30th May 2013
I appear to have people convinced I enjoy baking. Where on earth have they got that from? It's not like I buy copious amounts of baking books, bake frequently, and post photos of my creations on the internet and write about how much fun I had! Mentalists! Because of this mad delusion my friends and family a labouring under I received a few gifts along those lines.
Ben gave me a cookie cutter designed so that you could build a 3D dinosaur with the biscuits afterwards, and Jen and her family gave me some 'munchstache' cookie cutters (so that your biscuits are both shaped like and imprinted with mustaches) as well as some adorable teacup and saucer cupcake moulds and a hummingbird bakery book.
I had picked up some ready to roll gingerbread with the idea of testing out these things before I had to worry about a recipe as well. Of course, this is me. I can't ever bake something with ease can I? I opened the gingerbread and though it still had a week and a half left before the use by date it smelt strongly of cheese. I don't know about you, but weirdly I'm not so hot on cheesy gingerbread.
Cue a flick through my many baking books. I settled on some chocolate biscuits. There were two reasons....they looked fairly easy, and they were cut outs so I knew the dough would keep its shape in the oven.
As is becoming all too frequent for me, I had to make a trip to North Ealing Supermarket. When I was in the car on the way to Braintree last week I was behind a van that supplied flour and other baking ingredients. I was a little tempted to follow them and beg them to deliver to me.
The mixing and baking and things did not take long at all. What kept me going for longer than imagined (as per usual) was the fact the dough had to be chilled over and over again. Well. Twice. But still. First lot took 30 minutes, fine. Then I started cutting out and realised it wanted to be chilled again afterwards. Now, our fridge is always stuffed full and there was no way a baking tray was fitting in there. So, I cleverly improvised. After one tray was full of biscuit cut outs I chilled them in the freezer for 15-20 minutes whilst I filled another tray.
The biscuits only took 6 minutes to bake, so once the first lot were in I had a perfect little conveyor belt going on in my kitchen. The dough made a seemingly endless amount of moustaches, and eventually I got thoroughly bored of rolling out scraps over and over again, and simply cut them into squares. I couldn't resist doing another camera, as I did in a previous baking post.
They mustaches looked really good, but did not have quite the integrity I've come to associate with the tache. A load broke in the middle when they came out of the oven, so I now have a tin full of half biscuits. I've yet to try one with tea, but I believe it will be godly.
It being Ben's birthday tomorrow I decided to make a dino for him. Sadly this didn't stand the test of...well...standing. But lying down and from the right direction, he totally looks like a dinosaur.
Now you must excuse me. I have tea and biscuits waiting.
xxx
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