Bananering the pineapple cake

The ringbearer loves foam bananas. Don't know why-horrible fake tasting things that they are - but he does. As we disagree on this point I decided not to put too much effort into the mighty foam-banana-cake experiment I agreed to and utilised one of the easiest (and stickiest) recipes I know. So here it is: The pineapple upside down foam banana cake.

Step 1. Batter making. This is dead easy, no folding, bain-maries or even a mixer. Just add eggs, sugar, flour and pineapple juice in a bowl and stir.
Step 2. Melt butter in chosen dish on the hob, then add sugar. Squish the sugar into the butter (This is great fun and looks horrible)
Step 3. Place the pineapple in the dish. Also add pointless banana items in a specifically zoned area.
Step 4. Pour over the batter. Put in oven and bake.
Step 5. The only tricky bit. Cool the cake a little bit and attempt to flop cake out of dish onto plate. If this isn't done when there is residual oven warmth then the cake will NEVER come out. Seriously you could use the stuff to seal a reactant leak at Sellafield. At this point I spot a problem. Look at the picture below, have you spotted it?
Yes. The cake would flop over the edges of the plate. Now normally this would come with the considerable benefits that I could legitimately eat the fallen off parts. But I wasn't in the mood - there might be foam banana in parts of it! After much clanking and near misses I discovered a rectangular platter in the cupboard, that still didn't quite fit and had curved edge issues, but would mean less spillage. And tadaa!

The cake is naturally best served warm with cream. The ringbearer was delighted and to prove it gave me some very eloquent reviews. (I think he's been taking my remarks about his monosyllabic reviews to heart). He declared it to be 'A pineapple cake as interpreted in Las Vegas.' If this is a good thing I don't know. He also said 'It had a heightened sense of banana which formed a hyper real mix with the pineapple.'. I will grudgingly admit that it wasn't that bad and was very probably better than the softmint yoghurt cake. But lascked the diverting scientific questions about softmint integrity. Foam banana integrity was incidentally very good-which isn't suprising they taste of hardened wood anyway.

Refreshing the almond wine biscuits

Enough with this cake business, I have decided to embark on some biscuit alteration. My best biscuits are probably the 'wine biscuits' from Dr Oetker, so I thought I should try something with those. But what? Pondering the sweetie shelves, I came across my beloved sherbet fountains (in new packaging-of which more later). What accompanies sherbet, in tingliness? Why Barrats refreshers of course!
Stage 1 Make the dough. This is very easy indeed, especially with the mighty magimix. The breadcrumb like stage is meant to be combined with wine, instead of a tablespoon of water. As much as the ringbearer and I enjoy necking a bottle of left over wine, it always seems atrocious to open a bottle just for a few ml, which you can't taste anyway. I therefore switched to German grappa, which not only tastes stronger but we have a bottle of and rarely drink. Once the dough was made it was rolled out and cut into circles.

Stage 2 Refresher tests. Would refreshers survive the cooking temperature? Sure, they only needed to last about 15 minutes, but would they degrade? I therefore popped 1 in with the jacket potatoes. 30 minutes later the flat stunk of burned sugar as the blackened remains of the refreshers was removed from the oven. Not a good sign, but the jackets were in at a higher temperature, the refreshers were cooked for longer on the wrong substrate/matrix than they would on the biscuits, plus I have never let one very clear indicator of possible failure stop me before....
Stage 3 Topping. The rounds were then covered in beaten egg white, sprinkled with sugar or sherbet and then decorated with chopped almonds and/or halves of refreshers. I also cunningly hid the refreshers under the egg white, as a sort of initial blast cover. the biscuits were then baked in batches. At this point we must digress to the new sherbet fountain packaging.Plastic? Aren't we meant to be caring for the environment? Sure the paper sometimes got a bit soggy, but that was part ofthe art of consumption. The only reason I can think that Tangerine confectionery chose this atrocious environmentally disastrous, untraditional, quick and easy packaging for the lazy and slobby is that it allows you to replace the top and save your sherbet. Save your sherbet? When did obesity fears outweigh the importance of elegant eating and the environment? And who leaves a half eaten piece of liquorice for later? YUK!
Results. Score one for optimistic disdain of rough-shod scientific tests! The Refreshers survived unburnt, especially those hidden by egg white. Personally I could only just about taste the sherbet, which manifested as a slight extra-tang. However the refreshers were very potent and tasty. Certainly these biccies are unsophisticated and quite frankly taste a little loopy, but I liked them. The ringbearer, once he had gotten over his disappointment that a vast cake wasn't appearing from the oven (also his delight that the flat didn't fill with stinking burning refresher again) deigned to taste the biccies. He claimed they were like 'An outbreak of sunshine on a biscuit base', but mumbled a bit about whether he thought they were better than the sugar and almond original.

