mutteringhousewife

July 24, 2013

Not even Slightly Papa’s Ricotta Tarts

The Horror’s birthday is coming up and I like to get in early with cake requests. As anticipated it went something like this: “Strawberry cake. No, friands. No, caramel cake. Oh, some people like chocolate, how about half strawberry and half chocolate cupcakes? Or how about a ricotta cake?”

Anyone in the Inner West know that the the best ricotta cakes come from Papa’s Pasticceria. On weekends they have a line out the door and down the street of slavering hordes buying them as fast as they come out of the kitchen. Actually I don’t know if they are the best, I’ve never tried anyone else’s version. They are excellent. I knew I couldn’t replicate them, not with a week’s notice anyway, but I could have a stab at the ricotta tarts.

These are what you have if you just want a taste of ricotta cake. Not as widely known as the cake, I’m surprised they sell anything other than the cake at the weekend because the surging crowds rather obscure the long glass counter. You need to be in the know. I am, being a local, so I braved the throng last weekend and procured some for research purposes.

Hmm, pastry quite short, maybe some cream? And there are many recipes about for ricotta cheesecakes, I might just take an average. Here’s what I did.

Pastry. Into the Thermomix chuck 50 grams of cold Pepe Saya butter, two tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of cream, a cup of flour, a teaspoon of baking powder. Zap. In a few seconds you’ll get a jug full of damp crumbs.

I pressed these into fifteen fluted Bakers Secret tart tins, the ones with the removable bottoms. There was enough for sixteen, but I’ve lost the bottom out of one of them. Surprised its only one, really. Baked these for a touch over five minutes, until they just started to colour.

Cheesecake filling. Bung into the KitchenAid bowl an egg and two tablespoons of sugar. Beat until the stuff goes white.

In another bowl mix together 125 grams mascarpone, two tablespoons of cream, 250 grams of fresh ricotta and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. You can do this with a fork. The old skills remain. Fold the cream mixture into the egg. Spoon into the tart shells. Bake at 140 degrees for about forty minutes, I like to go easy on the cheese. Take it out when it’s just starting to tan a little around the edges. The cheese filling will be puffed up, but will subside once it cools.

I would recommend de tinning them before putting them in the fridge, though they’re pretty fragile at this point.

Oh, they were good, all right. “A lot like custard tarts”, remarked the Moose as he embarked upon his third. The pastry was quite fragile, but melted in the mouth. The whole lot was just sweet enough. The ricotta filling was light and fluffy, quite a bit lighter than Sam Papa’s version. And that’s what the Horror couldn’t get past. He couldn’t even finish one. “It just isn’t right”, he said, handing me half. “I can’t forget that they’re not Papa’s”. Well, he’s right, they’re not. I need a tougher pastry and a creamier filling.

Having said that, I’ve just sampled one two days later and they age in the fridge very well indeed, as do Papa’s. The pastry is still fresh and delicious, but not nearly as fragile. The filling has compacted a little. I may see if the Horror can bring himself to try another one. But you know what? Papa sells these for less than two dollars each. I have an excellent tart recipe for my next afternoon tea extravaganza and I’ll buy the Horror his birthday cake from the Pasticceria.

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July 23, 2013

Ah, Newtown

Newtown, I’d love shopping in you a lot more if there was somewhere to leave my car. Yes, I should catch the bus, but some of us haven’t got all day, you know. Kids to drop off, kids to pick up, washing to hang out, afternoon tea to produce, update my resume. Just in case.

It didn’t help that a whole block was taken up by what appeared to be a film rig in front of the Newtown Hotel. I wonder if the neon sign Smokes and Pokes was there for the filming, or if it’s a regular fixture? One never knows in this neck of the woods. You can also never pick who might be a film extra and who’s just a local. Girl with pink hair? Guy with a forked beard? School kid with dreadlocks? I’m going with local for all three.

Any trip to Newtown starts with a pilgrimage to Campos Coffee. Not one of those ones you see springing up all over the place. The original and the best.

Though I didn’t find it had its usual effect of taking the skin off my throat and causing my ears to ring. Perhaps they’re watering it down. It was still rich and satisfying.

