mutteringhousewife

June 6, 2013

Bathroom Progress

It’s not like it’s a complicated bathroom. It’s a straight rip out, reinstall stuff in exactly the same spot only new. Yes, we did discover that the floor waste wasn’t at the lowest point in the room and just emptied under the house anyway, and we did need to cut the giant architrave around the window to accommodate the shower screen. But why does it feel like this may be the first bathroom this team has ever done?

I get that there’s a lot of tradesmen involved. I’ve met Terry, Stu, Andrew, John, Sam and Alfio. I didn’t quite catch the names of the demolition team, but I think they were both called Scott. And Crystal, the site supervisor, has popped off for a week’s holiday, the slacker, so that doesn’t help. But I’m up to my fourth schedule version in this three week job. They’re not even bothering writing them down any more. At least today’s revision involved an acceleration.

I was expecting the carpenter, he was the one finally tasked to remove the window architrave after the demolition Scotts and the renderer passed on it. He actually arrived in the expected window between seven and seven thirty this morning. “Where’s the plumber?” he asked. What an excellent question. He was supposed to be here too, putting in the bath so the carpenter could build a frame around it. Fortunately he appeared while I was dropping off kids. “Where’s the bath waste?” he asked. It was a day for excellent questions. A text to Tony the bathroom supply chap brought it by express delivery half an hour too late. They managed to insert it anyway.

I was just stepping out of the house for a delightful lunch with friends when my mobile rang. It was Sam the tiler. “I’ll be there in half an hour” he said, not on Saturday as advertised. I put the keys in the tiny safe attached to the front door and advised him of the code. I arrived home to the distinctive smell of polymers cross linking. It’s been a while, so I can’t pick the exact chemicals, but I’m feeling like its an acrylate of some sort. I’ll have to check with the husband, he’s the one with the PhD in polymer chemistry. Anyway, he’s put a fan in front of the bathroom to help dry it and to push the pong out the denuded bathroom window. “Where’s the tiles?” he asked. I knew that one, out on the back verandah. “Ah yes, but where is the capping?” Cursing a little, I texted Tony again. “Where’s the capping tiles?” I texted. “And also, peeping into Chapter 2, is the vanity ready?”. Trying to preempt further snappy texts next week. It’ll be arriving tomorrow lunchtime. I wonder if it would have without any nifty phone work?

As I farewelled Sam, he paused to criticise the key safe. “Three digits no good”, he opined. “Any teenager, half an hour to get into it. Four digit much better.” I removed the keys from it immediately. That’ll show those teenagers.

I thought it prudent to close the dogs out of this bit of the house. I can just see them both up to their furry little ankles stuck in the waterproofing. I have enough going on without having to call in a dog extractor.

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June 5, 2013

A Musical Interlude

There’s a lot of music going on in this house. And most of it isn’t the sit down the young man and don’t get up until I’ve heard an hour of Hanon type stuff, which is why I think it’s working.

Oh, I started off trying to do it that way. I am a believer in starting kids off on the piano so that they can get a feel for reading music, using both hands, having more than one thing happening at once. Unfortunately there’s no easy way to learn the piano, it’s a bit of a slog for a couple of years and that at an age when they’d rather be doing almost anything else, including cleaning their rooms. If you can stick that out, and I highly recommend using quite a lot of bribery, you’re away.

You then need to get them involved in group music, and that could be at school. At the first school my kids went to, there was just the choir. And there was only a choir because me, another mum and a passing piano teacher decided that there would be, none of the actual teachers thought they’d like to be involved. It was quite painful for me, as I don’t actually like children that much en masse, every rehearsal I was worried I’d end up tied up in a cupboard somewhere while the kids set fire to the hall. It did get quite a lot of kids performing music, though, so the aim was achieved.

