Kitchen battery
Apr. 18th, 2010 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI may just have destroyed my food processor - it was seven eighths of the way through grating some carrots (which is as far as it ever gets, actually, but that's another story) and it stopped dead. It had already done most of the heavy lifting in baking a cake, and had, with a certain amount of complaining, reduced the remains of the onion baguettes to crumbs, so perhaps it has just overheated, and will function again after a rest: we shall see.
The food processor had to do more of its share on the cake* because the hand mixer was not up to the task of creaming butter and sugar. My mother didn't believe in creaming the butter and the sugar, and when she reached this instruction in a recipe she was using, she would melt the butter and stir in the sugar. She didn't believe in kitchen scales, either, so all her measurements were in tablespoons-full - heaped tablespoons-full, because she was always generous. She didn't sift the flour, either - "don't worry about that, darling!". Her cakes should have been as heavy as bricks, since she avoided every opportunity to add air to the mixture, and perhaps they were, but she liked to make fruit loaves, where it didn't really show. Oddly enough, she did, in her own way, stick to recipes: "Reach me that book, darling - Now find me such and such a recipe - Double the quantities..." She had a big Kenwood mixer, large enough to be sold as a professional model (and therefore exempt from purchase tax, way back when), but she still didn't believe in creaming the butter and sugar together.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about while I was mixing up the cake, and getting treacle everywhere. Which seems more worth writing about than the fact that it was a post-birthday lunch. We were ten, the cassoulet was delicious (I have no faith in a recipe which involves beans but no tomatoes, no celery, no vegetables to lighten and flavour the mix. But it was good. It was very good, for which I take no credit, since I have no faith) and the company was delightful.
*Black cake made following Dan Leppard's recipe. I was uncertain whether the recipe was instructing me to soak the (pre-soaked) prunes and then use the soaking liquid, but for the record, yes, the mixture needed that. Also, it takes about twice as long to bake as the recipe says.
The food processor had to do more of its share on the cake* because the hand mixer was not up to the task of creaming butter and sugar. My mother didn't believe in creaming the butter and the sugar, and when she reached this instruction in a recipe she was using, she would melt the butter and stir in the sugar. She didn't believe in kitchen scales, either, so all her measurements were in tablespoons-full - heaped tablespoons-full, because she was always generous. She didn't sift the flour, either - "don't worry about that, darling!". Her cakes should have been as heavy as bricks, since she avoided every opportunity to add air to the mixture, and perhaps they were, but she liked to make fruit loaves, where it didn't really show. Oddly enough, she did, in her own way, stick to recipes: "Reach me that book, darling - Now find me such and such a recipe - Double the quantities..." She had a big Kenwood mixer, large enough to be sold as a professional model (and therefore exempt from purchase tax, way back when), but she still didn't believe in creaming the butter and sugar together.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about while I was mixing up the cake, and getting treacle everywhere. Which seems more worth writing about than the fact that it was a post-birthday lunch. We were ten, the cassoulet was delicious (I have no faith in a recipe which involves beans but no tomatoes, no celery, no vegetables to lighten and flavour the mix. But it was good. It was very good, for which I take no credit, since I have no faith) and the company was delightful.
*Black cake made following Dan Leppard's recipe. I was uncertain whether the recipe was instructing me to soak the (pre-soaked) prunes and then use the soaking liquid, but for the record, yes, the mixture needed that. Also, it takes about twice as long to bake as the recipe says.
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Date: 2010-04-19 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 08:39 am (UTC)Am I? To the year? I never knew either!
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Date: 2010-04-19 08:51 am (UTC)I hope you're extending your birthday right up to mine. A week is about the right legnth of time for a birthday.
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Date: 2010-04-19 09:07 am (UTC)Length of birthday depends on when in the week it falls, I think. My 40th was a Wednesday, and we partied the Saturday before and the one after; but since this birthday was a Saturday, it fitted the weekend very nicely (or perhaps I have less stamina than I used to).
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Date: 2010-04-19 09:13 am (UTC)I have no stamina right now, so it's just my neighbourhood Indian restaurant. Next year I'm determined to be well and to turn 50 with style.