Soledad's Journal

... concerning my Easter bread, that is. In the end I chose an old, well-liked recipe that isn't too sweet. I've got enough cookies for sweet. Here is the recipe for those who're interested and can at least read German:
https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/341640321752408867/

I'm still pissed off at Pinterest that it no longer allows to embed pictures from there to here. I'd prefer to show the real things in my entries. But that can't be helped at the moment. *is irritated*

All in all, it was a quiet day. I made the asparagus Strudel - and promptly forgot to add the grated cheese to the filling. In the end, we ate it with sprinkling the cheese on the top after it came out of the oven. It was edible, but not the same taste as it should have been, of course.

Weather went crazy again: after a somewhat rainy day, now we had 10-12 degrees more than yesterday. Mum's joints were aching something fierce, but - real trooper that she is - she insisted on making a walk nonetheless. Tomorrow we'll try to reach our corner café. We haven't been there for half a year or so, I hope we can do it again.

I managed to write a bit today again. Still haven't found the right sentences to finish the ongoing chapter, but I hope I will get there, soon.

I was very busy today. First, I made these lemony egg biscuits, mostly because I wanted to finally put the lemon curd I bought at Aldi to good use. They turned out fairly well; I put white chocolate icing on them to counteract the lemon curd that was really sour. The two fit nicely with each other.

Then I baked Grandma's fabulous, idiot-proof sponge cake (a small one) because I had Quark creme left from the previous baking project. I stirred in some homemade raspberry jam and filled the sponge cake with it. Then I poured some milk chocolate icing over it and sprinkled with freeze-dried strawberry cubes - both left over from various former baking projects.

We had leftover soup and toasted cheese and ham sandwiches for lunch, after which I made the last batch of biscuits for this Easter: the orange-flavoured ones. Of course, I forgot to buy orange juice yesterday, which would have been a requirement, and I refused to go to Lidl again. So I used diluted blood orange aroma and some orange blossom water aside from the grated orange peels. The end results are... interesting. Not bad, just not what they should be. But since my friends don't know how the biscuits supposed to taste they (hopefully) won't complain. I'll add some lemony icing tomorrow, just for the citrus flavour. Ah, well, at least I'm done.

These activities ate my whole day; and we also had laundry day, this being Saturday and all that. But I did call H. for a friendly family chat, and I got Mum an appointment with the hairdresser - tentatively, but at least with her we know that she might not be able to come, after all. She'll call us in time to tell what's the case.

I'm tired but relieved that the baking is over. All those disasters along the process really took much of the joy out of it.

... do what my icon says. Things might be easier that way. Or not. Hard to tell.

Anyway, we had a moderately busy day. We both washed our hair (which means I assisted Mum in the process). Then I prepared a few of my newly acquired empty toilet rolls to be turned into egg baskets. Originally I wanted to do them all, but I stopped by 7 - too unmotivated.

I spent some time trying to decide what to bake next (a decision I later reversed and chose something else) and then made lunch: fried chicken chunks with a honey-chili sauce and rice. I've made enough for two days, so that I wouldn't have to cook tomorrow. Tomorrow will be for baking.

Mum had a visit from the physiotherapist lady and we watched some telly. I printed out some recipes for Easter biscuits that I'm sure I already have somewhere but can't find at the moment. But I've made them before, so there has to be some recipes. Ah, well. Tomorrow there will be Quarkhäschen, assuming the dough decides to cooperate. *fingers crossed*

I had planned a lazy day. What I got in the end was a rather busy day, but that was (partially) my fault.

I started with washing my hair, which was overdue. Then I cooked for two days - not such a hard work, just fiddly, what with peeling the mushrooms and chopping the ham and all that. Pasta Bolognese (with Spätzle instead of spaghetti because we like our noodles to be substantial) turned out very yummy. So, to work off some calories, we went for a walk. It went really well, so we decided to go to the corner coffee for breakfast tomorrow, assuming the weather will cooperate.