I was going to make my first stop Pentimento, but they had a snarky sign up saying don’t you bring that coffee in here you clumsy plebeian. So moved on to the marvellous Elizabeth’s Bookshop where I found the girl with whom my sister has had her longest friendship. See what I avoided there? Rachel Ann (not her real name) was busy in the dark arts of the second hand bookseller, sanding the edges of the yellowing books, risking her health with the older ones that have been impregnated with arsenic, and polishing them with Spray’n’Wipe. Where’s the mystique? I chewed the fat with her a little and exchanged pleasantries with her colleague Roger, a very cute little black doggie. More shops should have doggies in them. I’m only looking for two things in second hand book shops, early editions of Wodehouse and elderly cookbooks. I struck gold, there was a facsimile copy of the 1902 edition of Mrs Beeton’s book of Household Management for a very bargain price. Who would let go of such a thing?

Rachel Ann said “if you like that, check this out”, hauling out from behind the desk an ORIGINAL of the thing, massive, dusty and leather bound. Laid by at three hundred and fifty smackers. I’m glad I didn’t have to choose whether to buy that.

I had to move on because my actual motive for visiting Newtown was to get some inspiration for the Horror’s birthday present. Putting together all of the things he likes, he is actually into steam punk without knowing what it is. He has a fob watch and a little brass folding telescope. Rachel Ann suggested Monster Threads for steam punk, and a very fine shop it is too. I really liked a lot of the clothes in there and there was certainly a steam punk aesthetic among the adornments but they were more for girls. And adults.

So on to Pentimento. I was rather tempted by the sealing wax and seals, but the Horror doesn’t write letters. He should, his great grandma would love some, but he can’t get past I’m fine, how are you? They have gorgeous cards and wrapping paper, soaps and lotions, a basket of Fair Trade string.

Not sure what you’d do with that, possibly tie up the top of your homemade marmalade with a piece of Japanese paper to be a whole lot more Inner West than the passè brown string and gingham. They also have ironic homewares and a selection of glossy books, some of which make me think that the local milieu has changed somewhat since the time that I lived here.

I ended up getting some organic washing implements.

The one that looks like a toilet brush is for the Thermomix, the lenticular one is for scrubbing potatoes and the nail brush will look lovely on the side of the new bath even after removing chunks of soccer field from the Horror’s knees. Then I saw another snarky sign warning mummy bloggers not to take photos, so I slunk out.

My parking time was up, even though there was much left to explore. I reluctantly betook myself to a soulless mall at which I purchased a size twelve waistcoat with a pocket for the Horror’s fob watch and one for his rather unsatisfactory plastic monocle. That’s a start. He’s been wearing a waistcoat that my mother bought for herself in 1983 and has been complaining about the lack of pockets. I wonder where you can buy top hats?

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July 22, 2013

Marmalade Adventure

We don’t eat a great deal of jam in our house. The husband alleges that he likes all kinds of jam. But it’s simply not true, he actually will only eat IXL plum jam, the jam of his youth. So I needed a push to get me to make marmalade, despite having had it on my long list of things to have a go at making for some time. That push came this weekend.

If you have sons and they play any kind of sport that involves weekends and mud, you will have been called upon to provide cut up oranges at half time. This weekend was my turn to provide for the mighty Jedis, and I like to think Frank’s bargain navel oranges propelled them to their two one win. Seriously, a bag of oranges for three dollars. Nice ones too. Of course the Tupperware container came back full of skins and sucked on bits and quite a few untouched segments down the bottom. I’m not going to be fooling anyone into eating those, so it must be marmalade making time! Oh, I rinsed them off first. You don’t want grass in your marmalade.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the official Thermomix cookbook was so very rubbish I’d have less material for this blog, so I’m quite thankful. But the official recipe does very much deceive the novice jam maker. Here’s how it went.

You put a kilo of citrus fruit in the jug. My leftover rinsed orange segments were only 400 grams, so I added a Valencia I had in the fruit bowl, plus a couple of blood oranges and a couple of mandarins to make up the weight. The recipe suggest slicing the fruit finely, giving large circles. What arrant nonsense. You have a Thermomix! You chop the buggers up!

A kilo pretty much filled the jug. Once chopped it took up a lot less room.

