Top 5 Baking Disasters

After yesterdays chocolate cake 'incident', it got me thinking about the other times I have foolishly thought to myself 'that seems easy' when watching Great British Bake Off or anything on the Good Food Channel. (Thug life). I'm hoping compiling this list will be good for the soul, and also will hopefully make me think twice before taking a whack at a recipe with anything French in the title.

So, here are my Top 5 Baking Disasters. Jesus Christ. 

1. The Brownies. 
I was helping my Granny bake Brownies for some sort of 'Thing' we were having. Me and my sister actually said the other day that a lot of our childhood memories involve being in the back of a car, holding onto cake or sandwiches, hurtling up the M40 to Harrow for some sort of event, where we were told how tall we are by various aunts and cousins. 
Anyway, I was 'helping' and instead of cracking the eggs into the mixture, I instead thought it would make much more sense to crack them onto the worktop, and sort of scrap them into the mixture. I still can't think of any logic to this, and was never asked to help again. I was only five, which is quite a good excuse. 

2. The Shepard's Pie. 
Not technically baking, and by the end of the whole debacle not technically food either. 
It was during Food Tech, and I had decided to make Shepard's Pie, I think for Coeliacs. Anyway, I made everything you were supposed to, getting very smug about how well it was all going, until it came to assembling the bloody thing. For some reason, God knows why, I  put the mashed potato on the bottom and the meat on the top. I was fifteen. I had been having Shepard's Pie all my life. I still don't understand. 
So, tried to sort of reverse it, it didn't work so I just thought well, I'll cook it anyway, and just serve it upside down. No. My poor family, that night they were forced to eat what can only be described as Shepard's Pie Soup.
I'm so sorry. 

3. The Red Velvet Cake. 
What sort of cake recipe wants you to use vinegar? It was awful. So awful, it didn't even make it to the oven. 
To begin with, I had run out of flour, and the only flour left was wholemeal, and I thought, well it's all the same really isn't it (it isn't). I had to sift out the wholemeal bits, which was half the bloody flour in the end, and it was sort of brown because of it being 'healthy', so I overcompensated on the red food dye to make up for it, which made everything smell a bit arsenic-y, and then I couldn't get the lid off the bloody vinegar, and I was supposed to be at my friend's house, and I forgot to turn the oven on, and it all turned a bit like that scene in Bridget Jone's when she's trying to cook dinner for her friends, and makes blue soup. Except in my case, Colin Firth didn't turn up out of the blue and rescue me, the selfish bastard. 
Moral of the story, don't cook anything coloured. 

4. The Lemon Scones. 
I rolled them out into centimetres instead of inches. They were like very, very shit biscuits that didn't taste of lemon because I got bored of zesting. 

5. The Chocolate Whoopee Pies. 
They were supposed to be like a children's version of macaroons, except, for some reason they turned into the size of a small child's face. 
Oh my God, they were like a meal in themselves, I have never in my life had to eat something for desert which was physically heavier than my dinner. It took three marshmallows to sandwich the things together. We kept them in the tin for two weeks, and had to throw them away as, quite rightly, no one ate them. 

I would just like to take this moment to say that I make a very good Victoria Sponge and Millionaire's Shortbread. And I once made fudge. 

Love, L xxx

Wheeeeeere Have You Been?

I'm still alive!!

There have been countless demands for me to start writing again (mostly just my friend Sarah) (Hi Sarah) so as today I have made frankly one of the most disastrous cakes I have ever seen, (chocolate cake which, I don't understand how, is falling apart simply by standing on a plate) I thought I really do need to do something today which, unlike my poor chocolate cake, doesn't fall apart. So blogging is the answer!

Where have I been, no one cries?
Well mostly First Great Western trains to be honest with you, back and forth from 'That London', where I have been working in two very lovely art galleries, blagging my way through talking about art. "It does have a certain something about it, doesn't it?" Is a very good conversation starter if you ever find yourself in such a situation. 
I'm still not quite sure how I ended up in art galleries, I love art and find it all very fascinating (I watch BBC4 programmes on it, pretend I'm clever whilst beating my high score at Doodle Jump), but unfortunately I cannot, for the life of me, draw. 
I did for a very brief five minutes consider doing my art GCSE, but during my decision remembered my art teacher asking me if my drawing of the Queen, was a joke (it wasn't) and where was the real drawing I decided to maybe go down the old Media Studies route instead. 
Or another very embarrassing time, when me and my parents went for a look round my college before I started and found ourselves in a Fine Art introduction, thinking that it was English (I don't know either), we would have got away with it if it wasn't for the Art Teacher asking me what I was studying in Art at the moment. I'm ashamed to say that instead of answering with a well thought out, quick fire lie, we chose instead to run away. True Story. 

So that's where I have been! Running around Art Galleries and the lovely boroughs of Westminster and Camden, mastering the ability to not only be able to tell the difference between a lithograph and a screenprint (oh yes) but I can now also use a drill and spirit level, which, for frankly one of the clumsiest girls in the world is some sort of bloody miracle.

So there you have it, I am going to try to write on this much more often, if only to keep myself entertained

Love, L xxx

(RIP chocolate cake, we could have had some good times)