Feeling dangerous...
Hmmm – there’s something about the combination of the heat and Aunt Flo coming to visit (aka being “on the blob” ) that destroys my few remaining brain cells.
Yesterday I decided to follow the recipe from the Guardian Weekend for raspberry granita (scroll down – avoiding the “how I cut the top off my finger” story). Have a look at it – could it be any easier? So I set to to make sugar syrup. Hmmm – that can’t be hard? I’ll just look it up and check. The recipe I found said to boil the sugar and water to the crack. I found the jam thermometer, and boiled my sugar solution until the temperature was reading crack. Except that by then it was going brown, and quite clearly would set solid in the pan if I left it. (John knew that… I didn’t.) So I had my one stroke of genius of the weekend and added some boiling water, stirring madly as I did so – and somehow managed to end up with a delicious lightly caramelised light sugar syrup.
I left it to cool. Then I put it in the blender jug with the 1lb of rasps I’d lovingly picked in the heat of the day from our garden (with just a few loganberries thrown in too because they were there… ). I hit the button and gasped in horror as sugar syrup started cascading down the side of the motor unit. Huh. It turns out that that grey rubber seal thingy is important – who’d have known? 
Still, I rescued the concoction and simply worked it through a sieve and stuck it in the freezer. (It is stunningly delicious, very sweet, but very very raspberry too. In theory we’re saving it until John’s parents come to visit, but I have the feeling it may not last that long… )
Then today I decided to make bread for both me and John in our breadmakers (his’n’hers breadmakers works in a household with a Coeliac) – and wouldn’t you just know that the mixer blade is important in that? Apparently the bread doesn’t mix at all without it. Huh. The things you learn. (I did rescue it by digging around with my bare hands and putting it in.)
Now, do you think I’m safe to try some washing up? No, I thought not, it’ll be safer to leave it a while…
three comments:
I fancied the granita recipe, too, but gaveup all thought of making it when no recipe was given for the sugar syrup. Too lazy in this weather to even think about looking for a recipe for it elsewhere.thanks for the tale behind the tatoo, but what is the design (nosy rosie!)
rosie () (link) - 03 July '06 - 23:12
Not only did this make me giggle, but it reminded me that we have a bread-making machine and it’s about time I hauled it out of the back of the “stuff we never use cupboard” in the kitchen and had a go with it.Big Ruth () (link) - 04 July '06 - 19:02
Hello … I posted a comment on this entry sometime last week, but for some reason it never appeared. This seems to happen to me frequently, and rather than being part of some great technological conspiracy, as I first imagined, I’m having to admit now that it’s simply down to my own incompetence.Mutual friend M-G mentioned you last week, and said that you knew of my blog! I’d comment at this point that it’s a small world, but I think it’s more a case of Cambridge being a small town … Like your sock pics!!
E-J () (link) - 17 July '06 - 09:50