It’s much at easier at the fancy private schools I ended up sending my kids to. You have to make an effort not to be involved in music at these places. Because I’d put in the slog and my kids could read music, they had no trouble picking up the clarinet, the flute and the bassoon in descending order. The Moose didn’t join the choir initially because he found the public school one almost as traumatic as I did, but by the time he’d reached high school he’d got over that. The other two joined immediately, plus every other ensemble on offer. The Moose didn’t really enjoy the clarinet either, even though it got him into the jazz band. He campaigned long and hard to be allowed to learn the drums. “When you’re in high school”, was my technique for putting him off. What do you know, eventually he did go to high school, despite my confident prediction that one of teachers would slaughter him by halfway through sixth grade, and I had to come good. Now he’s playing percussion in the jazz band and the intermediate wind orchestra and loving it quite a lot.

What I’ve discovered is that once you’ve given them that initial push and then encouraged them to look at what’s available, you then let them choose. Muffet has quit her choir because the singing at her high school seems to be run by a series of unimaginative old bats and it’s no fun, and I’m behind her all the way. What is fun at her school is the really excellent pipes and drums band that she’s had a couple of pops at. Initially she had a go at the drumsticks that have fluffy pompoms on them that you twirl and get tangled up behind your right ear if you’re the Muffet. That didn’t work out, so she took a breather for six months. Then she decided to learn the snare drum and, despite the agony of listening to her practise, I’m all for it. It could have been a lot worse, she could have chosen the bagpipes.

Between the three of them, they’re playing ten instruments if you count piano twice and percussion three times. I went to a middle school concert last Thursday, a RockFest last night and am attending a junior school concert tonight, which is why I’m eating a bowl of vegetable soup at half past four in the afternoon prior to picking up the Muffet from pipes and drums practise, inserting some sushi into her and taking her to the boys school so she can be a supportive sister and make many superior comments about the lax techniques of the flute and sax players.

I also had a rehearsal on Monday night and have a committee meeting for my own choir on Thursday night, because I love being involved in music myself. It does take a fair bit of parental commitment, and can be expensive if you’re going the private lesson route, but most choirs are cheap and a lot of school bands don’t require you to be having ongoing lessons. It’s probably good for some parts of their brain if you’re doing a cost benefit analysis, but the best bit is it keeps them off the streets, they hang out with kids older and younger than them, and they love it. If only I could persuade them to sing madrigals with me…

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June 4, 2013

Extra Chocolatey Brownies. With Extra Chocolate

I was going to tell you an amusing story about my early morning encounter with a range of neighbourhood pets, but it was thirty six hours ago now and the immediacy is gone. It also reflects poorly on my housekeeping and anyway the swelling has started to subside. So instead I’ll be telling you about a new brownie recipe I tried on the weekend. It was very chocolatey.

There are so very many brownie recipes, not all of them very good, so once you have a tried and tested one that is fairly well received it’s hard to deviate from it. But I trust Tish Boyle, and I’d been waiting for a party or something to try her Double Chocolate Brownies out on because it looked so rich. This weekend there was such an event, there were two little nieces with birthdays this week, so a family gathering was called.

This is a walkover for the Thermomix, but if you don’t have one you could always mess about with double boilers and bowls and such. Melt together 150 grams of terrific chocolate (I’m using 70% Callebaut drops) with 180 grams of sweet butter. I’m not game yet to use my homemade butter on such a butter rich recipe, we’ll work our way up. I’ve used it in an oatmeal biscuit and it was completely acceptable. In the Thermomix you put the temperature on about 60 degrees and set it going for about four minutes on speed two. Or however long it takes to melt.

You then need to crack out your KitchenAid and slot in the whisk. If you’re doing the lot the Thermomix, scoop out the chocolate butter mix into a bowl, wash the jug and dry it. Stick in the butterfly. Beat together three eggs, a cup of caster sugar, a third of a cup of brown sugar and two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Beat it oh so very much, you won’t be doing this with a fork. After some minutes it will be thick and light coloured and will form a ribbon dripping from the whisk when you lift the KitchenAid head. Pour in the chocolate mixture. For me it sank straight to the bottom, meaning that mixing it gently with the paddle had little to no effect. Use a wooden spoon. Add a cup of white flour and fold that gently in. Stir in 180 grams of chocolate bits, you could use the same brand as you melted earlier or something lighter. Scrape the lot into a lined nine inch square cake pan.

