Tag Archives: biscuits

General of the Gingerbread Army

Goose Fair arrived in the first week of October, and started a train of thought that led to gingerbread.  From Goose Fair, through Halloween, Bonfire Night and until Christmas we will have gingerbread in a variety of forms. It started off with a look at traditional Grantham Gingerbreads. I’ve never done too well with biscuits that spread out, so I decided to look for another recipe and go back to that one.

It’s still in note form at the moment, but I will get round to writing it down properly soon.

These are more like a ginger biscuit when they are done, being crisp all the way through. My research (which meant eating several a day for three days) shows that they keep well. The residents of the Care Home we visited yesterday, and the Men in Sheds today all confirmed that they were good biscuits and had kept well. As these are people with years of experience in biscuit eating I think we will class this recipe as a success.

We also did apple juice and hoopla at the care Home, and talked of other fairs apart from Goose Fair (it turns out that most of the ladies don’t come from round here so we ended up talking of Shaftesbury, Hull, King’s Lynn and  Barnet). All in all it was an animated session even before Julia unpacked her mobile hoopla kit. Once the lure of prizes set its hook even the card school in the corner stopped to throw a hoop or two.

The only problem was that there were a lot of biscuits – forty medium size, forty small, six round and one odd shape. I tested them until I couldn’t test another one and when I went to bed I could still see them, row after row of gingerbread men…

 

 

The new biscuit recipe

I think we have the egg free biscuit recipe covered now. I’ve made a couple of hundred and I’m getting the hang of it, to the point I’m sure I could stand up and guide a class through to a satisfactory conclusion (as long as I don’t give a choice of flavours and as long as I remind them to divide the mix equally in their pair!)

It’s a versatile recipe. I made lemon flavour on Monday night (and lemon flavour with poppy seeds, which was quite good). I followed that up with ginger and caraway flavours on Tuesday morning. The lemon is good (using hand cut zest after finding that the zester has disappeared from the shared kitchen).Vanilla is a popular choice with visitors – that’s easy, with just a quarter teaspoon of flavouring. The ginger wasn’t very gingery so we need more experimentation there (two teaspoons looks a lot when you add it but it isn’t by the time you eat it). I’m going to try 2 tsp of fresh ground ginger next time – mine’s been hanging about a while.

Today I did orange. I used a zester from home and produced some long pieces, which I decided not to cut as I thought ‘what harm can they do?’ Well, as the bits stretch between two biscuits they can make a mess of the cutting. Next time I will cut them shorter.

Finally I tried it without dairy – substituting rapeseed oil. It made decent biscuits, though they don’t seem to colour up the same in the oven. Texture is a bit crumbly and the taste isn’t all it could be. All in all it’s a biscuit you’d do if pressed for a dairy-free biscuit, or for a bet, but not for fun.

The group enjoyed making the vanilla flavoured recipe and taking them home in paper bags. They had a tough day working with poultry in the morning and doing the tree measurements in the afternoon so biscuit making in the middle of the day, and biscuit tasting at the end of the afternoon was a nice change of pace.

The recipe –

Ingredients:

175 g plain flour

110 g softened butter

50 g caster sugar

 

Method:

Rub the butter into the flour

Add the sugar

Form a ball of dough and roll out about 5 mm thick

You should get at least 18 – I used a small cutter and managed to get 25 out of it

 

Flavouring:

Zest of two lemons and quarter teaspoon of lemon essence

Zest of an orange and quarter teaspoon of orange essence

Quarter teaspoon vanilla flavouring

1 tablespoon caraway seeds

Still working out the ginger, and haven’t decided on a measurement for the poppy seeds yet as I just sprinkled some on.

When to add the flavouring? I put it in at the beginning, Julia tells me it should go in at the end. Seems to work either way.

Sorry about the lack of science. 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other end of the scale

Two days ago we had five-year-olds, yesterday we had ninety-five-tear-olds. There isn’t necessarily a lot of difference between them at times, though the  older age group is easier to handle as they speak more slowly and don’t run about so much.

They also have better stories.

