Double Trouble

Every now and then, half way through a workday afternoon I get a real hankering for cake or biscuits. I’m supposed to be dieting but a long afternoon often needs a sugar boost to get me through to the end of the day. Its really not helpful having an M&S and WHSmith on site. It makes it too easy to pop along for a snack.

For some reason, Wednesday was a day that needed feeding. I’d brought my breakfast in and had it at about 9am. Yoghurt and grape nuts. Pretty good. I’d brought my lunch in too, homemade leek & potato soup with a slice of C’s homemade multiseed bread 😋. So far so good.

I had a couple of video conferences over the lunchtime period so I’d eaten my soup by 12:30. After the calls, I went for a walk around the hospital site to get some fresh air. Despite being damp out, it was warm and quite pleasant.

When I got back to my desk, I ate my Fibre One cake bar, swiftly followed by the popcorn bar, which I sometimes save for snack later on. But I still wasn’t satisfied.

Purse in hand I went to M&S firmly resolved just to get a small packet of biscuits. But I want cake. I REALLY want cake. But I want something savoury too. And something sweet for a sugar kick.

Before I knew it I’d got 2 packets of sweets, a packet of pitta chips and a twin pack of lemon curd whitby buns (why don’t they sell them in singles?).

I know, I’ll have the sweets this afternoon because I need a quick sugar hit, then save everything else for tomorrow.

Apparently not. I’ll get back to my desk, then scoff the lot. Now I have a sugar high and full up so I’ll not want my dinner. Doh!

Something simple for the weekend

The weekly bake continues. This time with a chocolate orange marble cake. It was going to be just chocolate and vanilla marble but something inside me can’t resist chocolate orange flavour.

I used #foodieflavours orange flavouring in the cake batter. Then decided to top it with melted chocolate orange buttons.

I’m missing out on Cake International this year as its been cancelled so my shopping list, that included getting some different #foodieflavours flavourings has also been cancelled. Their flavourings are brilliant. You only need a few drops as they are quite intense. And they have a really large range too.

Chocolate tends to go well with many different flavours though. I quite like raspberry chocolate too.

Looking ahead to next weeks bake, I’ll have the choice. I could either do one of the outstanding BakedIn boxes. I have millionaire shortbread or lemon & blueberry biscotti to make. Or I could do the next magazine bakes of either heart shaped cookies, with the dreaded royal icing again, or ice cream cone cupcakes.

Decisions, decisions 🤔

In anticipation

A couple of christmasses ago I was given a 3 month subscription to BakedIn, a baking club where they send you dry ingredients and the recipe card for a different bake each month. I was suitably impressed so I extended it.

Every month you get sent an email just before they post the boxes out, telling you what fresh ingredients you’ll need, but they don’t tell you what the recipe is. The anticipation is trying to guess what’s going to be in the box. The social media groups are abuzz with guesses as to what it might be. There is an embargo for a couple of days to stop anyone posting photos or comments to give everyone a chance to recieve their box. Then there’s usually a photo competition for those who get their bakes done quickly and the winner is sent some other BakedIn goodies.

I’ve never actually made a bake in the same month that it was sent. For a while I was considerably far behind, but since I changed my working hours it meant that I could catch up a bit. I now just about get it down by the end of the following month.

There have been a couple of bakes that we’ve not liked so much but that’s not because of the bake itself, more that we don’t like the some of the ingredients. For example the bakewell tart I had all to myself because C doesn’t like almonds, but then he’s had a different one to himself because I didn’t like it. There has only been one that I haven’t made at all because neither of us would like it, so I’m waiting for a time when I can make it for someone else.

This month, the email said we needed to get a lemon, some butter and eggs. I like lemon flavoured things so I’m sure we’ll like this one. And I still have last months millionaire shortbread to do.

I await my delivery 😋

His ‘n’ hers

So the weekly baking magazine fest continues. This week it was decorated chocolate cookies. The magazine always has a freebie stuck to the front and this weeks was plastic lettering cutters.

Mr was making bread at yhe same time so oven space had to be negotiated. His bread needed to prove and then bake at a higher temperature than my cookies need. Precision planning mode kicked in. He could prove his bread whilst I made the cookie dough. He could then bake his bread whilst my dough rested in the fridge. Then he could bake his bread whilst I roll and cut my dough, then turn the oven down to bake my cookies.

All sounds feasible. Until he gets side tracked by writing a report and doesn’t put his bread in the oven. My dough is still sitting in the fridge and getting harder. When he does put the bread in, my dough is almost too hard to roll out so I have to knead it more to warm it up enough to roll out. Then I cut out the cookies and put them back in the fridge to wait while his bread finishes and the oven temperature cools down enough for my bake.

Eventually get my first batch in the oven but they only take 10 minutes and his bread is on the cooling rack. Fighting for space on the cooker top to put the hot trays.

Then I start rolling out some fondant icing for the decorations and cutting out the shapes. They take up more space. Then I start using the plastic lettering cutters to cut out enough of our initials to go on each cookie. More space needed. Then the second batch need to come out of the oven. I now have decoration bits precariously balanced on the edge of the sink.