In theory you could bake it at 160 degrees Celsius for almost an hour, or until the skewer test says that it’s done. In practise you could put up with the Horror from Outer Space hopping up and down beside you saying “shouldn’t we go now shouldn’t we go now shouldn’t we go now we’re going to be late shouldn’t we…” for as long as you can stand, in my case about half an hour – my stamina has built up over the years, take it out of the oven half cooked and finish baking it at your sister’s place.

The what I recommend you don’t do is haul it out of the pan and immediately attempt to cut it up so that people can start eating it. It isn’t interested. It will sag and crumble. That didn’t stop about a third of it being eaten before it cooled down. Cool it completely, and maybe even wait a day. Then it will look like this.

It’s got a crunchy crust and a very rich and dense inside, but not wet or too fudgy. The high cocoa chocolate was perfect for this, it’s just gorgeous. You really could leave out the extra chocolate chips and bung in walnuts or nothing at all and it would still be a commanding presence in the brownie lexicon. However it’s no good for the schoolgirl figure at all. Perhaps if I ice my ankle some more I could go to the gym in the morning.

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May 31, 2013

These bathrooms take time

Do all tradies smoke? Are they given a carton of Winnie Reds at the beginning of their apprenticeship? Are there courses at TAFE on how to suck on a fag while checking your texts? Anyway, all the ones that have been involved in my bathroom so far have been. Even the suave purveyor of fine bathroom products, who used to be in the bathroom building business himself. Actually, I tell a lie. Crystal, the site supervisor, doesn’t appear to. She used to sell bathroom products, but got into bathroom building. Bathrooms seem to be a thing that doesn’t let you go. Can’t understand it myself.

You’ll be pleased to know that the bathroom bits and pieces have arrived. I keep looking at the new bath, perched as it is on a box on the verandah. Is it smaller than the old one? The measurement says I should be able to lie down in it, but it looks small to me. Then again, the Muffet thinks it’s bigger than the last one. All a matter of perspective.

Jack hammering off all the tiles in the bathroom had its consequences. It’s opened up a Dr Who style crack in the Muffet’s bedroom that she’s trying not to think about.

The bricks around the shower seem to be in the last stages of collapse.

Crystal assures me she sees this all the time. She tells me that it’s only the outer lining of bricks in a double brick house that are sturdy, the inner layer are just… She waves her hands about. Not terribly reassuring.

We had the renderers today. It’s not a terribly large bathroom, yet they’d crammed in a work table and two workers in there, wedged in by a wheelbarrow full of cement.

There was a lot of grunting and puffing and slapping about of cement. I think they’d puff less if they cut back on the fags. Apparently they were able to cobble the brickwork back together again. They did forget to take off the window architrave, as had the demolition crew before them. The unflappable Crystal assures me that the next lot will sort it. I’m guessing they also meant to leave the door off.

Four days into the job and we’re two days behind schedule. Lucky I’ve got another bathroom to ablute in. Meanwhile I’ve got all the doors and windows open to try to get rid of the fug of smoky, dusty, hardworking tradesmen. Should be fresh again by Monday.

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May 29, 2013

Thermomix Curry Vegetable Soup

I pay attention to my little blog project, you know, and I get a lot of quiet enjoyment reading the search terms that bring it to people’s attention. Today’s favourite search term was “thick housewife”, so someone’s profiling me. One that comes up surprisingly often is “Thermomix vegetable soup”. It is one of the things the Thermomix does effortlessly, but I find it hard to get excited about vegetable soup and am still working my way through many permutations of it. Here’s today’s one.