My friend Evie had mercy with me and delivered my eggs in the afternoon. Inspired by that fact, I spontaneously decided to bake the Nutella bunnies today instead of tomorrow. Mind you, this is a recipe that I make every single year for Easter. I even made it with 30 kids in the Hort. Never had any problems. Today, my dough turned out a disaster. It crumbled so much that I couldn't even roll it out. Since this has been the second such disaster in a row, I strongly suspect that something is wrong with the package of flour I'm currently using. For tomorrow's baking session I've opened a new package; I'll use up this one for cooking.

To save the yummy (not to mention pricey) dough, I shaped little balls and eggs of it by hand and baked them anyway. I'll give them some chocolate icing and coloured candy decoration tomorrow, to save face. But to prove that the recipe actually works, here are several pics of the Nutella bunnies I've made since 2015.

Writing-wise I managed to write the first part of the hunting scene for my current WIP. I'm fairly content with it. I also decided to post to AO3 a funny scene to an as-yet unrealized Andromeda/Star Trek TNG crossover on its own, just for a good laugh.

No actual crafting was done today. I did put my 6 of my coloured styrofoam eggs into their respective baskets, but that's all. Originally, I planned to make three more baskets of the toilet rolls I had pilfered from the waste paper bin yesterday but couldn't bring up the energy for that roughly 6-minutes-long work. ;)

So, I've baked #5 and #6 on my list because those are simply cookies, formed by hand, no need to use a cookie cutter. The toffee ones are already boxed and put into the fridge (the caramel cream tends to become liquid on room temperature, and we don't want that to happen, no, Precioussss!), the other one is getting its chocolate icing and the hazelnut krokant decoration. I've made my krokant from the scratch, but frankly, that wasn't complicated: just caramelized sugar with a bit of butter and chopped hazelnuts. The thing has already hardened out, so I broke it to pieces and then pulverized (well, sort of) it with the help of a rolling pin and put it into a jar.

Baking lasted half the day, and then I took Mum for a short walk as the weather was cool but sunny. They promise really high temperatures (for March, that is) for the next couple of days, so I hope we might even get to the corner café, as by warm weather she can rest a bit on the benches along the way. We'll see.

Not much else happened. I talked to H. on the phone to tell her about the improved cleaning situation, and I worked a tiny bit on my failed-pincushion-turned-into-a-gift-box. Not enough to actually finish it, but I hope I'll be able to do so tomorrow. No writing done, either; I need to re-watch an Enterprise episode to do so first, and the Dailymotion videos are such a bad quality that one can barely see what's happening. I'll have to dig out my DVDs, as the next part will be a description of their surroundings. *sigh*

On a completely unrelated matter: has anyone heard from chocolate_frapp lately? She used to update her journal daily, and there hasn't been an entry for five weeks. I sent her a nudge but there hasn't been a reaction so far.

Edit: She's back. Apparently, it was only computer problems. I'm very relieved.

... was busy, too.

I've finished my pistachio sponge cake with vanilla custard, fresh strawberries and red jelly. It looks almost exactly like this one from the previous year:



- only without the chopped pistachios on top, which I totally forgot. I added sugar flowers as decoration instead, which wasn't a good idea because they simply melted into the jelly. But they were pretty for the fifteen minutes they lasted. ;))

For lunch, I've made the bastardized version of spanakopita: basically rolled up puff pastry, filled with spinach, Feta cheese and pine nuts. Oh, and sesame seeds on top. It turned out very yummy.

My Easter bread got unexpectedly enormous, so I gave away a quarter of it. Better to make other people a joy than let it dry out like shoesoles because we can't eat the whole thing. I'm looking forward for tomorrow when we'll finally cut the garlic-and-cumin ham. Yum!

In the early afternoon I even got some writing done (after doing the laundry, that is, although it was mostly Luise the Elder who did the washing): almost two pages! Yay!

Around 6pm my friend Elise came to fetch her share of the biscuits. As mentioned before, I gave her a good chunk of the Easter bread, too, as well as a chunk of the yummy cake. She was very happy with it, and we were very happy to have a visitor.

Tonight promises to be very short. Not only will we have two episodes of Mary Berry's Easter Feasts to watch (starting at 11pm), daylight saving time is also coming upon us. Ugh, I really don't like it. We already have way too much daylight in spring and summer; I'm not looking forward to having to keep the blinds down even longer!

