was Mayfair Quickstep – Waltz Routine – Rumba Routine with new steps – Square Tango. We both felt we did really well with all of the above and Scamp got a quick thumbs up text from Stewart afterwards to confirm that we were doing well! Must keep up the good work during the week.

Final drawing for EDiF and 28DL was Bird Box. Mine was a simple wooden bird box like the ones we used to make in school. Birds don’t care about fancy painted details. All they are looking for is a place to hatch and rear their offspring. That’s what my drawing shows. All done for another year, although I may do EDiMay if the prompts take my fancy DV.

Spoke to JIC after the dance class and heard that they have actually been sitting out in their garden!!!  Probably without coats on too!!  What is the world coming to?

Our monthly Covid test is on the cards for tomorrow, otherwise the day is our own. Looks like a better day than today.

“It might sound dull … – 20 February 2021

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… but dull’s sometimes all we have.” Admiral Fallow.

Another day when the sun didn’t seem to want to come out to play. It was dry for a while in the morning, but then the rain started again and it did want to come out to play. In fact it enjoyed it so much it stay all day. It’s probably still out there splashing in the puddles.

Today I made some dough which I would in turn make into a couple of pizzas for dinner tonight. They were very nice pizzas too. Lots of tomato sauce and anchovies covered with mozzarella cheese that had been in the freezer since last year. It keeps perfectly, you know, at least the grated stuff does. Not sure I’d like to freeze the fresh mozzarella balls though.  Scamp baked an apple pie with our own apples that she had frozen back in the late summer.  As always, she wasn’t totally happy with it, but I had no complaints.

PoD was a collection of knives, scissors and secateurs that usually live in a ceramic pot in the kitchen. I tipped them on to the work surface to wash out the pot. When I saw them with the light coming in from the kitchen window they looked interesting, so I took some photos and with a few tweaks and the help of a preset I’d downloaded from a bloke called Mark Galer, they became PoD.

Today’s prompt was Spoon. I was generous and raised the bid to three spoons. Odd number again. Drawn in ink because there isn’t much colour, except reflected colour, in spoons. I photographed the finished drawing, then tried putting on a wet wash which would make the ink run and create shadows, but it just didn’t work. Glad I photographed the original pen drawing.

Tomorrow is forecast to be better than today, which wouldn’t be difficult. We may go out for a walk.

 

Oh no, more snow – 8 February 2021

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We woke to a white world today.

No more piling, this was real snow and a fair amount of it too. At first the air was clear, but soon the wind dragged more clouds from the east and they began to drop their load of snow, driven along by that same wind. Soon we could watch a full strength blizzard outside the window. We agreed that it would be best to wait a while before we went out for a walk.

Later when a few blizzards had blown through, the skies cleared and the sun shone. We gave it another fifteen minutes or so before we dared to get the boots on and go for that walk. However, it was not to be a long walk today, just in case the snow returned.

We need not have worried because the snow was kind enough to stay away long enough for us to complete our walk. I did get today’s PoD which was my favourite wild flower, the Cow Parsley holding little pockets of snow in its talons. The sun shining through the trees gave a bit of dappled light to brighten up the background and the wind was calm enough to prevent too much movement. I used the old Sigma 105mm macro lens for it. It’s more or less a manual lens now. It has no internal motor, so cannot autofocus which is a great disadvantage for a macro lens. However, it still takes exceedingly good photographs for its age. It’s definitely Old Glass.

Back home and after lunch which was Scamp’s minestrone soup, with lemons (!), I started to rough out today’s sketch for which the prompt was “Puppy”. The first rough looked good and assured me that I could do this. I’m not a great fan of dogs which is what puppies grow up to be, so I’m told. Cats I’m ok with, but not dogs. But that’s why I enjoy I enjoy drawing from lists on groups like EDiF and 28DL. It forces me to face my demons, even if the demons are puppies. The thing to remember is that you’re not drawing or painting a fluffy puppy, you’re just drawing a shape and shading it to give some 3D appearance to it. I liked the finished result.

While I was puppy drawing, Scamp was baking. She was making a Sticky Toffee Pudding. I did help out a bit. I was in charge of liquidising the dates and water mixture that would go into the pudding. It looked absolutely disgusting. However I must say that the finished article was worth all that messy stuff. Probably not the least fattening food I’ve eaten, but it was disgustingly good!

Although we had our walk in a snowy landscape this morning without any of the white stuff falling from the sky, during the afternoon it made up for that with continuous blustery blizzards. Tonight it’s continuing to drop more snow on us. I’m really glad we’re not intending to go anywhere tomorrow.

Little bits of snow on the breeze – 7 February 2021

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Not real snow. Not flakes of snow or blizzards, but what my mum used to call ‘Piling Snow’.

Piling snow is more like hail than snow. It’s usually the precursor to ‘real’ snow, but not today. Today it was just piling snow all day. Like little soft pills of snow. Not hard like hail, but soft and spongy like those little expanded polystyrene balls that get everywhere. Piling snow gets everywhere too, probably because it’s solid enough to bounce off the leaves of plants and soft enough not to break up when it lands. Strange stuff and it was there on the wind almost all day.

