Culinary Chaos

Before I go any further, I would just like to say – please don’t expect to see any photographs tonight as things have not gone altogether smoothly today and trying to get a few photos for the blog was the least of my problems.

I have just come through to the office after watching this evening’s episode of Masterchef.  Ironic really, considering the sort of day that I have had in the kitchen. 

Tomorrow is changeover day at the cottage and I always provide a home baked cake for our guests. Added to which we have got bed and breakfast guests in this weekend – so tea and cake on arrival and then as an added extra, we had 5 people here this afternoon on an Alpaca Experience Course which includes tea and cake.  Shouldn’t have been a problem at all for someone like me that bakes all the time.

Just before lunch today, I set out to bake two lemon drizzle cakes.  This recipe was given to me by one of our bed and breakfast guests and has become a failsafe recipe in my kitchen – until today.  At this point if you are listening Fiona, I apologise for making such a pig’s ear of your cake recipe.  When baking, I nearly always bake at least two cakes at a time.  I was dashing along, thinking I was in control of the situation when I realised – after the cakes had been in the oven for about 5 minutes – that I had only used three eggs.  Arithmetic is not my best subject, but even I could work out that for two cakes, I should have used six eggs.  Time was obviously of the essence, so I whipped the cakes out of the oven – glad at this point that I had used cake tin liners – and scraped the mixture back into a bowl.  Trouble was the mixture had become quite warm so I had to allow it to cool down before adding the missing eggs.  This I did, keeping my fingers tightly crossed that the cakes would be ok. I can just imagine the facial expressions of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood if this had happened to a contestant on the Great British Bake Off!  Bear in mind that it was one o’clock at this point and the alpaca people were due at 2 pm.   The cakes did look as if they might just about pass muster when I got them out of the oven, but I must confess that I kept the best looking one to take down to the cottage tomorrow afternoon.

Mind you it just goes to show that sometimes, you can avert complete disaster.  I suppose that I could have tried to con everyone with some of my Irish gift of the gab, by saying that it was all done deliberately for scientific testing purposes -  well on second thoughts...!

When we all stopped for tea and cake this afternoon, I did confess that I had had a few culinary issues this afternoon.  I thought it was probably the least that I could do given the fact that at the outset, I gave my Health and Safety pep talk, which includes the immortal words “ We won’t ask you to do anything which we consider to be risky” .  They probably didn’t realise that this included eating one of my cakes!  I very nobly said that neither I nor Scrumpy would be offended if anyone “accidentally” dropped some cake onto the barn floor.  I have to admit that although all of our guests praised the cake, it was really no great shakes
Here is the real Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe

175 g. Self Raising Flour

1/2teaspoon baking powder
175 g. Caster sugar
175 g. Flora cuisine
3 medium eggs
Grated rind of two lemons

For the drizzle:

Juice of two lemons
115 g caster sugar

Basically you mix all the cake ingredients together, put into an 8” lined cake tin and bake for approx 40 minutes at 180 deg C.  Then pierce the cake all over with a skewer and pour over the drizzle mix whilst the cake is still warm

Flora Cuisine is a liquid Flora margarine that is available in most UK supermarkets and is found in the chiller cabinets near the tubs of margarine.

Tip: - Remember to use unwaxed lemons.  Organic lemons are also unwaxed – even if they don’t say so.  If you only have waxed lemons to hand, then plunge them into boiling water for a couple minutes to remove the wax coating.

Let’s just hope that once I get over this stinking cold and get my back sorted out on Monday that my brain will once again kick into gear!  I'm also just hoping that our weekend bed and breakfast guests don't read this!