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wiseheartAs the subject line above says, I had a very busy weekend, spent with baking, crafting and writing.
Yes, WRITING! Something I haven't been able to do for a very long time! Yay!
In any case, I baked some cheesy buns, which Mum loves, and as a belated Mother's day gift, I made the world's ugliest 3-storey-cake. Basically, it was a simple sponge cake, the parts of it I've cut out with round cookie cutters of various sizes and filled it with apple-cinnamon flavoured pudding. Then I covered the whole thing with purple icing.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't. Firstly, the apple-cinnamon pudding tasted of... well, nothing, actually. Not my fault, honestly - what can I do if people sell pudding pulver that has no taste whatsoever? So I added some lemon zest, some butter and stuff, but it didn't really help, except making the pudding too soft, so that it simply dripped out of the cake upon cutting it.
That wouldn't have been such a disaster, had the cake melts behaved. They hadn't. I read the instructions, which seemed simpe enough: melt the stuff in a hot water bath; add a few drops of water if you want a harder icing or, if you want it more liquid, a few drops of oil. So far, so good. Stupid person that I am, I though a harder icing would work better, so I added a few drops of water. The molten stuff immediately became - well, I can't even describe the consistency. In any case, it wasn't liquid at all, and when I tried to put it on the cake - with my hands, because nothing else worked - half of it stuck to my fingers, while the rest of it seemed like purple concrete. I had to scratch it off the cake again because it was hard *and* looked disgusting.
I decided not to give up and made another attempt, this time adding oil. In a moment of complete insanity, however, I decided that it would be a criminal waste to throw out the stuff I scratched off the cake (these melts are outrageously expensive) and added it to the second batch. Which went straight to hell again, naturally. So I had to make a third batch, used up all my cake melts, and the cake still looked like something the cat dragged in. *sigh*
No, there won't be any pictures. This is one baking adventure I'm trying very hard to forget. At least Mum says it doesn't taste bad, but I think she's just being nice. Although... she ate three pieces, so she must have liked it, at least a bit. Well, those were small pieces, as the whole cake had a diameter of 20 centimetres, but still. Mum is a saint.
Then I did some more crafting, working on the third wedding journal. Thank God the other two are already done, but those were envelope journals and therefore easy to make... well, once I've figured out which side is which and what the right direction is to put the dratted envelopes into each other. The third one, though, is a vintage journal, with proper binding, a brown felt cover and metal applications. The clasp I bought has screws, so it's probably meant for wooden boxes, but it has holes, so I'll simply sew onto the cover, once it's done. The pages are mostly finished, due about three weeks of very detailed work, decorations all made free hand and all that. Now if I don't screw up the binding completely, it will be stunning - or so I hope.
Yes, there will be pictures of the journals. Mum volunteered to hold them open at various places, so that I can take photographs. Have I already mentioned that she's a saint?
But the best piece of news is: I've actually finished "An Excellent Mystery"! Yeah! Took me only three years which, considering that some of my WIPs are over a decade and a half old, is fairly quick for me.
Of course, there are parts of the last chapter and the short epilogue that need to be cleaned up and rephrased, but I can do that while typing up the stuff. And if the wonderful and generous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lindahoyland is still willing to clean up my creative grammar, I might be able to post the rest of the story before ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
picowrimo starts in earnest.
In spite of the baking disaster, I find this a successful weekend.
Yes, WRITING! Something I haven't been able to do for a very long time! Yay!
In any case, I baked some cheesy buns, which Mum loves, and as a belated Mother's day gift, I made the world's ugliest 3-storey-cake. Basically, it was a simple sponge cake, the parts of it I've cut out with round cookie cutters of various sizes and filled it with apple-cinnamon flavoured pudding. Then I covered the whole thing with purple icing.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't. Firstly, the apple-cinnamon pudding tasted of... well, nothing, actually. Not my fault, honestly - what can I do if people sell pudding pulver that has no taste whatsoever? So I added some lemon zest, some butter and stuff, but it didn't really help, except making the pudding too soft, so that it simply dripped out of the cake upon cutting it.
That wouldn't have been such a disaster, had the cake melts behaved. They hadn't. I read the instructions, which seemed simpe enough: melt the stuff in a hot water bath; add a few drops of water if you want a harder icing or, if you want it more liquid, a few drops of oil. So far, so good. Stupid person that I am, I though a harder icing would work better, so I added a few drops of water. The molten stuff immediately became - well, I can't even describe the consistency. In any case, it wasn't liquid at all, and when I tried to put it on the cake - with my hands, because nothing else worked - half of it stuck to my fingers, while the rest of it seemed like purple concrete. I had to scratch it off the cake again because it was hard *and* looked disgusting.
I decided not to give up and made another attempt, this time adding oil. In a moment of complete insanity, however, I decided that it would be a criminal waste to throw out the stuff I scratched off the cake (these melts are outrageously expensive) and added it to the second batch. Which went straight to hell again, naturally. So I had to make a third batch, used up all my cake melts, and the cake still looked like something the cat dragged in. *sigh*
No, there won't be any pictures. This is one baking adventure I'm trying very hard to forget. At least Mum says it doesn't taste bad, but I think she's just being nice. Although... she ate three pieces, so she must have liked it, at least a bit. Well, those were small pieces, as the whole cake had a diameter of 20 centimetres, but still. Mum is a saint.
Then I did some more crafting, working on the third wedding journal. Thank God the other two are already done, but those were envelope journals and therefore easy to make... well, once I've figured out which side is which and what the right direction is to put the dratted envelopes into each other. The third one, though, is a vintage journal, with proper binding, a brown felt cover and metal applications. The clasp I bought has screws, so it's probably meant for wooden boxes, but it has holes, so I'll simply sew onto the cover, once it's done. The pages are mostly finished, due about three weeks of very detailed work, decorations all made free hand and all that. Now if I don't screw up the binding completely, it will be stunning - or so I hope.
Yes, there will be pictures of the journals. Mum volunteered to hold them open at various places, so that I can take photographs. Have I already mentioned that she's a saint?
But the best piece of news is: I've actually finished "An Excellent Mystery"! Yeah! Took me only three years which, considering that some of my WIPs are over a decade and a half old, is fairly quick for me.
Of course, there are parts of the last chapter and the short epilogue that need to be cleaned up and rephrased, but I can do that while typing up the stuff. And if the wonderful and generous
lindahoyland is still willing to clean up my creative grammar, I might be able to post the rest of the story before picowrimo starts in earnest.In spite of the baking disaster, I find this a successful weekend.
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Date: 2017-05-21 09:05 pm (UTC)