I eventually bowed to the inevitable and went for a walk in St Mo’s, but not before I made my bread from the Bread Baking Club, a present from my son and his wife. This bread was “Honey Wheat Baguettes”. Strange dough made from two types of flour, chocolate powder, coffee powder, dark brown sugar, honey, salt, butter and yeast. With it mixed, kneaded and proving I set off, wrapped up like Nanook of the North. I’d not idea what I was going to photograph today. With a cold east wind and the snow piling around me I did my best to find something interesting, but the best I could find was a little blob of moss on a tree trunk. I liked the colour and the detail in the tiny baby flowers. I also found an almost abstract collection of snow and ice on another bit of moss. The tree trunk moss won PoD the other is on Flickr if you’re interested.

Back home I baked the bread rolls in the oven once the chicken was roasted. The chicken looked delicious and it was. The nascent bread looked disgusting. I won’t tell you what it looked like! However, miracles do happen. They did happen in this case and the batch of rolls turned out very nice. Good texture and interesting taste. Even Scamp agreed and she doesn’t like honey.

Dancing class tonight was Mambo, Rumba and Jive with a bit of sequence Quickstep thrown in for good measure. Not bad in sixty minutes! We did a lot better this week, evidence that practise pays off, as does patience from Scamp. Thank you dear!

Spoke to JIC later on the phone and heard about his long term plans which sound interesting to say the least. Also, it’s even colder down south than up here.

Sketch for today was “Fishing Boat”. I’m not a very nautical person. The nearest I’ve come to a fishing boat was cod fishing on a wee boat from Troon many, many years ago. However thanks to Wikipedia image searches, I present to you the good ship INK 1125 sailing from a port near you … wherever you are.

That was about it for today. Hopefully the weather will get its act together by tomorrow and decide if it’s going to snow or not. Personally I’d prefer Not, but I don’t get to choose. We’ll take what we get.

Baking and house building – 28 January 2021

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We thought it might be a good idea to go out early for our walk, and it was.

We walked down round the path to Broadwood and, after some discussion, went round the boardwalk. At first there seemed to be no birds on the water at all. Then I spotted what looked to be a grey heron, but a small, scraggy one. It was standing on the ice that still coats Broadwood looking very sorry for itself. I took a few photos, expecting it to fly off immediately it saw me, but instead it decided that it too wanted to go on a walk and disappeared round the corner, on foot (or on claw). I’m thinking now it might have been a young or perhaps sickly bird. Must check the next time we’re down that way.

We walked round one of our normal routes, noting the speed at which the new Covid testing station had been built in the carpark of Broadwood Stadium. It shows what can be done if the need arises.

Back home and after lunch the weather closed in even more. That fine smirr of the morning was now a drizzle and heading to full tilt rain. I decided the grey heron photo from the morning would be PoD. Scamp decided it was time we started making the Gingerbread House. That is, it was time I started making the Gingerbread House. She was simply the overseer, the ‘Gaffer’ and I was the labourer. I know my place. Bear in mind that this project started out as hers, then became a joint effort and now it was all mine. That’s the way it goes sometimes. I know, I’ve been there before. Apron on, time to get started.

Melted the butter over a low gas and added the sugar, then transferred the dank brown sludge to a big bowl and after letting it cool a bit, added the flour then kneaded it into a soft(ish) ball of dough. Chopped it in two and rolled out each piece and placed two templates on top and cut round the rectangle (Roof/Wall) and the triangle (End Wall). Did the same with the other piece of dough. Crushed up some sweets and poured the resulting scraps into the window holes of the Roof/Wall. We should have made a video of me smashing a poly bag of sweets with a claw hammer. Really funny, really satisfying! Scamp cut out two ‘adorable’ gingerbread people from the leftover dough, two Christmas trees and two candy canes, all using templates she’d prepared earlier. Baked the lot in the oven for about 15mins and surprise, surprise they actually looked like they’d work!

We let the gingerbread and our tempers cool while I made Carrot & Lentil Curry with Flatbread for dinner. Curry was good. Flatbread was exceptional.

Assembly was the bit that worried me, but the glue we made with beaten egg white and icing sugar was fantastic, if a bit messy, especially when a bit of back pressure on the piping bag allowed some of the mixture to escape back up the bag and onto the carpet (oops!). Actually, the assembly was a dawdle. I was expecting some of the disasters you see on GBBO, but it just worked. That’s what happens when two professionals follow the instructions. Decoration was a bit clumsy, I admit I have to work on that, but the overall effect was ok and much improved by Scamp’s careful placing of the Smarties, althought I do believe she sampled a few. Thank you JIC for an imaginative Christmas present. We both had a good laugh.

Now the Grey Heron photo got PoD, but I’ve made the corporate decision to use the Gingerbread House as the lead on the blog.

It’s really raining now, teeming down, but the weather fairies say it will dry up by tomorrow morning, so we might get out a walk. If not, we’ve a cake to eat.