On the minus side, we have to visit them and this month (for a session on harvesting) we had to work in the conservatory, which is hot and airless at the best of times. Fortunately it was overcast, but even so, I felt relieved to finish, particularly as one of the old ladies kept asking where she was (despite us stopping to tell her every couple of minutes) and nobody offered us a cup of tea. That’s right, nobody offered us a cup of tea. The country is going to the dogs. First we lose the Empire, then we lose our manners and the ability to pronounce certain letters (‘t’ and ‘th’ come to mind). Finally, our tea ceremony (though not so formal as some) seems to be extinct.

Fortunately the Empire has come here, and it has brought a vast array of curry houses with it, so not all change is bad. I’m also growing old, so I’m allowed to be bad mannered and I’m becoming too deaf to bother listening to the inane lisping of footballers and teenagers (did they say ‘four’ or ‘Thor’, you ask yourself?) However, you’re never too old to need tea.

That was actually meant to be a serious post about the joys of working with such diverse age groups, but I was thirsty and I’m never more than a few yards from a rant. (A bit like supposedly never being more than six feet from a rat, though with different spelling).

After the talk we passed the biscuits round. They liked the biscuits. I think they liked the biscuits more than the wheatsheaf loaves, the corn dollies and the fresh vegetables.

There must be a moral in the ability of biscuits to bring happiness.

Though, of course, you can’t attain full happiness unless they give you a cup of tea!

The Remains of the Day

We’ve just been Rainbowed. It sounds delightful doesn’t it, like strewing rose petals, sipping sherbet or riding to work on a pink unicorn.

OK, maybe not pink, but you get the picture.

In reality it’s more like a whirlwind of activity, a lot of high-pitched squeaking (some of which only bats can hear) and a large number of biscuits.

I’m not good on biscuits, and the recipe was one we’d never tried before because we had to find an egg free recipe (due to allergies) which used the rest of the ingredients we already had. Then, due to the lack of anything suitable for zesting lemons (shared kitchens are like the Bermuda triangle for shared utensils, I always find) I set to and spent half an hour paring the yellow outer skin from lemons and chopping it small. And chopping it smaller…

It all went reasonably well, though 15 out of 16 opted for vanilla flavouring instead of real lemons. I will be making lemonade tomorrow. The girls seemed happy, the leaders seemed happy and even Julia is happy. I just wish I’d remembered that offering a choice of flavours to kids is a bad idea and that you have to tell them to share equally even though you think it is obvious. I know all this, I just wasn’t firing on all cylinders.

Pictures are of my poppy seed and lemon biscuits. They were plain lemon but after using the poppy-shaped cutter I thought, why not use poppy seeds. The first lot were sprinkled on top and rolled in because I only though about them after I’d rolled the dough out. The rest were incorporated in the mix as I squished (yes, it’s a technical biscuit-making term) the dough and rolled it again. That’s why they look different.

So, once again, we have provided a good time for a group and nobody has spotted I don’t know what I’m doing. That’s not a bad way to wrap up the day.

 

What a difference a day makes

It’s a slightly ironic title when you consider the actual words of the song.

What a diff’rence a day made / Twenty-four little hours / Brought the sun and the flowers / Where there used to be rain

What has actually happened in the last 24 hours is that the rain has replaced the sun and the flowers.

We have a small group of children and parents visiting to bake, hunt for treasure hidden by teddy bears and play with the chickens. They managed a Treasure Hunt and some outdoor sports before the weather turned bad, so we can certainly call it a draw as far as the weather is concerned.

After that it was indoor sports and chickens.

That’s not for me, of course. I’m performing my normal indoor sport of Washing Up. Funny how that happens. When I deliver a baking session I wash up after myself. When Julia delivers a baking session I wash up after her. Interesting division of labour; I’m thinking of checking back on our wedding service to see what it has to say on the subject.

At the moment everyone has returned from the barn and they are colouring in salt dough shapes of teddy bears – one to take home and one to leave for our bread shed. There is a prize of sweets for the best one. I believe the plan is to have a large number of joint winners, as it would be a bit rough not to get any sweets.

Meanwhile, Number Two son looks more like he’s been in a fight than a dental surgery.

Years ago, whilst playing for the Wakefield Trinity U15 Scholarship team, he was set upon by two Featherstone Rovers props and ended up looking like he’d been in a car crash. To add insult to injury he was one of the two selected for sin-binning after a 26 man brawl developed (his team mates not being the sort of people to stand by like choirboys whilst violence was being applied to one of their own). I’m not saying that the beating or the sin-binning was undeserved, as his (defamatory) remarks about the mother of one of the props had, in fairness, been intended to get under the skin of his opposite number: I mention it merely to compare injuries.

