Adventures in the Kitchen
Dec. 14th, 2004 11:07 pmMe, who considers cooking to be boiling up some noodles and mixing in anything that comes to hand, decided to make Christmas puddings today.
And after an hour searching the internet for a suitable recipe -- not too many ingredients (because I had to buy everything, there was one otherwise one good looking one that required plain flour AND self raising for example) and went into enough detail that I could follow it easily. So I can handle things like "cream butter & sugar" but most of them are just stick all ingredients in a bowl, mix then steam/boil for 6 hours. Erm, help!
Finally found one in an old Ravenswood Playgroup recipe book (carefully typed out by someone about 30 years ago, complete with corrections & not quite even letters, for a fundraising project) which looked simple but detailed.
Then I had to buy everything and I mean everything -- suger, flour, eggs, 3 type of spices, mixed fruit, calico, string. I did make my own breadcrumbs. Sort of. I didn't put enough in :|
Then, um, measuring out the ingredient, which provided too problems -- no scales to weight anything! and imperial measurements when my measuring spoons are metric (who was the bright spark who puts mls on measuring spoons rather than equivalent teaspoons) but with the help of Gussy I got there, although the conversion seems to be giving rather large figures and, um, you know a pound of margarine & a pound sugar & a pound of flour & 2 pounds of mixed fruit & 6 eggs & everything else makes for a rather big mixture. So big that my little spatula couldn't handle the mixing and my "what am I ever going to use a mixing bowl this big for" mixing bowl was too small. The only bigger, plastic object in the house was a large vegetable crisper that I never used except for when I moved house. So it was washed & stuck in the sink (I did consider using the sink) so I could reach into it and mixing continued.
So there's 3 little puddings boiling away (they've just passed the 5 hour mark, I might haul the smallest out for a taste test) and more awaiting more calico so they can have their turn in the pot.
This could be interesting -- not enough eggs, definitely too much cinnamon (I didn't realise the mixed spice has cinnamon as well) and too much sugar (I sort of guessed at that).
And the kitchen is covered in flour & nutmeg too.
And after an hour searching the internet for a suitable recipe -- not too many ingredients (because I had to buy everything, there was one otherwise one good looking one that required plain flour AND self raising for example) and went into enough detail that I could follow it easily. So I can handle things like "cream butter & sugar" but most of them are just stick all ingredients in a bowl, mix then steam/boil for 6 hours. Erm, help!
Finally found one in an old Ravenswood Playgroup recipe book (carefully typed out by someone about 30 years ago, complete with corrections & not quite even letters, for a fundraising project) which looked simple but detailed.
Then I had to buy everything and I mean everything -- suger, flour, eggs, 3 type of spices, mixed fruit, calico, string. I did make my own breadcrumbs. Sort of. I didn't put enough in :|
Then, um, measuring out the ingredient, which provided too problems -- no scales to weight anything! and imperial measurements when my measuring spoons are metric (who was the bright spark who puts mls on measuring spoons rather than equivalent teaspoons) but with the help of Gussy I got there, although the conversion seems to be giving rather large figures and, um, you know a pound of margarine & a pound sugar & a pound of flour & 2 pounds of mixed fruit & 6 eggs & everything else makes for a rather big mixture. So big that my little spatula couldn't handle the mixing and my "what am I ever going to use a mixing bowl this big for" mixing bowl was too small. The only bigger, plastic object in the house was a large vegetable crisper that I never used except for when I moved house. So it was washed & stuck in the sink (I did consider using the sink) so I could reach into it and mixing continued.
So there's 3 little puddings boiling away (they've just passed the 5 hour mark, I might haul the smallest out for a taste test) and more awaiting more calico so they can have their turn in the pot.
This could be interesting -- not enough eggs, definitely too much cinnamon (I didn't realise the mixed spice has cinnamon as well) and too much sugar (I sort of guessed at that).
And the kitchen is covered in flour & nutmeg too.
