So day 2 of my blog and something quite extraordinary happened. The sticky toffee pudding in my last blog went into work today. Now people do often bring in bits and bobs and send round a group email offering them up, this is a bold statement clarifying a) look at me b) try my food i'm confident you'll like it. Now I do love a bit of attention like the next person, but making a bold statement about my cooking is really not me with a large group of people. So i've taken to just placing it in the kitchen and mentioning to a couple of people to help themselves... So i'd done this last week with some simple flapjacks (recipe will follow) and they went down well. Unlike the cupcakes - which were embarrassingly neglected and I think only a mouse or the cleaner had one bite out of one. So because I don't like to waste food, i basically ate quite a few and force fed them to friends. I actually have a slight phobia of cupcakes as a result.
Anyway, I just wanted to give you some back story to this as there's been quite a bit of food neglected humiliation on my part that I think is worth knowing. So back to the sticky toffee action... I left them in the kitchen and word got round. There was intrigue and interest but none were eaten. So anyway, I just plotted how I was going to force feed my guinea pigs (family and friends). But then midday happened and the floodgates opened. One by one, the compliments came and it was amazing. They were over the top which was great, one person said "that was unreal. no. totally unreal. absolutely amazing. I can't tell you. How good that was (groan)". I thought she was slightly mental to be honest, maybe on some sort of extreme diet and the only thing she'd eaten in a week was my pudding so it's bound to taste nice. Anyway, am I hyping this enough for you? Probably not enough so i'll list a couple of others. This is my glory moment after all... One person said they were the conoisseur of sticky toffee and this was the best they'd ever had. 10 out of 10. Another suggested I teach their wife how to cook and another said they dropped it but picked it up and ate it because it was so good.
Ok so i'm being super self indulgent, but considering i'm the only one that even knows about this I can do what I want. In fact, isn't that the whole point of this? Isn't this a platform for being totally self indulgent? Don't worry, that's not the plan. My plan is to document this cooking journey. To one day be able to share these recipes with people and to talk through our adventures.
I thought i'd mention a couple of foodie faux pas. I seem to get a lot of funny looks, I'll make some bold ignorant statements sometimes without thinking... today it was about soup. One person was laughing about the idea that someone was making a soup with no liquid other than tinned tomato. So I asked, what are you meant to put in? She looked at me as If I was joking. I wasn't and so I was just told "liquids"... not very helpful but I got the point. The point is... "you must be joking". There are so many clanger moments, so i'll think of more for next time.
Anyway, that's all for now. Here's the flapjack recipe....
ok so I forgot to buy the oats but had a new packet of golden syrup coated ones in small packets.
Anyway I used a whole box 375g golden syrup oats
200g unsalted butter
200g soft brown sugar
2 tbs desiccated coconut
1 tbsp almond powder
handful of chopped dried apple
1) grease proof paper a baking tin and preheat the oven to 180c/gas 4.
2) melt the butter and sugar. once it's all melted, add the oats, coconut and almond powder.
3) transfer to the tin and it should be around 2cm thick - the thicker the softer they will turn out in the middle and the thinner the crunchier.
4) after 15-20mins they should be ready - they need to be golden brown around the edges and still ever so slightly soft in the middle.
5) leave to cool in the tin and once they've cooled down, cut into squares and serve up.
*As a good guide, i used the honey flapjacks on the BBC food website - first thing that comes up in google under flapjacks. I amended this though as I only had the oats that were in golden syrup. I also found some almond powder on my flatmates shelf when I went to borrow some coconut and that worked well. I also have had a stash of dried fruit that I needed to use up so that's why I put in the apple. Also the recipe suggested demerara sugar, which I didn't have but the brown soft sugar worked perfectly.
PS in my last blog I was furiously ranting about white wine vinegar. I finally found a good use for it. I do a little tuna mix for work lunch as an easy fix and I poured in some vinegar and it nicely takes out the super fishyness. This is great! Finally it has a purpose... now what the hell do i I do with a giant bottle of white grape balsamic vinegar? I accidentally had bought it thinking it's the same as white wine vinegar and it's just a large threatening figure in my cuboard..... hmmmm
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