Hit and Miss

One of the loveliest benefits of being a stay at home Mum (and to tell the truth there are many), is having more time to cook properly and do a little bit of experimenting in the kitchen while Miss Kitty sits in her buggy in the corner and chatters away to me.  We've been doing a little baking over the last couple of weeks and some of it has worked and some of it really really hasn't.

My lovely sister Zee, knowing how much I like my collection of Nordicware cake tins, added another one to the kitchen cupboard at Christmas, in the form of some Zoo Animals.

I'm not quite sure where exactly in the world Nordicware found a Zoo on which to base their cake tin because it's certainly got an unusual mixture of animals.  We start our tour with a whale:


And then we move on to a lion?

Before encountering, an elephant, a hippo, two goldfish, a giraffe, a rhino and a monkey.

The assortment may be unusual but that cakes were delicious; made to the back of the tin recipe which turned out to be a moist buttery little sponge bite.  These ones were just vanilla flavoured but next time I might add a little lemon zest and juice to give them a little zing.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for my next incarnation.  I was trying to make Cornish Pasties from the recipe from Nigella's Domestic Goddess for lunch today.  I think the first problem was when I overrode my own instinct and didn't use any egg to bind the pastry, following the recipe instead to use just flour, lard and iced water.  The more I think about it, the more I think it must be a printing error; every other recipe has egg in the instructions for the pastry, and I always use it when I'm making a shortcrust pastry off the bat.

So failing number one was a batch of pastry that didn't want to hang together; and then got left in the fridge for a little longer courtesy of a nappy emergency.

The filling was looking good but the same nappy emergency led to the pan staying on the stove just a smidge longer than it should have done so it was a bit too dry for, well anything really.

And so it came to pass the I made, not a Cornish pasty but what I would like to newly christen:

A Warwickshire splat.  I did cook them, and we even tried eating them but alas

Only suitable for thudding crumily into the bin.  We ordered pizza.