I’m also dubious of the next step, which is to add 300 grams of water and cook at 100 degrees for ten minutes on reverse speed soft. With that amount of stuff in the jug, speed soft is just not going to mix it properly. The idea is to soften the peel. I wonder if you need the water at all? Anyway, I went on to the next step, which is to add 800 grams of sugar and cook at 100 degrees for five minutes on reverse speed two, which at least gets the mix moving. This dissolves the sugar, so that step can be left in.

Then you get to the jam making bit. The only useful piece of information in the final paragraph of the recipe is that you do it at Varoma temperature, whatever that is, and you use reverse speed 2. I cooked it for ten minutes, as suggested. I did wander off at one point to talk my husband through picking up movie tickets for WWZ that I’d booked online and wandered back to find a marmalade coated kitchen.

The recipe did warn that it might spit a bit, so put the little clear cup on the lid a little on the side, which I’d done, being a follower of rules. The cup had blown off clear to the other side of the stove. What did contain it was an upturned sieve.

I was fairly sure that it wasn’t cooked, so I gave it another five minutes. The only advice the recipe gave to test for it being cooked was that “it gels when tested”. Well, that’s less than helpful. I know about testing toffee, but toffee is cooked when it gets to a certain temperature. Jam is when the water content is reduced enough and the pectin has been extracted from the skin and seeds enough for it to start to set. Different. And this stuff was very pulpy, so a teaspoon full of it did just sit there, looking a lot like jam.

I decanted it, dear reader, into a litre jar and a half litre jar. Then I paced about a bit, occasionally mopping a bit of marmalade from a wall. It certainly tasted very good. But was it jam? As it cooled I became convinced that it wasn’t. Finally I slopped it back in the jug and set it going again on Varoma temperature at speed two, with the sieve back in place. Unfortunately in the excitement I forgot to put it on reverse, so it’s a bit more chopped up than I’d like. I let it go for twenty minutes. When that was done I had a look at it and I knew I’d got it right. It was shiny. I dropped a teaspoonful on a saucer, and raced to show the Muffet, who hadn’t been interested in a zombie movie. “Look at this!” I said, shoving the saucer under her nose. Then I tilted it to vertical and the blob of jam stayed where it was for a second or two before starting to slide very slowly towards her school blazer which she really shouldn’t have left on the floor. She scooped it up and pronounced it to be delicious, though possibly a little too hot.

It had reduced to being just over a litre of jam. After a night in the fridge it was the perfect consistency (and temperature).

That was fun. Don’t worry, though, I’m not going to top it with a square of gingham tied with rustic string. It spoils the flavour.

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July 18, 2013

Pickled Beetroot

“He’s got twenty eight kilos that he has to get rid of by the end of the day, no questions asked. Can I put you down for a kilo?” Who finds themselves in possession of twenty eight kilos of julienned beetroot, possibly contraband? I’m not sure that I want to know the story, but I love a random ingredient. So I take a kilo.

The only thing you can do with that volume of beetroot, unless you’re on a salad diet, is to pickle it. I’ve never pickled anything in my life before. I know my Nanna used to pickle beetroot, but she used a pressure cooker. The stain left by a thermonuclear temperature jet of death dealing beetroot would still be on her kitchen ceiling if her house hadn’t been demolished by soulless developers. I don’t trust pressure cookers. Or developers. So I’m not doing it that way.

There appears to be the American way of pickling beetroot and the Australian way, so I take a recipe from the ABC Tasmania site and use that. Except because I have julienned beetroot I decide not to cook it. I think it would be great crunchy. First you have to sterilise your jars. I had to get down my second biggest stockpot for that.

I have 700 grams of beetroot as it turns out, so I reduced the recipe I found. Place in a non reactive saucepan 700 mls of white vinegar (I would have used a fancy apple cider vinegar or something, but I wanted to get these babies pickled while they were still fresh off the back of the truck), a scant three quarters of a cup of brown sugar, a bay leaf, half a cinnamon stick, six cloves, ten peppercorns, a bit under a teaspoon of allspice and a teaspoon of salt.

