Songs, skirts and scones

Today friends of ours are coming over for an Indonesian meal Paul is cooking. Of course this occasion called for the traditional desert of spekkoek: a cake in very thin layers that are baked one at the time under a grill. It is flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamon, ginger and cloves. As I had never made one, and Paul only once (which wasn’t a complete success), last Saturday I did a trial version. Thank goodness for that! Nearly everything that could go wrong baking-wise went wrong.

When I was mixing the egg yolks with the butter and sugar mixture, of course the mixture curdled. It doesn’t seem to matter how little I put in, it still curdles. A little flour brought the worst to a stop.

Then egg whites. When I baked in my teens, I never ever could get eggs whites whipped. Never. So, now I have an egg white whisker and can get stiff egg whites. Unfortunately I am going overboard: found out I am always overwhipping. When you overwhip, you end up with eggflakes and water. Last week I thought, ach well, just give it a good mix, it will be allright…

Then, do you ever have those moments, when something completely unexpected happens and you look blankly for a split second before you realise action is needed? Well, that’s what happened when my overglove, taking the tin from the grill for the umptiest time, looked like a candle. Huh?! S%&*, my glove is on fire!!!! In a reflex I flung the tin onto the board, stopping it with my other hand. Mu ungloved hand. Big but thanks goodness not a deep blister on my thumb, boehoe. Will anything go right with this cake?

Well, in the end, the cake wa fine, but not really spekkoek, it was rather more a very very thick spiced omelet… It tasted very eggy. UP to today I didn’t think I was going to make it again. But then, this morning I checked what went wrong with the eggs I thought: I should be able to improve on that and not mess not!

So, at half eight this morning I was mixing the butter, sugar and egg yolks: no curdling; I was mixing the egg whites: no splitting; I was folding in the flour: wehey, batter!!! The baking went really well and without the hour I was a happy bunny again: cakey cake!!!

I am not sure whether stone bag is an existing word. If it wasn’t, it is now! When I was making plans for the highschool reunion in March, an old schoolfriend from the Netherlands asked if I could bring some stones from Irish soil for a nature and Ireland loving friend of hers. I wouldn’t be me, if I would just chuck some stones in a plastic bag, it has to be contained in a nice pouch. Rocks we had a plenty: the last time we were at the Inishowen Singing Weekend the children scooped up a small bucket of very fine pebbles from the beach near Slievebawn. Wind, little bit of drizzle, a belly full of fry up and a head full of songs! What more could you want?!

So last night I finally (sorry Claudia for the delay) sew a tiny bag to hold five small pebbles. Nothing fancy, but small enough to hold a ‘treasure’. I didn’t realise though until after I had cut and pinned the fabric that a small bag means very little space to turn beneath the sewing foot. It nearly ended up in blood, sweat and tears! Nearly. I am quite happy with the result. Now all it needs is a little old map of Slievebawn, printed on nice paper and folded up to go in with the pebbles. Hopefully that won’t take months either….

While the stacked coins quilt is waiting for the extra fabric, I have been spending many a night cutting diamonds. Euh, no not those, I wish! Fabric ones from the Sent with Love layer cake. Since I had chosen to make Jane’s Diamonds, I have been struggling with the design. I do not have exactly the same amount of diamonds per fabric design as either orginals and I just didn’t know how to start. I began with putting the pattern all the original fabric numbers in an Numbers sheet, copied all the fabrics in and tried to add and move that way. Pfff. Okay, what if I copy the pattern from the book, and put little diamonds with the right patterns on the copy? Pffff. Last but not least I simply did what is the best solution, but also the most annoying: laying all the diamonds on the ground. I really should make a construction whereby I can put up a big big sheet of flanel hanging from the big wardrobe and pin all the pieces into pace. When finished, roll up and put away. Maybe next week.

For now, I need to decide what sort of Jane’s Diamonds I am going to make: am I (more or less) sticking to the pattern or do I go for something else? A couple of nights ago I tried both and I still wouldn’t know what to go for.

I quite like the idea of grouping the similar shades together in bands like the unfinished business quilt. When taking photographs of the patterns while I was moving things around, it became clear what colours should move up or down. With the naked out it just didn’t seem that clear. I tried about four different patterns, before I moved on to trying to emulate the Lapis Jane’s Diamonds from Kaffe Fassett’s book.

