Joanne Mallon's Opposable Thumbs

Making mutant bourbon biscuits

Yes I know bourbon biscuits are about 50p for a packet of 30 but it's week two of the Easter holidays and I'm running out of ideas.

And there's no bourbon in them! They are the liars of the biscuit world. But they are chocolatey so we will forgive them this mendacity.

Anyway, my son and I made our own, but mutant. Also a bit turdly, but we'll get to that later.

This link is to the bourbon biscuit recipe we used. We mutantified it by adding mint flavouring rather than vanilla to the chocolate buttercream filling, and scattering a few honeycomb pieces in the middle.

It's a very easy recipe to make, but a bit fiddly to put together. Plus when you get to the stage of making four logs of chocolate dough it looks a lot like some other kind of log you might make yourself:

 

I know, it looks like something a dog owner would scoop up with an old Tesco bag, but you just have to ignore that and press on.

 

It helps if you have a real bourbon biscuit to hand to get the size and design right. Ten skewered holes in each one will do the job. It's handy if you have a small person to assist with this, but not too small because toothpicks are a bit health & safety averse for babies.

 

 

What you get is a really substantial and delicious chocolate sandwich biscuit, about 16 of them. The original recipe recommends freezing the extras. We never got that far. Reader, we ate them.

And thus endeth another day of the interminable Easter holidays.

Yo ho ho and a bucket of plasticine

The kids have been back at school for a week now but I am only just coming up for air. We celebrated the last day of the school holidays with a pirate themed trip to London. We've been invited by Aardman who are launching their film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists on DVD.

First of all there was an impressive pirate-themed buffet. Here is the before and after of the cake (Look away if you are easily distressed by scenes of violence to perfectly good cake):

Then pirate lookalike Jim from Aardman taught us how to turn squishy strips of plasticine into Polly the Dodo, star of the film:

Then we watched the film, and I was surprised to find that Polly, whom I'd made a gawdawful mess of re-creating in plasticine, was actually the star of the show. The film also revealed the significance of a large joint of ham in the buffet. You live and learn.

The juniors and I enjoyed the film very much - it's a piratey, sciency historical romp with bouncy music. And at 84 minutes it's not too long, which I liked - too many kids' films don't know when to quit when they're ahead. But this is great fun, we all liked it a lot. Plus one of the pirates is voiced by Jeremy Piven AKA Ari Gold from Entourage who's always guaranteed aceness.

The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists is out this week on DVD and Blu Ray, priced from £9.99.

Includes lots of  bonus features

•        Filmmakers’ Commentary
•        Exclusive to DVD: MR. BOBO’S FLASH CARD CHALLENGE
•        “From Stop to Motion” featurette
•        “Creating the Bath Chase Sequence” featurette
•        DVD-ROM link to more fun online

 

No cake though. Alas, like dodos, the cake is extinct.

Beard oil and mince pies - it's Christmas in July

So, it's July. And the Law of Media decrees that we must turn our thoughts to Christmas. At least, this is the law if you're writing for glossy monthly magazines, where they work so far ahead that Yuletide editions genuinely are being put together right now, in the (don't laugh) 'summer'.

This year is the first time that many Christmas in July shows have also invited bloggers.

This confuses the bloggers - I don't know what I'm having for tea tonight, why the frack have I been invited to this? they say.

Fear not lads - just take the highly sophisticated 'leave all the info in a bag under your desk until October' method. Works for me.

It has to be said, these events can be dull, even painful; with snooty PRs who visibly wither when they hear you're not from a glossy. And then there are the good ones, full of friendly people and lush products that make you wish it really was a bit closer to the festive season.

Being a bit pushed for time this year, I'm only planning to go to the good events. That is, the good ones I've been invited to. We don't talk about the rest.

So yesterday I oiled up my stompy boots and hopped on the 10:19 to Victoria.

First stop, Tesco, where I almost succeeded in overdosing on chocolate:

Yes, that is an entire chocolate cake posing as a Christmas cracker. What a work of art. Too good to eat, almost.

Almost, but not quite.

