Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 45 Comments

Weaponised Baking

It’s been a while. Too long. But fear not. Baking is back. As Spock would say, it’s baking Jim but not as we know it…. I like to call it Weaponised Baking.

I know so many of you wait for those Michelin Standard baking tips. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

So here goes.

I was about to bake a loaf of bread but I wanted to spice it up a tad. Maybe add some cheese, or a few Mediterranean herbs. But it just didn’t go far enough. What could I find in the fridge or cupboards which was game changing..

A few hours later we have……

I give you gluten and dairy free, no added sugar – BLACK FOREST FRUIT BREAD.

The end result, just a bit different from cheesy bread. The taste, well it’s different. As Hawklad described it

“Well it doesn’t taste poisonous, it’s a unique sensation. Its like my taste buds are being assaulted…..”

True weaponised baking…..

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 60 Comments

Added

Another dusting of the white stuff. It’s such a wonderful world filled with the best dreams and breathtaking beauty.

It’s bizarre how tiredness works out in practice. Yesterday on a few hours sleep I was a walking single parent zombie disaster zone. Bogged down in the minutiae of life. I couldn’t even make bread……

That was my bread after 3 hours in the poor bread making machine. Not sure if I should butter it or use it as a facial exfoliating rub…..Yet today on even less sleep I feel fine. Feeling like I’m almost competent at this parenting gig. I could even explain Calculus and Ionic Bonds this morning. Definitely NOT at home to Mr Zombie Head today.

So is even less sleep good for me? No not really. What is good for me is focusing on what is truly important to me. Doing that makes me realise just how beautiful this world is, just how wonderful life can still be. All the ingredients to happiness and fulfilment are there, just need to remember to us them.

It’s makes such a difference when you use all the ingredients in gluten free bread making 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Same bread just with added water……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 64 Comments

Tired bread

The snow has gone but it’s still cold. It’s rush hour again here…..

In the Black Friday sales I bought a bread maker. I had just been looking for a couple of new loaf tins. It was a rush of blood. Thankfully a much cheaper rush of blood than it could have been. So far so good. Much easier and much much easier. Almost fool proof…….

It’s been a tired day today. Hawklad is tired of school, I’m just tired today. Shall I show you just how tired, tired is. I present to you Exhibit A. It’s a delicious and wholesome traditional French herbal loaf…..

That’s what a traditional loaf looks like when you don’t add any WATER. As the faint sweet slightly burnt smell filled the house my brain pondered what that could mean. My bread never messes up these days, certainly not with my bullet proof machine. Maybe it just means a slightly more crusty loaf. Maybe it’s just the herbs infusing the dough. At no stage did the tired brain think ‘Huston we might have a problem here…..’. At no stage did the brain encourage this Muppet to get up and check upon the baking disaster unfolding in the bread maker……

That’s tired or it’s just me……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 54 Comments

Brave New World

Empty shelves in the shops, no petrol anywhere across the area, limited availability of blood test container tubes for Doctors resulting in the rationing of patient tests……..Another day in the Brave New World after Brexit.

As Hawklad rather adroitly put it this afternoon “this is what happens when a country needs leaders but votes in CLOWNS. Really nasty clowns.” As one commentator put it – the kinda clown who would happily pull out the plug on your life support machine so they could charge up their mobile phone.

It’s all going very dystopian here in Britain. To make the Huxley story link then we need a bit of genetically engineered trickery. What follows is the lamest link ever. Genetical engineering in the form of baking. My baking. Yes that is my latest bread loaf. Cheese topped Gluten Free, Dairy Free Honey and Sunflower Seed Bread. Huxley would be proud of me – it tastes rather fine. BUT…

“Dad that’s all very well but weren’t you supposed to be baking a sponge cake .”

Oh yes, I wondered why I was making bread when I already had a full homemade loaf still to eat. I must have got confused.

“That’s what happens when a kitchen needs a parent who knows what he’s doing and ends up with a MUPPET. Admittedly a muppet who can now bake bread.”

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 23 Comments

Bread love

Time for more baking. Yes time to play some ominous Hammer Horror music. It started off as just a standard gluten and dairy free loaf of bread. Then I remembered, it’s all about LOVE.

What could I add to the bread dough.

