mince pies

spent last night making mince meat and mince pies. I should have made the mince meat weeks ago but a lack of brandy in the house meant it got deferred to the last possible moment. I prefer it to bought still anyway, even without maturation.

have honed my mince pie making skills over the years, using my Grandmother's mince meat recipe (with vegetable suet instead of beef suet - there's too many conflicting religious and personal dietary requirements in my acquaintance to make them anything other than vegetarian) and my Mum's short-crust pastry, the way she taught me. Having both of their most used cookbooks out is a warm if slightly emotional feeling. Neither of them are with me anymore. As well as that it's Christmas, so all those associated family memories are at the surface.

he tools of baking are precious to. I always use the tart tin my Mum used to use to make me jam tarts on Sundays (which I ate with top-of-the-milk), because I didn't like apple pie when I was small...

... and my favourite mixing bowl, which was a Christmas present from Dan several years ago now, has also been incorporated into the ritual.

So after my spell of baking I read this post on Milkmoon about the Grandmother memory, so perhaps it's a seasonal thing. Doing things I know they did every year too, makes them feel a bit closer for a little while. These objects are some of the most precious things I own.

small items of domesticity squeezed from the week

So over the course of the week, despite really having no time for this sort of shenanigans whatsoever I have managed to squeeze out a few bits of crafty goodness.

It started with  making a birthday cake as a gift to a joint birthday party last Saturday. A simple chocolate sponge with vanilla butter icing. This was so successful however, that in a effort to lift spirits at home a little I immediately had to make a batch of similar fairy cakes on the Sunday. I was chuffed to bits with how these came out. Super soft and fluffy in the middle with just the right amount of pale green icing on top.

Please excuse the grill pan which doubles up as my cooling rack. And I had to eat that one before the photo was taken because it was all deformed and ugly. Honest.

During the week I started my second pair of cycle socks, this time in light blue. And for some reason, after an afternoon spent in the vegetable patch yesterday I decided to break out the headband. It's the remains of a shirt color of an old liberty shirt I picked in a charity shop some time ago that have been sat on top of my dresser for a year a least. Last night I bound the rough edge with some vintage bias binding I've always had in a lovely sage green, added an elastic grip across the opening and embroidered over some of the flowers with odd buttons from a rapidly dwindling stash and silver thread. I have to say I rather like it. The silver thread just seems to lift it slightly out of being just a scrap of cloth which is what I often wear in my hair.

Practical Cookery

"Practical Cookery and The Etiquete and Service of the Table" cost me the grand total of 80 pence in one of my local charity shops. This brilliant little book was produced by the Department of Food Economics and Nutrition, Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science in 1932, although this is a 16th edition from 1936. Wow, is all I can say. I haven't got the faintest idea how such a thing ended up in north London.

It really is an amazing thing, with such highlights including: the inner workings of an all manner of stoves and cookers; cooking from very first principles; detailed tables of boiling times for vegetables; scorecards for bread and dinner parties (though it doesn't say if this is to mark your own work or other peoples); detailed place settings and pictures of every knife, fork and spoon you will ever encounter.

However the true treasure is the handwritten brownie recipe on the back cover page. This reads as follows:

1/2 cup Spry
2 oz choc.
3/4 cup sifted flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup nuts

Melt Spry & choc. together over hot water. Cool.

Sift flour with b.powder & salt

Beat eggs until light, add sugar, then choc. (unknown word) and blend.

Add flour, vanilla & nuts & mix well.

Bake in 8 x 8 in. Spry greased pan in moderate oven (350F) 35 min.

Cool & cut unto squares. Makes 16

Now I have to admit I was flummoxed over 'Spry', I looked and looked again and that was definitely what the word said. A little detective work has revealed this and this. Spry is some kind of vegetable shortening used to back cakes - potentially in exactly the same period this book was printed, which is what I was most excited about. There's no date with the recipe, but the Spry, handwriting and ink makes me want to think it's circa 1940's too.

in the beginning

Today is my 25th birthday and the birth of the idea that maybe i'll start a blog.