Tesco also had some terrific retro gifts and a Star Wars-themed XBox Kinect which is now ON MY LIST:

 

Then, to John Lewis, which always puts on a beautiful show, and a nice line in crazy Christmas trees:

I think John Lewis is going to be the best place for man-gifts this year

So here we have Beard Oil, for shining up your face fur; touchscreen gloves that you don't have to take off to operate your smartphone or iPad and the record sleeve frame you can open any time you feel like caressing The Stone Roses.

And here's a gift for everybody - the party wok. Yes those are actually six teeny little woks that you're meant to schloop around with at parties cooking your ass off. Do people actually do that? Man, but parties have changed. Get your woks on, people.

And for those of you who fundamentally disagree with thinking about matters festive when it's still nominally summer, Tesco have a message for you, in cake:

 

The Christmas journey of the other cake

Remember I told you about our Christmas tradition of The Other Cake? Well, here's the rest of its journey:

First of all I got the square Christmas cake and cut it into four:

This gave four decent sized cakes, enough for one or two people. They were a bit lumpy in the middle - I could have carved them into a more perfect cube shape but frankly I couldn't be arsed:

I marzipanned each cake, then left them to dry for 24 hours. At this point I was wondering what it is about me that sees the need to over-complicate things. No answer as yet:

Then I iced them, pleased as punch to have found a dalek cookie cutter. Can you spot the exterminatingly good cake?

While I was doing all this I was thinking about what to do with the cakes. I never start out with a plan of who to give the other cake to, but there's always someone who feels like the right recipient.

 So this year, one cake is going to a relative who's on her own, another to someone who's been having chemo and hasn't felt up to making a Christmas cake. The third one went to my lovely 74 year old aunt who's been making cakes for me her whole life. To be honest, she didn't look best pleased - it was like that episode of Father Ted when they bought Mrs Doyle a teasmade.

And the Dalek one? That's for my friend whom I was birth partner to.

Happy Magic Cake Christmas!

Xmas Tradition Bloghop - The other cake

Salt and Caramel has asked bloggers to share their favourite Christmas traditions and recipes, so I thought I would share The Other Cake with you, which is both. I have been making this for about the last 5 years.

The Other Cake

Ingredients: Whatever you normally put in a Christmas cake. That, times two.

Method: Make a Christmas cake. If you've never done it before, it's easier than you think. I use Mary Berry's recipe.

You will very likely have lots of ingredients left over. You're never going to eat that many raisins in a year, and mixed peel, what's the point of that? So you use the left overs to make another cake. It will be a bit more rough 'n ready than the first one, but that doesn't matter.

Feed both cakes with brandy in the weeks before Christmas and wonder who will end up with The Other Cake.

You won't know who The Other Cake is for when you make it, but its intended recipient will show themselves at some point before Christmas. It might be workmates, a sick friend or neighbours. You will know the right person when they appear. Who ever gets it will talk about that cake for YEARS. It is a magic cake. This year, as you can see from the picture, The Other Cake is square, and my grand plan is to cut it into four and ice each one to make an individual mini Christmas cake. What happens to them after that is anybody's guess.

 You can also take part in the Christmas traditions bloghop here

How do you smuggle a custard pie into parliament?

Something has been bugging me for a few days.

Last year I went to an event at the Houses of Parliament, and the security was incredibly tight - you would let people into your knickers easier than these guys allow you over the threshold of the Palace of Westminster.

So how did that guy manage to smuggle in a flan to fling at Rupert Murdoch?

These are the theories I've come up with so far:

• It was a dehydrated pie and he spend two hours spitting on it to restore it to full size
• He's really Derren Brown and can do whatever he bloody well likes
• Wear pie as a wig. Perhaps this explains why Boris Johnson looks so untroubled by the chaos around him - he's prepared for any assailants by the custard pie he keeps on his head at all times.
• Ensure pie's already in the room, as part of the refreshments. Doable with help, but then again you're a bit stuffed if somebody eats it during the teabreak.
• Blame it on the Tories. This explanation worked well in the Eighties and is still going strong.

What's your theory?

Dear School...

Dear School

Thank you for your many letters, notes, emails and texts over the last few weeks. Since I have two children, I get all of this stuff twice. And since one of my children is starting a new school, there's a whole heap of stuff from that direction too. I know it's good to talk, but do you really have to talk so much?