I heated that until it boiled, then covered it and let it simmer for a bit to extract those flavours. Meanwhile I managed to get the jars out of their boiling water bath without burning myself too badly. I packed the beetroot into them using tongs, trying to be all sterile and everything. They filled the jars neatly to the top with a bit of squashing. I let the pickling liquid sit for about quarter of an hour to cool down and infuse a bit more. I got the liquid into the jars using a funnel with a sieve in it.

The liquid wasn’t enough to fill the jars, curses curses. But while poking at the beetroot in frustration I found that it packed down quite a bit more in the warm liquid and there was enough after all, oh me of little faith.

I think you’re supposed to leave it for a couple of weeks alone with its thoughts, to mature and develop and a whole lot of other anthropomorphic stuff. But I couldn’t wait and had a taste today. It tastes like bought beetroot, only sparkly and crunchy and alive. Oh man, it’s good. We might have to have hamburger night very soon. Or it would go so well with rocket and walnuts and a soft feta, or goats cheese, and cracked pepper and a splash of olive oil. Maybe I should have got two kilos. I’d need to go to The Source then and buy some more jars. Oh the horror.

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July 17, 2013

Blood Orange Sorbet

Every suburb needs a fruit shop like Frank’s. In original condition, as the real estate agents would say, staffed by Frank and his relatives, festooned with boxes and sacks and handwritten signs. A chef I’m related to has seen Frank early in the morning at the markets, picking over the produce, haggling, looking for the best. You can trust the fruit from Franks. He even stocks produce from local gardens, don’t buy your tomatoes anywhere else. He’s just got in blood oranges.

I haven’t seen them anywhere else. The kids have been eating iceblocks again and demanding new and more exotic flavours, so I thought I’d lay on them a blood orange sorbet. A quick google of recipes shows an astonishing consistency. You juice them, add a quarter of a cup of sugar to every four oranges, and then opinion diverges on treatment after that.

Of course a Thermomix allows you to use the whole fruit. I used twelve oranges, zesting them first because one is a frugal housewife. You just slice off the rind and pith (teehee, pith), cut them in half and poke out the seeds.

Put those in the Thermomix jug, added three quarters of a cup of white sugar and a tablespoon of zest, just because YOLO as I’m trying to stop my kids saying. I zapped that on speed seven for about a minute. I tasted it and it was still a little fibrous, though the sugar had dissolved. Another minute made it better. Look at that colour.

I poured it into a metal dish and into the freezer overnight.

This morning it was rock solid. And I learnt a lesson, dear reader. If you insert your favourite Wusthoff cooking knife that you got as a wedding present twenty years ago into a bowl of frozen blood orange juice and attempt to leverage out a chunk, you will snap off the tip.

This will cause you to stand aghast for several minutes, wondering where all the air in the room went. My favourite knife. What I should have done, and subsequently did, was to run the knife under hot water, jam it in the ice and wiggle it to the bottom in several places until it starts breaking up. It wouldn’t have killed me to let it soften for a few minutes either.

I got the chunks back in the Thermomix and very cautiously turned it on at a slow speed. The idea is to break up the ice crystals. The smaller the ice crystals, the smoother the consistency. You can achieve small ice crystals by freezing the stuff really quickly like they did the last time I watched Mastchef some years ago with a flash freezer. Or you can churn it while frozen, like you do in an icecream maker. The Thermomix did a fair job (two minutes at speed four with a lot of poking with the spatula through the lid) but it might have been better if I’d let it soften some more. Or if I’d put a few egg whites in the initial mix. You could serve it at this point.

I spooned it into iceblock moulds, the kids prefer to eat it that way.

The Moose happened to be around, he had a late start due to having to be in town at 10.30 for a giant music rehearsal today. I gave him a taste. He pulled a face. “Ooh, it’s a bit sour,” he opined. “It isn’t strawberry, it’s blood orange.” “Oh, in that case it’s great. Can I have some more?”. It’s all in the marketing.

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July 16, 2013

Thermomix Friands – Orange and Poppyseed

My Thermomix had its own holiday while we were away. It went to visit a friend and made a variety of beverages and butter and many other things that I’ll find out about next time I barge into her house and demand she makes me a coffee. I missed it as soon as I got home, I had to go and retrieve it and immediately make porridge and yoghurt and raisin bread in it. Not all at the same time. Over several hours. I know I’ve discussed friands before, but they’re just one more thing that’s a lot easier in the Thermomix.