I've finished decorating the last two batches of Easter biscuits and boxed them. Phew! That's one thing out of my hair, *is relieved*

I also managed to put in some crafty time. Ten out of 14 bunnies-in-the-egg are finished. The remaining four have their faces and their bow ties stitched on; all I have to do is to sew them together. I hope to do that tomorrow, as I want to deliver them on Tuesday, together with the cookie tins.

I also did the grocery shopping early in the morning, and we had laundry day, too, so I didn't have the time to get bored. Still, I even managed to work a bit on my picowrimo project, so I'm well pleased with today's accomplishments.

The weather had a change of heart; after some lovely, spring weeks, we now have wind and rain. I wonder if the balcony will hold out...

... is the feast of St. Benedict, whom I've always respected greatly. Of course, it comes from the fact that the congregation I once wanted to join (but left after two years for reasons) was based on St. Benedict's Rule, but I kept respecting him even after I had left the convent. What I value most in his teachings is the discretion - which, in his terms, means something entirely different than we understand it now. By St. Benedict, discretion meant to judge every brother by his own merits and needs. Weakness was something he accepted, instead of considering it a fault, and he was decidedly against extremes. Many people could learn a great deal from him, even in these times.

Especially in these times when being tolerant and understanding has long gone out of fashion.

Okay, that was the philosophical addition to the day. Otherwise, I spent the morning at the post office, the bank, the pharmacy, the supermarket and three different shops that sell craft supplies (Kik, Pepco and Tedi, respectively). Spent a great deal of money, which is always liberating. *g*

In the afternoon, I've decorated the third batch of cookies made yesterday, prepared things for the last leg of Easter baking, which will take place tomorrow, and by the time I finished that, it was evening already. I know I've whined about this several times, but the older I get, the faster the days are over. *sigh*

No writing today, and only a tiny bit of crafting before I'd have started my grand tour through the shops.

I've made the Nutella bunnies and the coconut lambs today (see pinned post for visuals). Just the basic biscuits, mind you; that was labour enough. Labour of love, as cooking usually is. :) They'll be iced and decorated tomorrow.

Originally, I planned to make a broccoli strudel for lunch, but Mum saw how tired I was and talked me out of it. So it will be made tomorrow. On Friday I may bake something again, so that everything can be decorated and boxed during the weekend, since on Monday we have our usual cleaning frenzy.

Since I didn't have to cook, I did a bit of crafting. Three of the eggs-with-a-pouch are finished, 11 more to go. And then all 14 bunnies sitting in the pouches. And less than three weeks till Easter. Why keep I doing this to myself again?

Some rudimentary writing was also done. Just a couple of sentences, to calm my conscience. But words are words.

In the evening, my friend Elise dropped by, with half the supermarket. She's my main recipient where Christmas and Easter baking is concerned, and she insists on contributing some ingredients - and she is far too generous, really. But she says that between her five grandchildren, elderly father and mother-in-law it is a huge relief for her to get the goodies ready-made. And since I love baking, it's a win-win situation.

... is what I've made today (among other things). I've set up my plan for Easter baking and needed to know if I had enough ingredients for the start. After all, I'll need almost 3 kgs of flour, 1,5 kg sugar, 1,8 kg baking margarine,7 eggs, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, coconut flakes, chocolate for the icing, lemon and orange zest... and on and on.

The results: I've got more than enough of the more expensive ingredients like the various kinds of nuts but not enough margarine and icing sugar. Go figure. So I'll have to do a bit more shopping next week before the baking madness starts.

I also did the laundry, made toasted sandwiches for lunch, worked a bit on Page(s) 5 of the baby books and made unexpected progress with the little felt bunnies... or rather with the felt eggs in which the bunnies will be sitting. Their front panels are decorated with 3 concentric little hearts, and I was sewing on the largest hearts today. I'll have to repeat the process with the medium and small ones, which means another 28 rounds, but progress is progress, and I'm well content.

Writing-wise I started on Jigsaw Chapter #2, made some small modifications and added one paragraph to the already existing stuff. Not much, but it brings me forward... a bit.

Mum accompanied me to the other end of the corridor today, where the garbage chute is. Not a long walk, but the longest she'd done for the last month. It gives us hope.