One of the first things I made in the Thermomix was a curry paste. It wasn’t anything fancy, just zapped together chillies, lemongrass, ginger and garlic with some fish sauce and cumin and coriander powder. From memory I don’t think I cooked it at all. I later made a much fancier paste for Adam Liaw’s laksa, but that’s nestling in the freezer, waiting for the next laksa to happen along. I chucked a tablespoon of that in the jug, along with three large button mushrooms, a wilted stick of celery, the white bit of a leek and a chunk of garlic butter that I’d whipped up earlier in the week because the Horror from Outer Space has decided that this weeks lunch shall be garlic bread. That makes it non vegan, but you could use a splash of oil instead. I also added some stalks of my new favourite vegetable, fennel. The smell of raw fennel makes me feel a bit nauseous, but I’m finding that it adds a complex, slightly earthy note to my usual mirepoix blend. Zapped it for a few seconds, scraped down the walls then cooked it on Varoma temperature and speed two for four minutes.

I then added in a chopped carrot and about two handfuls of chopped pumpkin, also a tin of chickpeas. I lifted out a teaspoon of the cooked mixture and decided to add a little more oomph with some salt and a tablespoon of black Chinese vinegar. I cooked it at one hundred degrees for eighteen minutes on reverse and speed one. I’m not going to show you a photo because it looks like sick, but I think I’m getting there. You can cook quite a thick mixture in the Thermomix, it doesn’t have to be soupy at all.

The thing with vegetable soup is it can taste pretty boring and a lot like diet food. I always think that it would be better with a ham hock in it. But I’m setting myself the test to make it vegetarian and make it flavoursome, and the curry paste helped a lot with that. Actually, fish sauce makes it non vegetarian, I might have to make a vegetarian curry paste. Not that I’m vegetarian, I just think that kind of limit presents an interesting challenge. You need that Thai thing of a balance of sweet, sour, salty and something else that escapes my mind. Bitter? Crunchy? Umami? Hot? You get the sweet from carrots and onions. A bit of salt, herbs and spices and chillies help. I like to keep some texture in the soup, so chickpeas are good for that, barley would also work well. Don’t suggest lentils! Those things are lethal. Maybe I should go searching for Thermomix vegetable soup.

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May 28, 2013

Goodbye Bathroom

I know my limits, sometimes, and I know I don’t do renovations. I’ve lived through my parents’ renovations and my Nanna’s renovations and it’s not for me. My neighbour nearly had a nervous breakdown doing hers and a friend said her renovation was far worse than having cancer – speaking from experience – and had permanently warped her view of mankind.

I only renovate when the house portion in question has actually stopped functioning. A couple of years ago it was time to bid goodbye to the old kitchen and bathroom. I had to send my husband to Afghanistan for six months to get it done with the least discussion. I got in a kitchen and bathroom company and told them to tell me what I wanted. I agreed, with the proviso that whatever they installed had to be extremely hard wearing. I don’t want to have to do it twice.

The inside bathroom had a toilet which had been condemned by the last plumber as being unrepairable, a rotting vanity, a peeling bath and a completely unworkable shower curtain arrangement.

A couple of chaps turned up this morning to remove it. “Expect them between nine and ten” said the bathroom company. Which, as you all know means that’s the exact time of the day they’re guaranteed not to turn up. They arrived at ten forty eight, with a gripping story of flat tyres and bent axles. “Are you keeping the bath?” they asked. What, the cast iron one with the wobbly feet, the chipped enamel, that sucks all the heat out of the water? No way. “Put it out on the grass, and I reckon someone will come past and take it”. It lasted less than ten minutes before it had a new and grateful owner. Sucker.

One of the practicalities of a renovation is stopping the dogs from escaping. I stayed with them out on the back verandah. Harry’s normal tactic for removing an obstacle in his path is to sit beside it and determinedly lick it. He went one step further with the cardboard box I’d put up to block the dog door.

To entertain myself, I went on with my black and white necklace. I wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped.

After much jack hammering and smoko breaks and the fire alarm going off and wheelbarrowing, the old bathroom was evicted.

Apparently the tiles had been simply glued on to the original hexagonal tiles underneath, explaining why the bathroom floor was higher than that of the rest of the house. I was slightly tempted to keep some of the original tiles, but what would I do with them? They’re just octagonal and terracotta coloured. Let them go.