The order is a little different to doing it by hand, as are the ingredients. You put in the jug 200 grams of white sugar and 110 grams of blanched almonds. Zap it, zap it good. Probably about speed eight for a good thirty seconds. Rub the mixture between your fingers after it stops, if you want it finer go another thirty seconds. It depends whether you’re using caster sugar or regular, or slivered almonds. You want really fine. Tip this mixture into a bowl.

Put 125 grams of sweet butter into the jug and melt it at 60 degrees and speed two for about three minutes. Actually, I got this completely the wrong way round today, I did the butter first. I had almond meal, last time I went up to the IGA that’s all they had. I forgot about turning the sugar into icing sugar. So after the butter had melted I put in the two hundred grams of sugar and kept it at sixty degrees for another three minutes on speed three to dissolve it.

Then you put back in the sugar and almond mixture, plus three quarters of a cup of plain flour, half a teaspoon of baking powder, three eggs and your flavouring. I’m doing orange and poppyseed because blood oranges have just come in. I want to make something with the insides of the blood oranges, so in pursuit of my snout to tail philosophy when it comes to citrus fruit I’m saving the zest. Ignore the instructions for doing citrus zest in the Thermomix, you need a Microplane. You can’t Thermomix everything, you know.

I tend to use a lot of citrus zest, so the zest of twelve blood oranges should disappear quickly from the neat little glass dish I’ve stored it in. You want the zest of two oranges for this recipe, it’s about a tablespoonful. You also want a tablespoon of poppy seeds, put those in the jug too. Have I got everything? Sugar, butter, almond meal, flour, baking powder, egg, orange zest, poppy seeds. All right. I zapped it on speed eight while looking through the hole in the lid, stopping when it looked well and truly mixed.

I did use the friand tin this time, they do look a lot more appealing in that shape.

As you only get six to a tin I also used a patty cake tin inherited from my Nanna. I put the tins in the oven for a couple of minutes, then cut off a chunk of cold butter to grease them with. I’ve tried the spray oils and they don’t work as well as butter. You have to be a bit careful releasing the friands, wait until they’re cool and maybe run a knife around them if you can’t ease them out.

I overcooked them a little because I like the tops crunchy. Not that I get to eat them. They really are quite a bit lighter in texture done this way than by my old fashioned manual labour way. I going to have to think of some other flavours than orange and poppyseed and pistachio. If I did hazelnut and cocoa powder that would be a Nutella flavoured friand. Now there’s a thought. Wow, stream of consciousness invention right there.

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July 15, 2013

Kosciusko Chalet

There’s a few different ways to get the snow experience. You could rent your skis in Sydney (remember when you rented your skis and outfit at Rebel?). Then drive up after work on Friday and stay at the caravan park at Jindabyne and drive up to the snow with all your gear every day (that relationship didn’t last). You could do what our friends the Larry Adlers did and gather some buddies and hire rooms at a lodge so they could hang out after skiing together. As this was at Charlotte Pass the only catch with this is you have to bring in most of your food. There is a shop at Charlotte’s, but after it has sold you a joke hat and a bag of freckles it has done its dash. The nearest IGA is about an hour away by oversnow at Perisher.

Or you could utterly lash out and stay at the Kosciusko Chalet.

Man I love staying here. Especially when remembering staying at the caravan park at Jindabyne. You walk twenty metres up the hill to pick up your gear. You ski out the door of the chalet in the morning after a hearty buffet breakfast to the T bar. And because my husband currently has two jobs, we stayed in the Tower Suite. See that round bit at the top of the chalet? That’s the Tower. The round room is a sitting room with excellent views of the mountain, there’s a double bedroom and a kids bedroom where three kids occupy some pretty squeaky beds. Also a bathroom with a fairly tiny but serviceable bath and one of those hotel showers that make you leap about as the temperature touches all points between ten and eighty degrees at random. It’s gorgeous. I can see the top of the T bar from my bed.