Fortunately the cookies cool down pretty quickly so I can start applying the decoration and our initials. We have 19 cookies each. There will be no secret cheating and snuffling of cookies.

Tested one with a cuppa before boxing the rest up. Just to be sure 😋

Thank you for the thank you.

Someone at work gave me a thank you gift yesterday morning. Another team that my boss manages is going through consultation and Wednesday was interview day for the top jobs. One of the candidates came to see me last week and asked if I could help her with some interview preparation as she’d never applied for a post this high up before. Interestingly, the post is higher banding than what I’m on.

Anyway, I spent over an hour with her last week talking about the sorts of questions she might be asked and I said that she would need to pay particular attention to management skills rather than purely technical knowledge. A role on that level is more about strategy and managing other people rather than doing the graft work and knowing all the ins and outs. Its a little bit more of understanding office politics and dealing with very senior management, liaison and so on. Stuff I have done and do do in my current role anyway, I’m just on a lower pay band, but let’s not go there.

So, having spent some time with this person, we’d talked about the sorts of questions she might be asked, and the questions she should ask back. The interview happened but she didn’t get the job.

Apparently she’d spent all night worrying about it that she’d hardly slept, she had been worrying about the minutiae of detailed technical things instead of the strategic level things, so she didn’t perform well on the day. Of course they’d asked her some technical questions but wanted to know more about her and her ability to think laterally and outside of their own current structure. Precisely some of these things we’d been over. She was disappointed but mainly with herself as she knew that she had not performed her best because she hadn’t slept. She also said that her heart wasn’t really in it because it would take her away from what she knows and felt that she applied because she was expected to.

She was profusely thankful for the time that I’d spent with her and had bought me a gift by way of thanks. I did say that I wasn’t sure I deserved it as she didn’t get the job, but she said that she was appreciative of my support nonetheless.

Thank you for thanking me 😁

Learning from experience

On Wednesday evening a select few of us gathered on a video conference as a dress rehearsal for our #bellringing Association AGM which takes place on Saturday, again by video conference. The event is being hosted as a webinar so that only the active participants are visible but other means are available for members to be able to communicate. Having had the experience of a similar event the weekend before I was able to suggest some changes to our plans to avoid any pitfall this time around. Learning from that previous experience will hopefully mean it all goes smoothly.

Early(ish) Friday morning a different select few gathered on the virtual #bellringing platform and video conference to try to ring a quarter peal of Cambridge Surprise Minor. The ringing itself was rather good, very few hesitations. However the technology wasn’t going to play nicely. Before we’d barely started the conductor’s internet had thrown him out and he had to log back on. That happened twice. Things then went along reasonably well until everything just froze. None of the bells rang and the video conference just hung for a few seconds before springing back to life. By then of course it was too late and we had to stop. However, attempting these longer lengths of ringing really does help cement the method into your brain, so if nothing else, we’re a bit more experienced now.

Then, as I mentioned yesterday, I was going to bake some biscuits from a magazine that I’ve had kicking around for yonks. The pic above is the result.

Making the biscuits was simple enough and being the piggies that we are I doubled the qualities. Then came making royal icing from scratch. Something I’d never done before. Well, I got in a right mess. Icing sugar all over place, then the mixture was too stiff for the runouts so improvised which meant that you could no longer see the outline definition. In the end I just chucked it on, added a few sprinkly bits et voila! Something vaguely resembling royal iced butterfly biscuits. At least they’re edible. I learned something new. I also learned that I’m not going to make royal icing from scratch again. I’m sure you must be able to buy it ready made in a tub!

Something for the weekend

We’re somewhat creatures of habit in our house. Since our daughter attended Rainbows and Brownies then Guides when she was younger, I used to squeeze the food shopping in in between dropping her off and picking her up again every Thursday. She gave up Guides when the unit folded when she was about 12 or 13. She’s 23 now. But we still do the food shop on a Thursday. And what’s even more ridiculous is that my husband retired (early) 2 years ago so could do the food shop during the day and on any day of the week he wanted. Yet it still happens on a Thursday.

That means the shopping list has to be created on Wednesday evenings. We are currently loosely following a well known diet club food menu, although we don’t actually belong to the club. It helps us make healthier food choices and gives better variety to meal times. So I go through the recipe books and decide which dishes we’ll have in the coming week. He then goes back over them to check what he actually needs to buy and what’s already in stock and writes the list. Then we add on anything else that we need in addition to food items. I always end it “and something nice”!

Over the years I have collected many, many, many #baking magazines for inspiration and the “oh, that looks nice, I’ll try making that” only never to get around to it. This last week I have decided that I need to devote more time to #baking. I’ve put the magazines in order with the intention of making something each week until I’ve got through all the magazines.

In addition to the usual food shopping I have added some extra items to this weeks list in order to create some royal icing covered biscuits, magazine 1. My plan is to make them on my day off on Friday or at the latest on Saturday, depending on what else is going on.

I find #baking and cake decorating very therapeutic as I have to concentrate on what I’m doing. It helps me zone out of other stuff for a bit. And you get something (hopefully) edible at the end of it. So much the better.

I shall look forward to creating our little something for the weekend 😋