Yeah, I know, it looks rubbish, but I had to take away all the pieces that weren’t ‘in pattern’ yet. By 12 o’clock I had quite enough and packed it up! I will need to cut just a few more diamonds and half diamonds before the real work start in ernest. By then I hope to have a nice vertical work surface!

Print from the Library and Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalogue

Last Monday the junior singing group wrestled their way through Follow the heron and Bonny Labouring Boy again. They are not the most difficult songs, but if you have never heard them before, tune and lyrics do take some time to get stuck in the brain! As a final challenge that evening, I put an oldie on the program: By the hush. I learned it of an old tape that Paul has had for nearly 30 years. Where the tape is, I don’t know, so who actually sang it, I have no idea! Later on in life I heard slightly different versions by Frank Harte and Roisin White, which causes me to trip up every now and then, when I can’t remember, what tune goes with what version!

At class I think I sang the version I had originally learned, with one line from Roisin White. I am hoping the version I am putting here, is the one the girls remember!

Listen here to By the hush.

By the hush

Oh It’s by the hush, me boys,
I should ask to hold your noise,
And listen to poor Paddy’s sad narration.
For I was by hunger pressed,
And in poverty distressed,
And I took a thought to leave the Irish nation.

Well, I sold me horse and cos,
My little pigs and sows,
My little plot of land I soon dd part with.
And me sweetheart, Bid McGhee, 
I’m afraid I’ll ne’er more see,
For I left her there that morning, broken hearted.

Chorus:
Here’s you boys, do take my advice;
To America I’l have youse not be coming.
For there’s nothing here but war,
Where the murd’ring cannons roar,
And I wish I were at home in dear old Erin.

Well myself and a hundred more,
To America sailed o ‘er,
Our fortune to be making, we were thinking
But when we got to Yankee land,
They shoved a gun into our hands,
Saying, Paddy, you must go and fight for Lincoln.

Chorus

General Meagher to us said,
If you get shot or lose your head,
Every murdered soul of yous will get a pension.
Well myself, I lost me leg
They gave me a wooden peg;
And my boys, it is the truth to you I mention.

Chorus

Now I’d think myself in luck
If I got fed on Indian buck
In old Ireland, the country I delight in
And with the devil I do say,
God’s curse on Americay,
For I think I’ve had enough of your hard fighting.

Chorus

Although the baking has prevailed over the last few weeks, I did work on Kathrijn’s quilts little by little. But, every little was to small to actually devote a post to! Slowly but surely the stacked coin columns came together. They are going to be continuous, i.e. the colour at the top in the second follows the colour at the bottom of the first; the colour at the top of the third follows the colour at the second, and so forth and so on. It makes the quilt unexpected, but still harmonious. The colour for the columns inbetween the stacks and for the borders will be one of the to middle purples. I am hoping this will balance the colours.

The only problem is that I still haven’t found a UK/EU online shop that stocks the entire range of Kona Cotton Solids. Maybe I should just go for the extra payment in import taxes and order from Hancocks… I do want to finish this one for Kathrijn’s birthday on 1 June!

Sunday morning early, as my wandering steps did lead me, down by the Callan river, I carelessly did stray … We went for a good walk today. The children in the Rambler, Paul pulling and me just tagging along, to the Callan river and back. About a quarter in it started raining and the children plus Rambler turned into the Cuddly Ghost on Wheels underneath the horse hair blanket we took with us because it was a bit nippy today. Luckily it was only a light shower and on the homestretch coats were discarded and big posies of dandelions, grass and other flowery weeds were snapped up along the road side.

When we got back, the bicycles were immediately mounted for quick spins around the parking lot, while I quickly whipped up some wheaten muffins from the Tassajara Bread Book. There was not enough bread for lunch left and no time really to go for a full blown loaf, so these more bready than cakey muffins were perfect. For festivity sake I added a little cinnamon (and also to ensure the children would actually eat them, to be honest!)

But I shouldn’t have worried: it is in a wrapper, it is a bun, yippie! All the bread was finished after lunch, most of the buns and the bigger people already started to feel worryingly doughy… But, I had planned to make the orange cake today: I had all the ingredients ready! Contrary to healthy and logical thinking, I started baking an orange cake: two layer of short bread like dough sandwiching homemade almond paste, decorated with some sort of cream. The addition to the recipe The cream is a tricky business and needs careful attention should have told me that this wasn’t for me. Sugar thermometer, keep at 106 degrees, add in a trickle, hmmm. Hmmm indeed. The making of the dough wasn’t too complicated, but the work surface looked as if I had had to make pastry for 100 people!