We first started staying here when the kids were small, four six and eight. The chalet has a kids club that has actually deteriorated a little in recent times. They used to have a huge room with all the consoles and lots of equipment. They’re now in a quite tiny room with just a Wii, but the staff are still lovely. Anyway, when the kiddies got tired or snow down their fronts you could ski them up to the door, click off your skis, hand in the kid and ski off again all in the space of about five minutes. It was very easy to check on them every hour to see if they’d recovered enough to come back out again. They also take them off your hands at 5.30pm to feed them and you can have them back at 9pm after you’ve enjoyed a three course meal with your dear husband. Awesome.

This year the weather was spectacular for the first time in my skiing experience, so we barely used the kids club at all.

Sunshine all round, cold enough to keep the snow frozen. So it may be that our time at the Chalet is coming to an end and we should start skiing somewhere that has more than two lifts servicing the mountain. I’ll miss the massive stone, the somewhat leaky windows, the gluhwein, the young cheery slightly inept staff, the relative lack of teenagers (most people bring their own), coaxing my screaming knees up the carved wooden staircase at the end of the day, no queues! Maybe we could go for one more year.

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July 9, 2013

Skiing at Charlotte’s Pass

You’re not going to get a blow by blow account of this holiday, dear reader, because we’re at the highest ski resort in Australia and there isn’t any phone reception. None at all. Except at the top of the T bar and if you think I’m going to blog from there, you have another think coming. So we’ve forked out for twenty five minutes of wifi so the husband can check his emails and the Muffet can water her virtual plants.

The one hundred and fifty people who warned me to be careful of my ankle will be greatly relieved to hear I’m still on two feet. Though I do emit small cries of anguish while going up the stairs, but that’d be knees, not ankles. They’ll recover as soon as I stop skiing, and the pain is greatly alleviated by alcohol. You’ll also be pleased to see that there’s enough snow.

There’s a fair bit of shrubbery poking through it, but that’s fairly soft. I’m working on my technique, especially as there’s a couple here that we know who look like something out of a Larry Adler commercial, skis always together, always have their weight on the uphill ski. They make an almost vertical slope look like a stroll down to the shops, rather than the crouching, flailing, clouds of snow, adrenaline pumping epic adventure I make of it. I’m taking on board some advice the Horror’s instructor gave him. He said imagine there’s a killer worm in you boots. You need to squash him against the front if your boots before he wriggles up and eats your knees. Squash that worm.

We’re also prepared for the conditions. It’s pretty fabulous up here at the moment, but the temperature hasn’t got above zero yet. You want all you skin covered.

I’ve also learnt a valuable lesson from the children. If they say “hey Mum, I’ve found a great new way through the trees!”, on no account follow them. Death and despair and getting your skis stuck in a snowdrift when you panic and veer away from a jump will follow.

Look how beautiful it is up at the top of the chairlift.

That’s after you finally get up here. It’s never crowded at Charlotte’s Pass, so the lifties are very kind and slow down or stop the chairlift for young kids, slowboarders, nervous nannas, anyone really. Instead of mowing them down like they do at more commercial resorts.

Well I’ve checked the kids into kids dinner, us adults get a three course dinner while they watch some lame fairy movie, as the Moose would put it. All I need to do is put on my shoes and howl my way down two flights of stairs. I do love skiing, especially at Charlotte’s. I just wish my joints would stop acting their age.

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July 5, 2013

Frosting a Window plus a spot of Amateur Plumbing

I’ve had one of those efficient days. I blame my husband. He was working from home today, so I kind of felt like I had to look busy. So not only did I do much washing, cleaning the fridge and packing for skiing, I also attended to some of those little odd jobs that I feel I’ve are part of my remit.

We have a bathroom on our back verandah. I had it renovated two years ago, and it was fully as painful as the current indoor bathroom refresh. It has a door leading outside to the washing line with a large pane of glass in it, giving a clear view of our neighbour’s back verandah. Conversely, giving them a clear view of us showering. I can’t help notice that they’ve put up a wooden screen.

See? On top of the fence, on the left. Now I don’t really care if they see me showering or not, but my parents in law are coming to mind the house and animals while we’re away next week, and they may be more shy and retiring. And they don’t have a choice, if they showered in the indoor bathroom the would be water everywhere due to the continuing lack of a shower screen. So it is time to frost that window.

