After saying that, the things I am going to write about now aren't even 'tea dishes'. But none the more for that. Yesterday, it was my grandpa's birthday, and as rock cakes are his favourite, I made him some of those as a present. I like making rock buns because it involves rubbing butter and flour together... this is one of the first jobs I ever did in the kitchen (seriously, there is a video of me doing it that I don't even remember!) and it remains one of my favourite jobs to this day! The other being taste testing... ;)
Dried fruit, cinnamon and not overly sweet. These were made for me!
As this started out as a general craft blog, I am going to show you the card I made him.
It is a horizontal card, but I have yet to figure out how to rotate photos on here...
This was quite fun to make as I couldn't find any glue or my glue dots- which are fabulously quick and easy by the way! I solved it by using pretty coloured tape, and a little bit of normal tape rolled over to tape the main section to the card. I do enjoy card making, but I don't have room for all my materials etc at university, so I only get to make them while I'm at home. I like to make them wherever I can, so if you have any requests, send them my way. I have no work to do so I'm free to spend as long as I like on them!
I also did some baking yesterday for my mum to take to work. Where we work, whenever someone goes away they usually bring back something edible to share, and I suspect this is the case in workplaces the world over. She went with my dad on a motorbike tour of Portugal, with a little bit of Spain thrown in... so it was really practical to try and bring anything back. Biscuits? Get crushed. Chocolate or sweets? 40 degree heat. Would melt. So it fell to me to make something! We had a look through some of the many recipe books we have (at last count, 280 something... and that was about 10 years ago...) and she decided on Bakewell Biscuits from Miranda Gore Brown's book, Biscuit. Neither of us has ever made anything from this book, so I was quite excited. Plus that fact that I would get to tick a new recipe. Plus I just ADORE anything remotely Bakewell-like.
The biscuits contain almond extract, ground almonds and glacé cherries to make them 'bakewelly' (new word). They are topped with toasted flaked almonds before going in the oven, and the icing is a simple glacé icing with a tiny bit of almond extract. The cooking time is 30-35 minutes (only 30 in our super hot oven!), which may seem a long time for biscuits, but the texture of them is quite different. I wish I'd taken a picture of the inside as it is quite hard to explain! They don't have a traditional biscuit/cookie texture, it is more macaroon like and quite chewy... very different and very delicious. I didn't try an iced one, just a quarter of one that broke ACCIDENTALLY- I swear!- as I was transferring them to a cooling rack, and a teaspoon of icing. When I tried the icing, my first thought was that I should have cherry bakewell for my birthday... but you already know that I chose Battenberg six months in advance! Maybe I'll have both, it is a special birthday after all... my 21st! I think I will have both. Birthday Battenberg and Bakewell is just too fun to say to not do it!
Only five months ad 14 days to find out what I have!
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