Kitchen Disaster
First of all, I’ve realised that I’m absolutely awful at keeping any kind of regular update going on here. I’ve never really been a diary person. I set off with the best intentions and lets months slip by without as much as a whisper.
Flying-wise I’m further than I was last time but every time I have a lesson it widens the realisation of what I have to learn to become a pilot. Flying is simple – a plane will fly itself if you leave it alone, it’s doing it safely without crashing into things that makes it a bit fiddly. I’ve now got a whiteboard on the wall reminding me of a few things I need to do rather than a nagging feeling in the back of my mind (like booking a medical for one, I’ve heard they make you touch your toes – I don’t think I can do that!). I’ll elaborate on the whole flying thing another time.
For now, it’s coming up to Christmas and I decided to make a Christmas cake this year. I’m normally quite good in the kitchen, I can handle lots of things going on at once and can make a sunday lunch along with a few cakes all come together at once. I made a Christmas cake a few years ago and it worked out very well but this time I think I may have rushed things a but too much and I now have a Christmas cake disaster situation on my hands.
The cake looked okay(ish) after the 5 hours at gas mark 1. A bit sticky on top but I put that down to my very relaxed measuring of the treacle. Turning the cake upsidedown after a full day I seem to have a mushy, undercooked, raw mess which I’m currently trying to recover.
Cooking is 90% science and 10% luck/art. The luck/art element comes down to the individual differences in cookers, testing the damn thing is cooked afterwards and using a certain amount of judgement which I think I have lapsed on this time. The science bit is understanding why the individual ingredients bond together and knowing what happens during the actual cooking process.
I have gone against science on this occaision as I know the cake is a complete write off but, just in case, I tried to put the cake back in the oven for twenty minutes. Turning it upsidedown it appears to have started to fry the fruit-mix. I have now completely inverted the cake in the tin and it is now back in the oven – god knows how it will turn out, I’m ready to throw it in the bin.