And now I must call the bathroom fitting company who were going to deliver my new bathroom last Friday. Then Monday lunchtime. Then how about Wednesday? No, I said, I really need them Tuesday at the latest. Oh all right, you can have it Tuesday. I called them at lunchtime to check my bathroom was on its way. “Yes, the truck will be there a bit after four”. Here it is dark, the children full of sausages and gone to tennis and nothing to fill the aching void of bathroom. This is why I don’t do renovations. Look out, I’m putting on my terse voice.

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May 27, 2013

Butter

Those of you who are trying to avoid thinking about buying a Thermomix, avert your eyes now. I made butter today. It was a bit more fraught than the simple instructions may have one think.

The simple instructions are as follows. Insert 600 ml of cream in the Thermomix jug. Insert the butterfly attachment, pictured below.

Beat until it turns into butter, then rinse with cold water. Well, that sounds ridiculously easy. All I need is some cream and receptacle in which to place my creation. The chain store House actually stocks butter dishes, so I purchase on of those. I could hunt down the butter dish my Nanna used to keep her butter in, she never put it in the fridge, but knowing her she probably got it from Copperart, so wouldn’t think it would be worth it. And some cream. I don’t want to use just Dairy Farmers, even though my local IGA sells it in two litre jugs, I feel like I could just buy Allowrie butter instead and save myself the trouble. I also don’t want to use the extra fancy small pots of high fat cream you can get either, because then the price starts getting a bit ridiculous. I found some cream that met my specifications at Harris Farm for three dollars a pot.

Well now, into the jug and we’ll have butter in no time. I turn it onto speed four and prepare to wait the one to three minutes suggested in the recipe, when at about twenty seconds the machine starts making noises like a mouse being eaten by a not very hungry cat and stops. Err, it says. I have a look in the jug.

I’m pretty sure that’s not butter. It’s very thick whipped cream, which would be excellent if I were hosting a Devonshire tea. I try ringing my sister, who makes butter regularly. No answer. I breathe deeply and try to gather my thoughts by booking a large amount of weaponry for the Moose’s upcoming fourteenth birthday party. I look back in the jug, it’s still whipped cream that’s almost the consistency of butter, but I can’t kid myself that it is. I heave another sigh and decide to go on to the next step, which is to remove the butterfly and add five hundred grams of cold water and beat for a few seconds and speed four. This gives me a jug full of thin cream.

I’m jolted back to third year inorganic chemistry prac. I’m holding a centrifuge flask while a demonstrator looks at it with a puzzled frown. Everybody else’s flasks are lined with sparkly orange crystals. Mine is empty except for a thin green smudge around the equator of the flask. “I’ve never seen that happen before”, said the demonstrator. “And I’ve been watching what you were doing because I know what you’re like”. That incident did cause me to go on to study a branch of chemistry that didn’t involve handling actual chemicals during the course of which I met the man who later became my husband, but that’s not helping me make butter.

I fetch a third sigh and put the butterfly back in the jug. I crank the speed up to four and peek in the hole in the lid to see the thin cream swirling about. After about a minute the crossed fingers pay off and it starts getting chunky. At about two minutes I can see that I’ve definitely and against the odds made butter.

I poured off the buttermilk, added another five hundred millilitres of cold water, removed the butterfly and zapped it for a further ten seconds. Poured off that water too, but I don’t think I’ll keep that. Buttermilk on the left.

I poured it through the basket that comes with the jug. What you do next is gather the butter up as if its dough and start squeezing the water out. It’s rather enjoyable and I’m sure it’s good for the skin. You quickly have a surprisingly yellow log of fresh butter. I weighed mine and it’s 400 grams, so that makes the price of it slightly better than Lurpack and far less air miles.

I don’t think I’ll use it in biscuit making because I’m not sure of the water content. I did put some of it and some of the buttermilk into a banana cake just now, and that seems to have turned out rather excellently. I finally got on to my sister who said her experience has been rather mixed in the butter making department too, and also that she adds oil and salt to hers and uses it as sandwich butter, which sounds like a very fine idea. This batch I’ll test out in various guises, and if it’s no good for baking it’s still not to late to blend it into something more spreadable. I tell you what I’ve discovered already, she said incredibly smugly, it’s very good on a homemade roll with a slice of cheese.