Spiders vs Conkers. FIGHT!

Are spiders conkerphobic? The Royal Society of Chemistry wants to know. (Chemists of course ask all the important questions). I'm a bit torn on whether I want it to be true. If it is, then conkers will become righteously popular again -which will mean less for me, but also better horsechestnut tree care.

I love the headline 'Spiders vs conkers', it just evokes such glorious images. Possibly a Pixar style silent comedy as the spider attacks the tricky to control sphere, or a more malicious horde of spiders facing an avalanche of conkers (One spider would naturally be pacing at the front trying to rally the troops). Would one spider be capable of creating a web that would hold a conker, let alone stop one rolling or falling down? I'm off to find a spider web to do some experiments.

Oktoberfest statistics

The Oktoberfest statistics are in! Just the 759 "beer corpses" and three drink related deaths over a 2 week period. Best of course is the 700 id cards and passports, fishing rod, toaster, 3 crutches, miniature pinscher, 18 children and a milk tooth that were lost (the children alone were reclaimed and I reckon the tooth fairy can get into the Munich lost-and-found). And I assume we are all very relieved that the traditional set of dentures has been reported missing. Why don't we get stats releases after big events in the UK? I personally demand to know how many tonnes of fish and chips were sold in blackpool on a given bank holiday weekend. I also want to know the number of Carling carcusses found after any given music festival.

Conker threats

Well this is a disaster, the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner are here in the UK! They are making the beautiful Horse Chestnut trees look nasty. What person want to hunt for luscious smooth conkers under something as pitted and pocked as the leaves above? Sure the moths might not have lasting effects, but these are trees, not people. In 30 years time we could be talking about his moth like we talk about smoking - If we knew then, what we know now etc etc.

Why have there been no public service announcements? Our conkers are at risk! Sure the Forrestry Commission is keeping an eye on them, but is it enough? Maybe Mi5 should be brought in for better surveillance and spread calculation. Our finest scientific minds should be workling on this. We should have daily adverts telling us to collect up conker leaves and burn them! Children should be taking part in leaf-collecting-drives in school! Old ladies should be collecting leaves on the bottom of their zimmer frames! Communities should come together to burn the leaves - and not just on bonfire night, every night! There should be an emergency helpline for notifications about infercted trees!

Save our Conkers!

It is clear to me that I must do further research on the risks to conker trees, so that I can run my own public information campaign. There is something out there called Bleeding Canker of Horse Chestnut, which is already giving me nightmares.

Cheese map

A map of cheese. Truly a glorious thing. I reckon I could draw a line through the mini cheeses and plan a road trip.

Moths declare war on conkers

A certain kind of moth is attacking conker trees in Germany, needless to say I am very concerned that these little b*stards might make it over the channel. I shall be writing a strongly worded letter to the border agency on the subject of searching people for chestnut leaves and conkers. I myself am distraught that I might have brought some to the UK when I moved back here.

On a side note, is drinking under a conker tree a good idea, or are the Germans normally inside before the splendiferous seeds start dropping?