Whilst I wait 1 1/2 hours for my pork ribs to simmer I thought I’d share with you my latest BB. That’s ‘Baking Balls-up’.
It was looking good, and in fact, if I had been in the right mood, I could have passed this one off as a deliberate creation. I could have called it Chocolate Orange Melt-in-the-Middle Cake. But I cannot lie. Ask the wife. I come out in a cold sweat and start stammering.
Nothing much wrong with this right? Wrong…
(Ed. note: Eagle-eyed readers might notice that I posted this a few days ago. But I only posted the preamble rambling; I got over-excited and pressed ‘publish’ instead of ‘save’ before including the bit about the chocolately creation, which is now included)
I’m a fully connected individual.
I Lync (sic), I Skype (sic not needed as this name is some crumby attempt at a portmanteau, I suspect, something like Sky-Type. Rubbish).
I can Webex, GlobalMeet and joinme.com and I generally can think of nothing more fun than sharing my desktop with people I do not know and will more than likely never actually meet.
I have a head set than enables me to go hands-free whilst on a call and I have been told by colleagues that said headset reminds them of Rosemary, the telephone operator from Hong Kong Phooey:
This is the perfect answer to those family gathering event type things where you want to take something along but know not what. This is a no-bake, no-fuss, no-messing cheesecake, made with that most wholesome of breakfast ingredients; Nutella.
Now, you might think Nutella is just a gooey mess of chocolate and nuts. But according to the marketing it’s a healthy breakfast ingredient. Come on people, its chocolate.
And also I might be over-egging the no-mess, no-fuss line. It is messy – making things with chocolate always is. And you have to wait 24 hours before you can mash it into your face. But it’s all worth it!
Jaffa Cakes. Those little morsels of joy are brimming with benefits:
They even cause controversy. Several years ago the tax man tried to make us pay VAT (sales tax) on them, saying they were chocolate covered biscuits (you have to pay that tedious money-grabbing con-man tax on such an item).
However McVities argued they were chocolate covered cakes (after all they’re called cakes aren’t they?) which don’t attract VAT.
Guess who won? Why McVities. It’s rumoured they baked a giant Jaffa Cake to prove that they were just very small cakes, rather than biscuits. In your face tax man!
The problem with baking is it’s hit and miss. Some things go right and some things go very wrong. The main points though are a) never give up and b) post the results no matter what, good or bad.
So in a delirium of confidence bought on by my ability to smear melted chocolate around the insides of a mould I decided to try another Mary Berry creation from BBC’s ‘Great British Bake Off’. Sachertorte is a rich chocolatey cake that was apparently invented by some bloke called Sacher or something.
It’s main distinction is a smooth satin chocolate covering. The original has a chocolate medallion on top but most people write ‘Sacher’ on the top in chocolate. Easy right? Well it’s always easy on the TV.
A bewildering array of ingredients – and an empty bottle of wine. That doesn’t bode well…
