Monstrous Mummies and Shattered Glass

Dish: Monstrous Mummies and Shattered Glass

Difficulty: Quite hard

Utensil's Used: Electric whisk, piping bags, rolling pin, candy thermometer

Cock Ups: 9, plus a bonus several days after the event (a new record?)

Recipe Book: Lily Vanilli in A Zombie Ate My Cupcake

Cooking: I was bought this book a long time ago, and figured it was time to crack it open for halloween. So, pairing up with Carole Heidi once again, we got set on what has been my most ambitious project yet.

I prepared my cupcakes before hand. They were meant to be chocolate, but… well, I didn't bother to measure the cocoa powder, so they were kind of just… off brown.

I did remember to put them in the fridge though, so they wouldn't melt the icing when we eventually got round to putting it on.

So the decorations for these required a few things I didn't have, and wasn't likely to use again. Fortunately, Carole - who's much more of a baker than me - was able to fill in a lot of the gaps. My mother provided a candy thermometer, and she was going to give me Cream of Tartar, until she realised it went out of date… nearly ten years ago. Oops. Disaster number 1.

The Candy Thermometer was good though.

Figuring that the sugar glass for the shattered glass recipe would take the longest, we started by lining a baking tray with tin foil. The recipe called for spray oil to line it. Carole left hers at home. Disaster 2. And then I dropped it on the floor (3).

Instead of oil, we decided to butter the tray.

Meanwhile I heated 500ml of water in a pan.

We measured out the sugar, all 785g. Well, not all. It was meant to be granulated, but I had an open 500g bag, so that wasn't going to work. (4) We topped it up with caster sugar which was slightly brown, tinting our glass when it was eventually set.

Then we added the 250ml of corn syrup. Which was actually 140ml, because that was the size of the bottle I had. (5)

The mix had to be heated to 150 degrees C. Before I had a Candy Thermometer, I was just going guess what temperature it was at. It's a good job I didn't, because it took a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would, even with the hob on full blast. I kept myself amused with the measurement labels (We were making Hard Crack, if you can't quite read the labels on the picture.)

This required constant stirring to stop it burning at the bottom of the pan.

So, while I was busy stirring, Carole got on to making the icing. She sieved (a Disaster Kitchen first, I didn't even know I had one!) 300g of icing sugar.

And whisked it together with 30g of butter (once she'd transferred everything into a slightly larger bowl 6). Despite it being in a larger bowl, whisking it up did create a plume of icing sugar that coated my kitchen like snow… (7) I was still cleaning it days later.

Once like breadcrumbs, she added 2tbsp of milk to the mixture and whisked it some more.

Meanwhile, the sugar glass finally got to it's Hard Crack temperature. I quickly and carefully (as per the recipe) poured it into the baking tray. Looks like urine. Yum!

I started off putting it on my windowsill, but we realised there was no way it would set in time for us to get to our restaurant for 8pm, so I covered it with a tea towel and left it outside in the cold to speed up the process.

Meanwhile, we got on to icing, which we fast learned was a fiddly job that made your hand ache like crazy.

But our mummies were starting to look like mummies.

I mixed up some red icing with red gel colouring for the eyes. Chocolate sprinkles made good pupils. Unfortunately, making the eyes was hampered by the fact that all my spoons were in the dishwasher - a dishwasher I swear I turned on, but came home to find complete with tab in the drawer, but not switched on. So, before I could spoon little balls of mixture into place, I had to do some impromptu washing up (8).

Meanwhile, we carefully tipped out the sugar glass and tried to peel off the tin foil. Which didn't go so well… (9)

With careful application of a rolling pin, we broke the glass up.

Which was very satisfying.

Shards were then selected to stick into the remaining cakes. For blood we used the jelly jam my mother made a few weeks ago from her home grown grapes.

Washing Up Required: Too much to even photograph.

Result: Not too bad, really.

The only problem was, the recipe said 'make a batch of cupcakes' and clearly Lily Vanilli's idea of a batch is much smaller than mine, for we had tonnes of sugar glass left over, and for the sugar glass to ft in my idea of a baking tray, it was layer so thick it almost destroyed the cupcakes. The shattered glass shards certainly weren't elegant and delicate like Lily's.

Taste Test: They were pretty tasty. The icing was very rich and the sugar glass had a nice toffee flavour, though it was far to thick and large to actually be eaten.

Overall Verdict: Really good fun, and satisfying to make. Next time I'll probably do quarter quantities of the sugar glass though...