Without enough thinking time I went for it. Sunflower seeds. Ok that’s sensible. Dairy free cream and Strawberry Jam. Not so sensible.

So I give you Strawberry Jam Bread….. Looks ok. Tastes different but not unpleasant. That almost worked and I do love a Cream Jam Scone. So yes bread love.

Do you feel the baking love.

We would love you to take part in the Great Bloggers Bake Off Festival of Love. Please send your baking photos and baking ideas into:

CRUSHEDCARAMEL@GMAIL.COM

Already Mel is receiving so many fantastic submissions and the occasional disaster 😂😂😂😂.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 22 Comments

Maybe

There comes a time when bread has to be baked. No gluten, no yeast, no dairy bread. Whisper it but it went without disaster. No need for nuclear decontamination. I didn’t creat Frankenstein’s monster. It kinda looks like bread. It kinda tasted like bread. It actually tasted ok.

Maybe I’m getting there.

Maybe I might be a approaching something like parenting competency.

Maybe next I might even figure out how the steam iron works 😂😂😂😂

M

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 31 Comments

DEFCON

Guess who has been baking again. Yes NORAD have raised the threat level to DEFCON THREE.

Years ago I worked in a Police Force as a civilian. I was based at an old country mansion which acted at the Police Headquarters. At the front desk there was a sign on the wall saying THREAT LEVEL. It had a slide in colour board. Usually it was Green (it’s all cool dude), sometimes yellow (it’s not so cool but no need to panic dude) and rarely Red (it’s time to assume the crash position dude). We also had white which meant ‘everything was cool, but the government audit team is in so put on a tie, dude’. One day the threat level went brown. No one had a clue what that meant. Even granite chiselled veterans had never seen that colour in decades of work here. Much confusion and speculation ensued. The receptionist was not there so we couldn’t ask her. She was like Thor’s Heimdall. The Gatekeeper. No one got in or out without her approval during the day. She also maintained the threat level board.

Finally she was located. Apparently Threat Level BROWN was ‘she had put the board in back to front’. If just one of us muppets had bothered to look on the other side of the board we would have found that it was in fact GREEN…..

And yes DEFCON THREE was wrong. Apart from the earthquake cracked crust it was a rather fine gluten and dairy free loaf. Time to lower the threat level.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 40 Comments

What went wrong

While I was rummaging around the loft I came across a box from mums old house. Inside I found all sorts of things. Decades old bus timetables, shopping lists, out of date vouchers, instructions from long lost video recorders, random keys and coins from long defunct foreign currencies. My mum had a philosophy – you never know when you might need this. Actually the answer was invariably – NEVER.

But as I still have the box I must clearly have signed up to mums philosophy. But I did find and one of my old school reports. All pretty boring apart from the Home Economics page. I quote

“He shows some talent in cooking. He has mastered a number of baking recipes. He has produced some very good bread loafs and cakes.”

Wow. What went wrong……

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 29 Comments

Bread making

A few weeks back I was in the loft trying to find some old papers. In a corner I found the old bread maker neatly packed away in its old box. No papers but I did decide to bake some bread.

So a few days later I bought the gluten free bread ingredients and went back into the loft for the machine. Wow it was heavy. So I opened the box. Pants…..

Ok, no it wasn’t full with pairs of my big pink pants. But no bread making machine. A box full of papers. The papers I was trying to find. My plans had gone a RYE. Homemade bread was now TOAST. What was I thinking about, I’m BUTTER than this. But at YEAST I found those papers.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 21 Comments

Uranium

In Food Technology today Hawklad was set the task to research how wheat is turned into flour. I was expecting this would set him off about the health aspects of bread. Maybe the additives used.

But NO.

His line of attack was – flour mills go through all those stages, make all, that effort, spend all that time. This is on top of the months of hard work performed by Mother Nature. So much effort and then a certain muppet Dad can’t even produce a half edible loaf of bread. What was the point….

Fair comment.

The other task was to forage and with parents help make some Jam. I remember the last time I tried to make Blackberry Jam. Even after two ceiling repaints I can still see the evidence. That Jam stain has a longer half life than Uranium 235. Plus Hawklad hates Jam.

Maybe we might opt out of that one. 😂😂😂😂