New paintings and regular art updates.
That pineapples looking sad,
Spotted leaves are wilting
It looks like it’s ripened
I must carve its flesh
Before it’s too late
Sweet yellow and sharp
Shall we have custard or cream?
Or just plain and succulent?
Last time we had one..
Ten years. Fifteen
Really..
Looking forward to it.
But is the pineapple?
Tasty but a bit too greasy.
I decided to make a pear cake with a couple of large pears off the tree. I didn’t have a recipe to hand so followed the one on the back of my bag of self raising flour.
The ingredients were:
150 grams each of self raising flour, butter and sugar.
Three medium eggs
A small amount of water
This was to make a Victoria sponge. I decided I would add raw sliced pears into the base of my glass flan dish (I don’t have a cake tin or grease proof paper).
Method. It said cream butter and sugar together till its light and fluffy, then add the eggs and a bit of water. Then gently fold the self raising flower in.
Problem. I can’t eat sugar. So I used sweetener that you can bake with. The amounts were questionable. 150 grams when you don’t have scales. So I guessed the amounts and I think I put about 200 grams in. The sweetener said 200 grams was five tablespoons, so I used four instead. Then the eggs? I used three, but they were large. Finally I guessed a mug full of flour would be about right….
I creamed the butter and sweetener together and made it softish and fluffy. Then I slowly added the eggs. The mix started to curdle. I tried adding a bit of flour and it started to look like undercooked scrambled eggs! I got my hand whisk out and tried to beat some of the lumps out. Then I folded in the flour, I made a batter, but still saw flecks of butter in the mix.
So I spooned the mix over the pears in a well greased Pyrex flan dish. I put the cake in the oven on gas mark 4 (medium heat) initially for thirty minutes. When I checked it, there were bubbles of gas coming out of it and it was still pale. So I put it on for another twenty minutes. The bubbles were still happening but the surface felt fim and was golden brown. When I tapped it, it sounded hollow, and when I pricked it with a knife that came out clean.
I eased the cake out of its case. Some of it broke up because it had stuck in the dish. It was greasy, but I cut a section out and it held its shape.
It tasted eggy but nice. The pears had cooked through.
Next time I might start making it with flour, then rubbing the butter into that till its like breadcrumbs, adding sweetener, then making a hole in the flour before adding the eggs. I wish I’d remembered that before I made this cake.
X
The hedgehogs are about tonight eating catfood again. I quietly opened the back door and saw one of them eating the catfood I’d left out for the abandoned cat. When it realised I was there it slowly scuttled off up the yard. When I looked again later all the cat food had gone. When the abandoned cat arrived I gave him a couple of pouches of wet cat food to make up for him missing supper.
I love out hedgehogs, I’m hoping they will weigh enough to survive winter. I think they are living in the back of the shed. My hubby says he hears snuffling in there late at night.
X
My hubby, forty years together and we are both getting old. Various marker pens on cartridge paper. He didn’t keep still or I would have done a better job on it. I’ve bought a few more permanent marker pens. Some are OK, but some seriously smell of something like acetone? I used a silver pen to try and add grey to his hair and reflections/highlights on his face.
Bread (with oats, rye, multiseed loaf mix and tiny bits of pasta!) I think he would have added the kitchen sink. He did add larde chunks of apple and also pear. Had a bit hot with some butter. Well cooked, moist, not too crusty! I’m amazed!
An explosion in the kitchen? No hubby making apple bread. There was flour over the draining board, the crockery drainer, in the sink, on the floor. He got me to scrape the dough off his hands it was so sticky. He had added oats and rye flour to a bag of breadmaking flour which had added yeast. It wasn’t rising very well but he added cooking apples to the loaves.
Now they are in the oven, cooking, I wonder how they will turn out? In half an hour I will know.
Tea, (early evening meal). Cornish pasty. Mixed salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion, sliced mushroom, baby bell peppers and a bit of dijon mustard and light mayonnaise. On a Portmeirion dinner plate. I think it was a good balance of food groups. Trying to cut down on carbohydrates and fats a bit. Colour on a plate.
My vegetables didn’t do well this year. It sort of fizzled out in August and nothing grew much apart from the pears. But I spotted this growing last week. The weather is due to get cold in the next day or so but I hope if I give it a lot of water and some feed it might grow a bit more before the frost gets the plant. There are more flowers on it.. I also found a few baby tomatoes in a hanging basket. Green, but maybe they will survive for a while.
A pineapple
Spikey
Neither apple nor pine
Grows on a bush
Causes a hush
When you see it
Juicy and sweet
Packed with yellow pulp
Delicious with cream
Or in an upside down cake.
Pineapple sponge
And custard
Delicious.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt. It was meant to be a plate of food but I’d eaten it before I remembered! The depicts a Magnolia plant with butterflies on the plate made at Portmeirion pottery. I drew it using a black drawing pencil on cartridge paper in my little sketchbook. We had a salad and quiche. With whole grain mustard. Tasty.
Mallaband-Brown