Two props, aided by a couple of second rows, left him hurting and with eyes swollen to slits so that he was unable to see properly.

Without any slander as to the virtue of the dentist’s mother he was left sore, swollen and barely able to speak.

Makes you wonder what would have happened if he’d upset the dentist.

As a trivial aside – can anyone link Wakefield Trinity to Dr Who?

 

 

 

A touch of cookery

Apart from the weather (see previous post) it’s been a good day, with a possible new member coming to have a look at us. It was a good day to visit, as we had had a cooking session planned, which ended with us eating cheese scones and lavender biscuits.

Yes, the same lavender biscuits and cheese scones we have been cooking for a couple of weeks now, but people like them and we have the ingredients.

This is the recipe for the scones – it’s an easy one because it uses rapeseed oil (or canola if you want the American translation)  instead of butter. It’s therefore probably healthier for you (though these food fads could be reversed next week), cheaper and considerably easier. My scones never reach that “fine crumb” stage, on account of having hands like bunches of bananas.

Please note at this point – I’m using the cheapest oil for this recipe as it doesn’t need a quality oil. In fact I use the cheapest oil for most purposes – we are self-sufficient in it and that’s a good enough reason for me to think of changing from olive oil if all else is equal.

As usual, it’s difficult to tell where  the truth lies because the we internet contains a web of science, lies and stupidity that makes it tricky to see the truth. Good luck if you’re the sort of person who likes to base decisions on all the facts, because you’re going to have plenty of hard work  looking for them.

The lavender biscuits contain flour, sugar, lavender and butter.

I can’t link to the recipe because Julia has it on a scrap of paper, but there are plenty of recipes about if you want one.

Next step for the scones is to try blue cheese and pear and Stilton and date. Next step for the lavender biscuits is to try a recipe with rosemary.

If you don’t hear any more about them you can take it that they failed.

If the blog stops, you can take it that they were fatal…

Meanwhile, here are some pictures of our fruit and veg, which is finally coming to life. And a cricket – we don’t actually eat them.

Finally, on a sadder note, we lost two chicks today and we aren’t sure why. The keets are looking well and if they are still OK by Wednesday they should be safe. Fingers crossed.

 

 

And finally…

It’s the end of the day. I’ve just been drinking tea and eating lavender biscuits. It’s not all been this easy of course; I’ve actually had to spend some time pressing computer keys, walk round with a camera, do a bit of thinking and  and make sure the kitchen is tidy for the bread group.

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I did have to do a bit of toilet cleaning, but even that isn’t so bad. If I had to do it all day and every day I’d probably grow to resent doing it but a couple of times a week isn’t going to kill me. (Unless I catch typhoid but I don’t really think that’s likely).

Basically, toilet cleaning is nature’s way of telling you that you should have worked harder at school, so it’s hard to feel bad about it, as I definitely should have worked harder at school.

I also had an epiphany on the way to work, which is something that doesn’t happen every day. We were talking about applying for grants (we’ve just been turned down for another one) and I said that the time involved in applying must be between 20-40 hours.  You have to research, think, write, listen to unwanted advice and try to match the project you have in mind to the funding criteria of the funder. This is out of all proportion to the time and effort it takes to print a form letter telling you that you’ve failed.

In truth, I may as well have wasted a week playing Solitaire. I say “wasted”, but it’s a skill, and you need to practice to get better.

Or, as I said to Julia, I may as well have spent the time arranging bag packing or collection sessions at local supermarkets. Even in these depressed days, we should be able to raise a few hundred quid that way. We are currently looking at taking on charitable status, and at that time it might be possible to persuade supermarkets to let us in.

It’s a tough gig – I’ve packed quite a few times (helping fund a junior rugby team to Canada and buying shirts for an entire junior section) and I know that getting volunteers is tough, and getting money is even tougher.

I once packed bags (neatly and efficiently) for a well spoken lady who, at the end, said “I won’t be able to give you anything, of course, because I never put money in open buckets.”

Until that point I hadn’t realised I looked like the sort of man who would steal from children. And I really felt the sting of that “of course”.

