Guilty on the “can’t be arsed” tbf.
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I no longer bake… 
Carinthia.xx
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You might be cheered to hear that the little gods of CBA about egg sizes frowned on me yesterday.
A pressing need for displacement activity set me baking a lemon cake. I weighed me eggs. Well not my actual eggs, don’t be daft, that would have meant gouging out me ovaries - far too messy. I used the requisite multiples or equivalents of butter, sugar and flour. And what I produced was definitely less the lemon sponge, more the lemon biscuit. There was a very faint snickering audible as I removed it from the oven.
Later I applied a wee lemon glaze, which slid gracefully from the top of said ‘cake’ and puddled abundantly round the base.
That, as they say, will larn me.
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Brilliant.
CBA obviously pays dividends.
The “faint sniggering” in the background is the sound of my children whenever Mrs. Shanks decides she will “try making fudge”. A generally good cookist she’s never got fudge even nearly right in the 40 years I’ve known her. But still she tries.
She becomes Wendy Craig’s Rhia the moment the fudge word is uttered. I text the kids, in Northampton & Wapping now. whenever the utterance is made. The kids call and text and generally enquire throughout.
Son #2 has even suggested I buy some & replace it whilst almost finished cooking.
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Sounds of Immoderate Snorking coming from Chesterfield, Gus
Sorry
Carinthia.xx
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What is the ‘not nearly right’ fudge like, Armitage? I’m rather liking #2 son’s idea. A stealth Blue Peter gambit.
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It’s not even “nearly right” Janie. Would that it were.
If you imagine the sort of thick tar that Road-Runner cartoons would have the hapless Coyote run into until his feet are brought to a halt, attached to stretched gloop, you’re sort of getting there. But not quite.
#2 son being the Road-Runner. He’s a tricky customer. Last time he sniggered Mrs Shanks threatened to tell him he didn’t have one goldfish for 8 years, but 4 with 3 carefully selected lookalike ones. Moral ; - Do not mess with Mrs Shanks.
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One day I shall “start to make doughnuts” like Nell in Mary O’Hara’s Wyoming books. She added too much shortening (whatever that may be) trying to make them lighter, and put the first perfectly-shaped globe into the hot fat – and it broke in half, and then in half again, and finally vanished altogether into the fat.
So she baked the rest of the dough as a cake instead, and it was a great success, and thereafter her children would beg her to start to make doughnuts.
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I have no idea why that suddenly went into large type. Sorry
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It’s fat, though I think you knew that. Hard fat, as used in making pastry. So butter technically qualifies, but you can bet your boots, or whatever other stake happens to appeal, that when someone talks about using shortening, they aren’t referring to butter but one of those dreadful baking blocks, or if in the US, probably Crisco.
Urgle.
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I now have an earworm of ‘Shortenin’ Bread’
Sigh
Carinthia.xx
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Management refuse to accept any responsibility for any earworms anyone may bring onto the premises…
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Armitage, I suspect you used a # at the start of the line - which is the Markdown for “this is a header”. If you edit the post to have a space at the start of the line, before the #, it should go back to normal.
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Brilliant. Thanks.
… & I think I just ‘flagged’ the message !! Ooops
No worries, I’ve hit it with the big stick with nails in.
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How’s the “Shortenin; Bread” ear-worm doing today C ???
Ooops !!
If it helps, may I just say “Coo-ee, Chirpy-Chirpy, Cheep-cheep” ?
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[quote=“Armitage, post:56, topic:42, full:true”]If it helps, may I just say “Coo-ee, Chirpy-Chirpy, Cheep-cheep” ?
[/quote]You take that back! Me muvver wuz a saint!
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Not great, Armitage
I remembered learning to play it on the piano - my teacher used an American series - JW Schaum, or summat like it, & there were these little ditties in amongst the Classics
She used to sing along too
Lordy, that’s 50 years ago…
Carinthia.xx
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Carinthia, sounds as if worms are the least of your ear problems at the moment. Hope the spray does its stuff and you feel much better very soon.
I have succumbed to a Lunch Earworm. I had cheese, biscuits and grapes. Guess the tune now on an endless loop in my cranium…
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Thank-you Gus
The spray is certainly a novelty…
Carinthia.xx
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