Hands up if you’ve ever made a cream horn. I’m guessing nobody, other than the five of us taking part in this challenge (and the Bake Off participants themselves, of course). And with good reason.
They’re a pain in the arse. They require a lot of different processes and techniques, and on a personal note, a week later, I still haven’t got feeling back in one of my fingertips after touching a hot toffee-coated spoon.
This might be the best pudding I’ve ever made. And it still came second to my friend Charlie’s cinder toffee version in our GBBO challenge!
I used this BBC recipe, but I’ve got fancy pants vanilla essence which contains vanilla seeds, which I used in place of the vanilla pod because I’m not made of money, it gives a lovely flavour and you still get the flecks of vanilla. I also used this almond puff pastry sticks recipe to serve with them, but I found them a bit too dry.
I’ve avoided hanging baskets until now in my life, as I, yes, had the recently realised misconception that they are for nannas. And granddads, let’s not be sexist.
Following our harrowing Homebase trip, we ordered some brackets from t’internet and then drilled big holes into our house to make it all pretty like.
In the meantime, you can see that Scarlett dedicated herself ostensibly to keeping them alive (see exhibit A), which was negated by the armfuls of pink blooms she wandered inside to bin the following day.
We visited Homebase last week, a harrowing trip where we lost Scarlett for a full five minutes and found her in the outdoor bit, presumably returning to a plaster of Paris sheep that had taken her fancy. I actually ran round with a full trolley balanced with flowers without thinking to just abandon it. Great cardio.
We managed to gather ourselves enough to pay for our purchases: lots of flowers for the long planter in the back garden, and two hanging baskets which were on offer, presumably because Britain is not likely to see the sun again this decade.
I, along with several of my friends, am watching this year’s Great British Bake Off very carefully. Don’t get me wrong, I always watch it, but this year is different.
I put a call out on Facebook to see which of my friends would be interested in a GBBO challenge – baking our version of the contestant’s weekly contest in a mini competition of our own. I did exclude my lovely friend, Lenka, who is insanely talented on the baking front (check out her Facebook page), so she’s judging (albeit remotely), and showing us how it’s done. She’s basically a young, Slovakian, Mary Berry.
When the Morrisons man hands you onions, you make… French onion soup. Idiot that I am, I ordered six bags of onions, not six onions, in a recent online shop (Barry did the same with oranges a few years ago), and made it my mission to use them all in delicious recipes.
I am not a patient person and the lack of control in house selling is driving me crazy.
Following a challenging six months with our original estate agent, we’ve cut the apron strings and moved onto another. There was some miscommunication, and we’d come to the natural end of the contracted period, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to get bumped back up the Rightmove ranks and try a slightly different market.
Back to my Ashley Thomas addiction now. I’ve been mostly hanging fire on buying anything for the house (like these flowers), but I’ve had my eye on these storage tins for months, and I decided not to wait any more. If they don’t suit the next kitchen, I’ll put them in a cupboard and look at them covertly.
I do most of my grocery shopping online (the “big” shop), so I don’t even remember how I found them, but JUS-ROL have started making pain au chocolat in a can*. They give you the pastry and the mini chocolate sticks and you take all the glory of hot pastries, straight from the oven.
A lot of my friends have very good taste, so when my friend Charlie mixed paper flowers in with real ones for the table at her wedding last year, it obviously looked great, whilst feeding her very real addiction to Etsy.