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May 24, 2013

Yoghurt

You know when you get a gadget, such as, say, a Thermomix, you have something in mind that you really want to make with it, that really tipped you of in deciding to get it (not that I decided). The demonstrators all push making risotto in the Thermomix as being the thing you’d do with it, so easy, perfect every time. I have no interest in risotto. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that my family don’t eat it, they like something with a bit more texture. What got me is that you can make yoghurt in it.

Of course you don’t need a Thermomix to make yoghurt, but once you have one, why wouldn’t you? Well, as it turns out, because you also need a Thermoserve, and I could only get one by holding a party. They weren’t interested in me sticking skewers in my eyes instead, so a party I duly held and now I have my Thermoserve.

You also need milk, an existing yoghurt, and powdered milk, something I wasn’t even sure how to get. The only person I’ve ever seen use powdered milk is my grandma who manages to make a box of Diploma skim milk powder last a year and prefers her milk see through to go with her equally weak tea. I don’t know why she doesn’t just drink hot water while thinking of England. Our local IGA does carry one brand of full cream milk powder and it looks disturbingly like a formula tin.

Measuring it out I have flashbacks to preparing formula for my baby sister, scooping it out, smoothing across the top of the spoon. I could only have been seven or eight, my kids all insisted on only Mum in their babyhoods. You measure fifty grams of the milk powder into the Thermomix jug, along with 800 grams of full cream milk. You blend it on speed 7 for ten seconds to mix it all up. Then you cook it for thirty minutes on 90 degrees at speed 1.

You then allow it to cool down to body temperature. You could wait for twenty minutes, then stick the jug back into the machine where it will take a temperature reading. Or you could stick a sweets thermometer in there and watch as an unattractive skin forms across the surface.

Once it has cooled to thirty seven degrees Celsius you add three tablespoons of plain yoghurt, one that you like the taste of. I like both Jalna and Bornhoffen, but Coles has stopped stocking the lower fat Jalna yoghurt for reasons best known to their evil souls, so Bornhoffen it is. Blend it in for four seconds on speed four. Then cook for ten minutes at temperature 37 degrees on speed 1.

Meanwhile you pour boiling water into the Thermoserve to remove the dust and to heat it up. Tip the water out. Once the yoghurt is cooked, pour it into the warmed Thermoserve, or you can dick around with a yoghurt maker if you happen to have one.

I’m not naming my Thermomix, but I have named the Thermoserve. It’s the Magic Hat. You can’t tell me it isn’t.

You then wait for the bugs to work their magic on your cooked milk. The instructions also admonish one not to disturb the nascent yoghurt before eight hours is up. I wasn’t game to ignore those instructions, but I wonder what could possibly happen? I did check it after eight hours and it was still as runny as milk. So I left it overnight.

In the morning I had a peek at it. Still looked like milk. I tasted a bit with a spoon. Hmm. Tasted like milk that had been left on the heater overnight, and not in a good way. I stirred it a bit and hit a much thicker layer on the bottom. Here we go. I stirred the layers together, gingerly tasted it again and was relieved to find it tasted exactly like Bornhoffen plain yoghurt. Only a bit runnier.

Well, now to find a container to keep it in. I had saved a Jalna pot, but it smelled a bit funny, and I rather wanted my new creation to live in glass. I knew the Moose had one of my preserving jars in his bedroom, so I hurried thither, tipped out his collection of peach seeds onto his desk and filled the thing with boiling water. I guess it wasn’t a preserving jar after all, it cracked fairly comprehensively.

I managed to find another couple of jars, decanted the stuff and bunged it in the fridge. It’s still pretty runny, but should be just fine on my breakfast with a passionfruit or two. One does have the option of turning it into Greek yoghurt by pouring it into some muslin suspended over a bowl and leaving it for twenty four hours. It may come to that. But what do you do with the stuff left over? I know, you give it to whoever you can find sitting on a tuffet, eating curds and wishing she had something to go with them. Problem solved.