Yes, the door was supposed to have a frosted window, but the bathroom people, when met with that suggestion, just gave a resigned shrug. Hardier souls would have taken it up with them, but not me. No. I waited two years, then got me up to Bunnings for a $16.99 roll of window frosting. It’s next to the fly screens.

It’s easier than covering books with contact, that’s for sure. You wash the window with a spray bottle of water and your trusty Enjo window washer.

You discover that the glass is already covered with a plastic film. I knew the outside was, because it’s starting to decay and flake off. So out with the Stanley knife, after you’ve retrieved it from under your daughter’s pile of “craft” on her desk and gently trace around the frame, then it just peels off in a rather satisfying manner. You cut a piece of film slightly larger than the window, then lay it on the floor. You peel off the backing and spray the sticky side with water, which appears to stop it curling up on itself like contact does. You then press it onto the window and squeegee it down to remove any bubbles. I don’t usually say this, but et voila!

Flushed with success, I turned my handy attention to the next family complaint. This was that the new tap in the new sink in the new bathroom was a bit too enthusiastic. Could I get the plumber back in to have it tamed down? Not on your nelly, I’ll have a crack it myself.

Have you looked under your bathroom sink? Chances are you’ll find that the taps are attached to woven metal pipes which have their own taps.

You need to keep an eye on the hot pipe, they need to be replaced about every five years because they rust. Also a simple Bunnings job. Anyway, turn the sink tap on full in the cold position, then turn the tap under the sink counterclockwise until the pressure drops to your satisfaction. Do the same for the hot side. Plumbers, who needs them!

I also finished a kind of crocheted mitten without any fingers, it’s more of a tube with a thumb hole really, and now I just need to make one more for my left hand. But instead I’m making a pompom for the Muffet’s beanie. I can’t tick off too many things on the list, I’ll be setting my standards too high.

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July 4, 2013

Butterscotch

We’re driving to the snow on the weekend. Yes, yes, yes about the falling over, I’ll try not to. Like I mean to. Anyway, it’s a bit of a drive and I have quite the knack for falling asleep while driving. It does mean that I have no problem getting to sleep at night, but a bit problematic on a long drive. So I suck on sweets for my bit, and avoid driving at afternoon tea time and after nine. My sweet of choice is Koolmints, but I thought I’d make my own this time.

Had a look at making humbugs, but that seems to involve third degree burns, so I had a go at butterscotch. Here’s the Women’s Weekly recipe.

This cookbook was published just as Australia was going metric, so the back of the book has handy conversion tables to metric. A pound of sugar is 453.6 grams. Quarter of a pint of water is 142 millilitres. Who knows how much a dessert spoon is, I just used my breakfast spoon, and anyway the glucose is so viscous you’re never going to accurately measure it except by weight. And why are they mixing weight and volumes? Instead of half a cup of brown sugar, I used half brown sugar and half dark muscovado sugar. Partially because I like the rich treacly taste, partly because I’ve run out of brown sugar.

So you put all the ingredients in a saucepan, and bring it to the boil while stirring with your trusty wooden spoon. After the butter has melted and the sugar is dissolved, you turn up the heat and leave it alone. Well, you put the sweets thermometer in. That little eight dollar miracle takes all the fear and loathing out of sweet making. It’ll start bubbling up, adjust the heat so it doesn’t bubble right on out and all over your stovetop. But once you’ve got it bubbling about half way up the saucepan and the sweet thermometer measuring away, you can leave it alone.

It took about half an hour to get up to that temperature, even with obsessively watching the temperature. You want it at 290F, I’m going Fahrenheit because that side of the thermometer is easier to read. As soon as it touches that temperature (hard crack if you’re doing it the old fashioned way), take it off the heat. With great foresight, you’ve put out a biscuit tray covered in baking paper. Slosh that boiling toffee all over it.

It takes a surprisingly small amount of time to cool down, only as long as yet another irate phone call to a bathroom supply shop. Try to cut it up before it solidifies, and use your largest knife, you need leverage.

If you don’t want it to all stick together you’ll need to wrap it which does sound like a pain in the neck. I just cut strips of baking paper and rolled them up, then packed them in small ziplock bags.

Here’s the important step, hide them from the children. The leftovers went in seconds.

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