Since you have been chasing my time, cash, presence and cake-making ability, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I don't have an abundance of any of those.

But still, what fun it was to be making fairy cakes at 11pm after a hard day at work. And then to see the PTA ubermum abandon them under a table at the class picnic. How glad I was to have put in the effort.

Really, who doesn't enjoy a morning that starts with a child wailing I need a costume just as you're going out the door? And all those nights of working until the wee small hours because the afternoon was cut short by your insistence that we turn up at 2pm for an open day/class assembly/celebration of Best Class Fart.

I know teachers get tired by the end of term, but why so keen to inflict it on the parents too? At least you get a rest from our kids, we've got them for the whole of the summer. Yes I realise I could ignore the letters, not turn up to the events and pretend I didn't know I was supposed to bring the cakes. But then I would feel like crap, and I prefer not to feel like crap if I can help it.

I appreciate all you've done, I honestly do, but if a man was to display this level of demands I would dump him, change my phone number and report him to the police for stalking. Don't make me do that to you.

Yours in end of term exhaustion, 

Joanne
A Mum

  

 

image: Flickr user kennymatic

The amazing six layered cake

You'd be astonished at how many people land on this blog after Googling "coach cakes". I guess they're looking for a recipe to honour their favourite sports professional. And they probably then go away disappointed, because the only real post on the subject is this one relating the theory (so far only proposed by me) that cake can be a useful tool in personal development.

But actually I do have a sideline in cakery. And today, in between two coaching sessions, one and a half blog posts, writing a feature, 1000 words of a book, two loads of washing, a flurry of emails and a ton of phone calls, I made a cake. 

It is Son of Mine's 8th birthday, and he designed this amazing six layered beast:

 

The First Rule of #Blogcamp...

...is that you have to blog about BlogCamp.

My day didn't start well when I realised too late that I was wearing the same blue top/black cardie/typewriter necklace combination I've got on in that picture on the right.

Holy crap, I've come as my blog I thought I am a 24 carat loser for sure. But then somebody came over and did the Be Seeing You peepy eye/hand gesture (as also modelled to the right) and said Is that you? So I did it back at them and said Yes it is.

Brilliant. My day brightened considerably from there.

And here are some of the things I learned at BlogCamp for starters:

 

Video blogging for beginners

 

Sometimes an editor asks you to do something, and inside you scream "Noooooo! How can I posssibly do thaaaaaatttt!!!" but what comes out of your mouth is: "Yes of course, when did you want that for?"

As mentioned previously, at half term we went to a cupcake masterclass in London. And Ready for Ten wanted me to write about it and film a bit of video to accompany the post.

Only problem is, my filming skills are non-existent. In fact more than that, I'm a little bit scared of cameras, an attitude that held me back when I worked in TV. The pressure was on for producers and directors to film their own stuff, but I could never quite work out how to handle the camera and ensure things were in focus. Worse, I didn't want to try.

And in effect this had a negative impact on my career, since it kept me making programmes in studio, where they have professional camera people, rather than out and about making self-shoot documentaries.

These days I am not letting fear of what is basically not that hard to master get in my way.

Plus a lot has changed in terms of how video is created and viewed. First of all, the technology has got simpler and more widely available, the focus takes care of itself and you pretty much only need to press one button.

And the visual landscape has changed. Our eyes are attuned to rough and ready clips we see on YouTube, meaning that video blogs, or vlogs, don't have to look like they were directed by an award-winning pro. It doesn't matter if it was filmed on your phone if the personality and feeling is there.

And aside from that, if you are in the business of providing content to websites, that content is very unlikely to just consist of words - you have to be prepared to find pictures and video as well. Just like your writing style and when and where you use links, moving pictures are part of the language of online writing.

Before we filmed, I read a useful post by Pippa on how to make a video blog. The main challenge when we got to the venue was the fact that it was very crowded and I wanted to avoid filming other people's kids. But because everyone is a film maker these days, there's no real respect for the camera, and random children kept walking past the shot. So I filmed an extra bit on the train on the way home, and this is what we ended up using. It's a bit scrappy, but it's a lot of fun - see what you think. Now I'm itching to do more.

What are your tips for novice video bloggers?

pic: Flickr user, Nesster