In the major house clean after the holidays, T. found a newsletter from 2005 which commented on the torrential, Ark-inducing rainfall. Those were the days, and the return of the rain to this rather dry state – this week’s “conga line of storms” as one forecaster deliriously burbled – is still too much of a novelty to provoke much complaint about the snarled traffic and the inconvenience of a sudden ploot, as the Scots call a downpour (though we WILL complain about the eejits who don’t understand that one cannot drive a wet road at the same speed as one dry). At work this week, D. discovered that his thick wool cardigan indeed smells quite like wet sheep when thoroughly drenched. Funny, that.
It’s always nice to do a bit of baking when being outdoors is not an option, and D. took the opportunity to use a recent gift of an Angel Food pan for the first time. Whether it was the lemon zest he added to the carefully folded froth or the fact that he – strictly following a recipe for once, since he’d not made an angel food cake for over 20 years – used Egg Beaters instead of cracking fresh eggs, or the Egg Beaters had frozen previously — something made this cake weirdly almost soggy, with huge bubbles, and an appalling…coarseness. Since an angel food cake is normally light, airy, firm, yet tender of crumb, this was a definite MAJOR fail – the first of the New Year, which amused us greatly. It was frustrating, but angel food is just such an easy cake that we were sort of gobsmacked that it had somehow not come out right. From Cook’s Illustrated we learned that Egg Beaters are twice pasteurized… of course, we checked with them AFTER we’d made our error. Well. Live and learn. We have some ideas for what to do next time, and will begin by using a different recipe, in-shell, non-carton egg whites… and going from there.
As you can see, it looks more like bread than cake…
At least our Lavender Lemon Shortbread turned out. Of course, D. doubled both the lemon and the lavender because he feared they’d simply taste like really rich sugar cookies if he didn’t. T. felt the spices fought each other, and would have preferred one merely complementing the other, OR, Lavender sugar cookies and Lemon shortbread, separately. D. found them reasonably tasty, and T. decided, as she often does, that they’d be improved with a tart lemon frosting glaze. Lemon juice, with a soupçon of icing sugar, covers a multitude of sins.
All that needs to be added is a cuppa and a fire, and all’s well that ends well. Well…mostly. Happily D. got a new EvenGrind – a hand-powered coffeebean grinder – and while he is quite pleased with it, he and a coworker have discussed making it work with an electric drill… so, once the whirring stops, and the cuppa’s brewed, THEN all is well. Apparently.
So. A fire, a cookie, a game, and thou. Looking back at every January, wet or dry, we’re pretty much the same as we always are. Cheers to that.
Those cookies sound like an edible spa experience!
Hello you two I do visit once in awhile. I love those cookies. I was on one of those islands outside of Seattle in Sept and went to a lavender store and bought some cookies like that. Angel food cake is so good, one is tempted to compress it and eat too much. Things are very mild here in Alaska. We have rain and only a small thin layer of snow. It’s another warm winter like last year. All if fine with me and it looks like you both are doing well. Nan York