Monstrous Mummies and Shattered Glass

A Final Disaster: I knew there was good reason I didn't write this up 'til now. Yesterday, I emptied the bin and was surprised to find a gloopy, oily mixture leaking out of the bag. It took me a while to figure out it was the melted sugar glass… Oops.

Easiest Ever Bread and Butter Pudding

Soo…. my biggest cock up on this was that I got halfway through this before remembering to take any pictures… yeah… I'm a genius.

I actually really hate bread pudding - I had some at school once and just found it disgusting. But the Boyfriend is a fan, so for a treat for him I decided to make some.

It basically involved cutting bread into triangles and putting custard on it.

The recipe I used called for fresh custard, but being me, I just used Ambrosia.

I then had to add some milk.

And mixed it all together, which was pretty disgusting. The bread didn't stir easily with the spoon, so I just had to get my hands in there.

Then basically pour it into a tub and put some raisins on it.

When the bread and butter pudding was cooked, I sprinkled the top with sugar and grilled it for a couple of minutes to caramelise and crisp it up.

Then served. With ice-cream, though the Boyfriend wanted custard. Many of my Facebook friends agreed with him in this regard, but I didn't see the point of having custard with a pudding that was ninety percent custard?? He seemed to enjoy it though, and I had a piece and didn't find it absolutely horrible, so yay!

(Recipe from BBC Good Food)

Apple Crumble

With all the apples on the tree in the garden, I thought it was probably time I picked some and cooked them. I had every intention of storing them, but to be honest, after giving myself repetitive strain injury peeling all the apples, I'd really worked up an appetite.

So, instead of storing them all in a handy ice-cream tub (thanks to the Boyfriend's mum for that tip), I decided to make crumble.

In the end my ratio of apple to topping was a bit out. And not in the good direction.

But it was still a pretty tasty reward for all that hard work peeling and stewing!

A New Addition to the Disaster Kitchen

Every so often I reach tipping point and feel the need to buy something new for my kitchen. A utensil or appliance I've cursed not having enough times to justify the expense. Not that this particular device was expensive - £15, but you get what you pay for. It's pretty cheap and tacky, and I'm slightly concerned by the fact that a part looks a bit bent. But we'll see how it goes - it's guaranteed for 12 months anyway.

Say hello to my new food processor!!

A kitchen appliance has never made me so happy.

Banana and Apple Loaf

Dish: Banana and Apple Loaf

Difficulty: Easy

Utensils Used: Grater, peeler, electric whisk, spatula

Cock Ups: A couple...

Recipe Book: Feeding Boys and a Firefighter (my boyfriend is a firefighter, so appropriate!)

Cooking: The Boyfriend was at work today, leaving me on my own all day. I thought I'd make something using the bananas we had that were starting to look a little past their best. I found a recipe for banana and apple loaf. Thinking the Boyfriend would be full of enthusiasm for this venture, I text him and got this response:

I probably didn't help matters by calling it 'bread' instead of 'loaf.' Oops.

Miracle upon miracles, I actually had all the ingredients for this, so no impromptu trip to Morrisons for eggs or anything.

I creamed together 150g of light muscovado sugar and 85g of butter.

Then added in two eggs to the mix.

I mashed up four bananas. One wasn't overripe, but the others were more than enough to give it that really banana-y flavour.

I then went to pick an apple from the tree in our garden.

You don't get fresher than that!

This was then grated into the banana and mixed in.

At this point I measured out some flour, only to realise it was a little.... alive. Checking the best before date was a bit of a shock. But it was okay, I had a back up. This one was unopened. And still out of date. I need to bake more often.

The flour was mixed in with some cinnamon and nutmeg.

I think my loaf tin must be miniature sized, as the mix didn't fit into it. So I got out another cake tin, greased it and put the remaining mix in that, then put both in the oven at 180 degrees to cook for 45 minutes. But I was at least smart enough to realise the shallower cake tin wouldn't take so long, and so did recall to get that out of the oven after about half an hour. Disaster, for once, avoided!

Washing Up Required: A modest amount. A few fiddly bits and bobs like the grater and peeler and the whisks.

Result: Two perfectly cooked cakes that smelled delicious coming out of the oven and slipped nicely out of their baking vessels without cracking or sticking.

Taste Test: Despite the Boyfriend's misgivings about the cake, he did eat a slice. And declared it... banana-y. Well, that was kind of the point.

The family came over to eat some though, as we had two cakes instead of the one, and it went down very well with everyone. Except Dylan who wanted some sweets. Perhaps he remembered the last time I fed him some cake.

Overall Result: This was quick and easy, and an ideal way to use up some bananas that are a bit past it. Hopefully next time I won't also be using flour that's a bit past it...

Banana and Apple Loaf (and cake)