As a result I went out and bought a dozen of the proper buckets. You secure the top with  a cable tie, put a label across the join and start packing. People give you money and at the end of the day you go home, cut the cable ties, pull off the stickers and (I you are that way inclined) steal the money from the kids.

The only difference is that you are spending money on buckets and cable ties instead of on the kids.

 

 

The ethics of biscuits, and other modern dilemmas

I have an unopened packet of biscuits on my desk. This isn’t a normal event, as people don’t generally trust me with biscuits, but so far I have not weakened. The problem with Hobnobs, apart from them tasting nice, is that they have loads of oats in them. That, as far as I’m concerned, elevates them to the level of health food, and it’s difficult to see what the downside of eating them. It’s like eating porridge, but they aren’t grey and nobody tries to make you eat them without sugar.

There’s just a small voice at the back of my mind stopping me (the one saying “No more biscuits, fatso!”), but it’s getting weaker…

My next ethical dilemma is Twitter. It really is the ultimate displacement activity, it takes far too much time and it’s the natural home of idiots. The problem is that it does contain a lot of interesting stuff (including tweets from people I follow on WordPress). I’ve just been looking at a tweet from @CarefarmingUK . It’s a timely reminder that we’re part of a larger movement (it’s very easy to get too wrapped up in yourself when you work out here) and it has a link to a great article.

I wouldn’t like to do without it, but I do feel guilty when wasting time reading it. Yes, I know it’s a question of self-discipline, but it’s nice to have a vice that isn’t fattening. I’m @quercuscommy, if anyone wants to waste time.

The next problem is photography. I waited about twenty minutes to get the photo at the top of the page, managing just a selection of tails and empty frames as the parents went back and forth to the box. It’s not a great shot, but I was happy to get it. I also got another go at the woodpecker and a starling. Was it worth it? I think so. Should I have been doing something more productive? Er…well…

Anyway, I’d better go now as I need to do some work.

I’ll just leave you with one last shot.

`

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A puppy comes to visit…

We had a visitor this morning, looking considerably larger and less puppyish than she did a couple of weeks ago. After that it was all doomed to be an anti-climax.

The sick ewe died (we think it was twin lamb disease), despite us dosing her with the appropriate drench. The worst thing about twin lamb disease is that I always feel it is avoidable.

We had home-made Leek and Potato soup (with the leeks being home grown, as you could probably guess from the clumps of soil on the roots), but it was a bit glutinous. I remember seeing something about the problem before when I started making soup but can’t recall what the cause was. All I can find now is that the potatoes were over-worked (and you shouldn’t use a blender) or that I used the wrong (high starch) potatoes. Neither of these seem to be what I remember from the previous time, which I though was something to do with ratios.

I always use the cheapest potatoes in the shop, I always use a hand blender, and I don’t usually have a problem. Maybe it’s the way the soup-maker works. Does anyone have any ideas?

Blue tits are using the nest box by the centre entrance, but as my wife pointed out, they did that last year and the year before – they just like to torment us.

Things picked up a bit towards the end of the day when we cleaned the store cupboard (which we had been putting off for months) and one of the group baked chocolate chip cookies. A fresh warm biscuit for afternoon break was just what we needed.

 

 

 

Ups and downs

Another monthly recording session for the agroforestry scheme and more eggs collected from the poultry. There’s a grinding monotony about our daily tasks at the moment, probably brought about by short days and rainy weather, rather than by any actual increase in tedium.

A goat and a lamb both died over the weekend, which is always a depressing event. Added to the other goat that died last week it could be the start of a worrying pattern. We will have to see.

On the plus side – after numerous complaints to the taxi company they were on time at both ends of the day, which always makes things easier,  We were also visited by someone who used to work here and she brought cake! We knew she was coming, which was nice, and we bought shortbread in anticipation, which was also good. However, the addition of chocolate fudge cake really lit up my morning. I’m easily pleased. As usual I managed to eat it before remembering to take a photo, which is why I’m not a food blogger. However, I did take a picture of the biscuit tin.

I’ve also managed a book review, which I’ve been intending for some time.

If you want to try some exquisite cake (there were other varieties but I’m trying to hide the exact quantity from Julia) try visiting the The Clock House cafe and tearoom. I’m going to make a trip in the next few weeks so will report back for those of you unable to make it.

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