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May 23, 2013

Porridge Weather

It is porridge weather in the good old Ney of Syd. I know I’ve told you about Nepalese porridge before, but the Thermomix has taken it to new heights. It may be the perfect breakfast.

Cut a small Granny Smith apple in half and remove the seedy bit. Toss in the Thermomix jug. Add a handful of coconut flakes and a handful of hazelnuts. I do love hazelnuts. Zap very briefly. My Thermomix was so surprised that it threw the little plastic cup that goes in the lid into the toaster, but stand firm. You want it to go from this

To this. It should only take a couple of second, you don’t want to pulverise it.

Add in half a teaspoon of cinnamon, thirty grams of rolled oats and thirty grams of rolled spelt flakes, or all oats if you haven’t popped into the health food shop lately. Add three hundred grams of water and cook at 90 degrees on reverse speed two for about eight minutes. It looks a bit watery at first but firms up almost immediately. Sling it into a bowl and drizzle over a suspicion of maple syrup.

Gosh it was nice. And it didn’t turn into a cannon ball in my stomach, which is a first for porridge. It may have been the spelt, which is why I was using it. Or it may have been because I was dicing with the unknown and using Unstabilised Rolled Oats.

Unstabilised! Anything could happen! Look out, she’s gonna blow!

Also, clean up your jug quickly, that stuff sets like concrete.

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May 22, 2013

Another Banana Recipe

It turned out fine in the end, though it was touch and go for a while. There does seem to be an infinite amount of permutations to the banana cake recipe, but this one was a bit further out than most and I lost concentration half way through, as you do. It’s another one from the Black and White cookbook. I can sell you one if you’d like.

The Muffet only likes to eat bananas in company, so we have a surfeit of them from when the German girl came to stay. This morning I had six small spotty bananas, each with a halo of vinegar flies, begging to be put in a cake. I thought to myself, I thought, I’ll do a nice healthy banana loaf with half of those and something fancy with the other half.

The something fancy is a banana, raspberry and almond cake. The recipe suggest a bundt tin, but honestly, who has one of those? Well, I do actually, but I’m going to be making these in muffin form. Stuff gets a lot more eaten in muffin form.

You start off by creaming 200 grams of butter with a cup of caster sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Add a couple of eggs, beating after each addition. Stir in a large banana, or two small bananas in this case, and a half a cup of sour cream. Or some leftover creme fraiche from last week’s Thermomix demonstration and some accidental light sour cream. Stir in two and a half cups of flour and half a cup of almond meal. What you should do at this point is also stir in five teaspoons of baking powder to make up for the fact that you don’t use self raising flour. Or you could just proceed to folding in a cup and a half of frozen raspberries. You have quite a stiff dough at this point. And I would recommend folding them in, don’t try using the KitchenAid.

I got to the point of spooning them into the paper lined muffin tin before realising I’d left out the baking powder. So I heaved a deep sigh. And spooned in the baking powder. Of course with the raspberries already in there, you start breaking them up a fair bit when you mix that in. You could try cursing a bit. I didn’t find it helped, but it relieved the tension a little. Not as much as eating a handful of chocolate bits did.

Spoon the mixture into lined muffin tins, I got eighteen out of it. Bake for about half an hour at 180 degrees. Notice halfway through that black spots are appearing on your muffins. Google fruitlessly for a bit. Decide to make sure they brown quite a lot. I’m guessing it was due to improperly mixed in baking powder, but I’ll never know for sure. The browning certainly helped, but they weren’t the most attractive things.

I thought about icing them, but they were fairly strongly flavoured already. A dusting of icing sugar while still hot covers a multitude of sins. I do this by getting a chunk of icing sugar and rubbing it on a sieve over the muffins.

I thought seriously about firing them from the event I’ll be taking them to tomorrow, but then I tasted one. The least attractive one. Rich, moist, delicious, what a flavour combination. The icing sugar on top had formed a crunchy crust. The Muffet ate two before I could wrestle them away from her. That’s going on my deadly sixty. Hang on, wrong show.

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