The rolling out of dough however is something I always struggle with: it is either to sticky, or too thin to take from the work surface, regardless of how much flour I add. The two layers were like plasticine and I had to use various layers of grease proof paper to keep it together (in more ways than one!). Then I had to ’smear’ the almond paste on one layer of dough. Yeah, right. After several failed attempts (which broke up the dough as well, grmbl) I spread teaspoons of paste over the dough, covered with paper and rolled and rolled, grrrrrrrr. By now the meditative quality of baking had long gone out of the window!

The meditative quality definitely didn’t return when I started on the cream…. Place a sugar thermometer on the edge of a pan and melt sugar and water to 106 degrees. Make sure the thermometer doesn’t touch the metal of the pan! Make sure 6.5 cm of the thermometer is submerged! Don’t touch it! The sugar and water amounted to not even 1 cm, so there was a problem. To submerge the pin deep enough, I needed to hold the pan askew, but that caused the sugar to cool down again. In the meantime the egg yolks had to be mixed au bain marie. Yes, you counted correctly: 1 hand to stir sugar, 1 hand to hold pan askew, 1 hand hold mixer, 1 hand to hold the au bain marie pan steady. It will not come as a surprise that the first lot of eggs scrambled and the sugar crystalised. Steam was coming out of my ears!! Right, breath in, breath out. This is meant to be relaxing. NNnnnnnnggggg.

Second round. Eggs were fine and lovely, sugar syrup was fine (although maybe not at 106 degrees, but fine). Than the adding the syrup to the eggs: syrup runs along the side and bottom of the pan just outside the bowl, so with some mathematics I manage to hold the pan were it should be. Only to see the mixture split…. Flour, flour, flour, save, save, save the mixture.

The cream tasted divine, was super fluffy, but there was this splittiness about it that made us throw it away after the first round of cake… Without it the cake was still really yummy: crispy outside and lovely crumbly almondy inside.

After all this baking and eating, it was clear: this was way too much baking for our poor stomachs. We felt really bloated (which is a good thing, it means we normally do not eat that badly after all!) and I felt I had spent too little time doing other things. The songs and skirts part of my life have been a little (not completely) neglected. So, from this week onwards, I strive to have equal posts on baking, singing and sewing. I will try and dedicate particular days to particular posts, so that you will know what to expect!

This weekend the Tassajara bread book was fighting with a recipe from the Dutch Magazine Noorderland which my sister gave me when we met up last month. What to bake first: Tassajara cinnamon rolls or Frisian oranjekoek: two layers of sweet biscuity cake held together by almond paste and topped with berry glaze and a particular buttercream….

The decision was taken after I read that making the butter cream involved a cooking thermometer, which I didn’t have. Sometime today we will get one and in the meantime I’ll try my hand at cinnamon rolls. The rolls have the same sweet yeast dough base as last week’s Swedish Tea Roll, but a sweeter, thicker and more yummy filling of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins.

When the dough is ready and rolled out, the cinnamon mixture is smeared across the dough. And smeared again, and smeared again. Such a satisfying job, I just had to start again! The silken dough is then rolled up and rather shaped into a ring, cut into 1,5 cm thick slices. This gives a lot less dough per roll in this recipe than in the tea roll, which makes the rolls more tasty and moist.

I had to cheat a little to get all the rolls onto the plate: I had spent so much time in the preparations, I wasn’t going to bake the rolls in two batches, no way. Bake and eat, I say!

As usual, Tjabering came to have a look at the buns while in the oven. He has such a endearing enthusiasm for buns, that I just had to take a photograph of him peering into the oven and shouting ‘LEKKER!’ (=YUMMY!)

And ‘lekker’ they were, so soft, sticky and sweet (and after the sugar glaze was out on: so very very sticky!!!).

Lunch was a happy affair with sweet sticky buns and fresh linseed bread. Our resident birds (couple of ‘whatever’ tits) joined us on the patio for some lunch. They have gotten so used to waving arms and children jumping up and down while pointing at them, that they now stay put whenever they get spotted!