Adventures in cake making

For many years I have considered making a Battenberg Cake. I am alarmingly fond of Mr Kipling's diabetes-inducing versions of the same, but wanted to have a go at making a "real" one instead. I made use of one of my favourite cookery writers, Felicity Cloake, who tries and tests multiple versions of traditional dishes to find the "perfect" one. Which led to me to the perfect Battenberg recipe.

So I set about making an appalling mess of my kitchen, including making the marzipan from scratch, which was considerably easier than I'd been expecting.

Raw mixture

I felt it was a bold move to simply fill a single cake tin with two colours (and flavours) of cake mixture, though I was pleased at the lovely colour that freeze-dried raspberries provided to the raw mixture.

Still segregated

The "two" cakes did, to my slight surprise, behave themselves and remain in their own sides of the tin.

Cake surgery

Though lacking the virulent pinkness of a commerical Battenberg, the colours were still pleasingly contrasting after slicing up.

Then came the irritating bit. I'd remembered that I owned raspberry jam, required as glue in this particular recipe. I had not remembered that I only owned seeded raspberry jam. There then ensued a tedious process of small ramekins being fed through the microwave and jam hot enough to melt bitumen being pushed through a tea strainer. Look, I know, in retrospect that heating the jam in a saucepan and using a full-sized sieve would have been more sensible, but all the small pans were dirty, as was the sieve, and I couldn't be arsed to wash them. Frankly it would have been easier to go to the shop and buy some seedless jam, but by the time that became a more obvious solution, there was already jam on the walls, and I was committed to my course.

Jam everywhere

However, stupid decisions aside, the end result was pretty awesome.

Triomphe!

My friends, my husband and I all thought it was delicious.

LittleBear, however, informed me that he didn't really like raspberry, and what with the cake and its glue being raspberry, it wasn't a big hit. In fact, he went so far as to inform me that he prefers the bought one.

At this point I should take you back in time approximately thirty years, to an occasion when my beloved great-aunt also made a Battenberg. My little cousin was sufficiently impressed by this confection that he kindly told her that it was, "just as good as shop bought." This particular occasion has gone down in family folklore. I feel quite proud of myself for not even reaching the heights my great-aunt achieved.

Because I love my LittleBear however, and because it's the school fete tomorrow, I have made another Battenberg. This time it is pink only because of obnoxious quantities of food colouring, and it is held together with apricot jam. LittleBear taste-tested it for me.

The non-raspberry version

"It's not just pretty good. It's fantastic. I even prefer it to Mr Kipling."

Dubious long term strategy

Long-term readers may remember my sage words of advice about getting through parenthood - Rule Number 2: do what works for you until it stops working. I may, however, have to slightly modify this advice. Let me explain.

LittleBear has, once again, for what feels like the squillionth time, hit a patch of Not Very Good Sleep. He wakes in the night, either with a nightmare or Just Because. He then struggles to get back to sleep and becomes increasingly overwrought and distressed about never, ever, ever being able to get back to sleep. Obviously, eventually, he does go back to sleep but this has been known to take an hour or more, occasionally also resulting in a small boy curling up in bed with me while his father is banished to a different room.

After a week of broken nights, I am not a terribly good-tempered person. (See also, inappropriate swearing and throwing)

Yesterday evening, BigBear was feeling unwell and didn't want anything to eat for fear of seeing it again, so I didn't bother to cook anything. Instead I poured myself a martini and ate snacks.

Dinner

and a drink

I ended up eating the entire packet of cracker crisps and nothing else for dinner. I then went to bed, read my book for a bit and fell asleep. It was only this morning, when LittleBear scrambled into our bed for a morning cuddle that I discovered that he'd been up three times in the night and been tended to by his Daddy. I had not heard a thing. I had had a full, and uninterrupted night's sleep. I am therefore going to have to drink martini and eat appallingly unhealthy snacks for dinner every night to ensure I sleep enough.

I can't see a problem with this strategy. Can you?

Intimidating? Me?

Picture the scene...

A crowded meeting room, twenty-five or thirty people sitting around a conference table discussing the planning and implementation of a large football tournament. Only three of those people are women, me included.

My fellow manager pipes up with a garbled piece of information about the parent of one of our boys volunteering his firm to be a possible sponsor for the tournament, that he'd forgotten to follow up on. So I nudge him, tell him not to worry about it and make a note that I need to contact said parent.

At this point the Chairman jokes, "I can't believe you've managed to get yourself a secretary."

A secretary.

A secretary.

I am not sure if I am proud or ashamed of the fact that I picked up an empty coke can, and threw it, hard, at the Chairman with an emphatic, "I'm not a fucking secretary!"

There was a combination of shocked silence and laughter around the room.

I don't think anyone who was at that meeting is going to mess with me now.

A summary

I've not been blogging, mostly because I'm tired. And I'm tired because I'm busy. And I'm busy because I keep biting off more than I can chew. And then when I think about writing anything for this blog I feel a bit overwhelmed as I'm not feeling whimsical, or amusing, or informative. And I certainly don't have the energy for any ranting, no matter what I may be feeling about the current state of politics (on either side of the Atlantic).

So, herewith a summary of what's what:

• I had a lovely holiday with Tigger, Piglet and most of their progeny. It rained, but we were happy anyway. I think we came home ten days ago, but it feels like months already.
• I am now lagging several projects behind the mechanical engineer in designing the electronic control systems for instruments at work. He has completed The Indian Job, The Pelican Brief, Portugal-can-fuck-right-off-again and Ocelot Double Plus. I am still stuck on The Indian Job. (Yes, this is how we refer to projects at work. Technically I think they may be project numbers 1729, 2087, 2068 and who-knows-what. See? Names are so much easier. No, I do not intend to explain all those names.)
• We had to "let go" an employee, and now we're trying to recruit again. This is (a) more work as we have to recruit, and (b) more work because we have to do the work of the person we don't have.
• Being involved in LittleBear's football club turns out to involve a tedious number of meetings. These meetings are always on the same evening as my pilates class. I haven't been to pilates in a while.
• Taking LittleBear and his LittleFootballTeam to tournaments is even more tiring than regular matches. They play the same total amount of football, but it's spread across four or five short matches, and three hours. Preventing insanity, injury and sunburn in eight children over that period takes its toll.
• I appear to have tendonitis in my shoulder. I am going to switch to using my mouse left-handed to try and rest my right arm completely. Being in constant pain is tedious.
• I can't be bothered to cook any more. 
• Bread is featuring a lot in my meals. 
• My trousers don't fit.
• I have volunteered to help run a stall at the school fete.
• I have volunteered to spend a day at LittleBear's school during Science Week teaching them about science.
• I have volunteered to help out at LittleBear's football club's tournament.
• I must stop volunteering for things.