The Gisborne Institute of Broadsword Polishing and Leather Lustering

[SupermassiveLBD]

Motto: Honi soit qui mal y pense

Master Classes available in:

Smouldering
Stompy boot wearing
Pointy weapon waving, and the effective deployment thereof
Exotic equestrianism
Imperatives
and The cause and alleviation of damsels' distress (Godwyves also welcome)

Hello peeps. I've never had cardamom ice-cream but I should
think it would be nice - it's really just vanilla ice-cream with a hint of spice. And cardamom always seems vaguely lemony to me, so I bet it'd be lovely.

Red Velvet cake is amazing. I've always heard people witter on about it but never tried it until last year and now I'm a real convert. It's a cross between chocolate and vanilla. The red part just seems to add an air of rich smoothness to it but that's purely psychological of course. Spiro, you wrote red velvet cake into my story many moons ago... :)

Also, itg's beautiful!

So how does the red bit get red?

Well that bit slightly unnerves me, Massive - a whole bottle of red food colouring...

Right, well the frosting has just been done and I've told the gullible idiots little darlings that the cakes have to 'set' for half an hour before they are edible, so they need to go and play in the garden by themselves for 30 mins whilst Mummy gets on with some 'important work' on the computer.

:o

Well, I don't suppoe it does much harm once in a while. As the art mistress also said to the gardener.

The red colouring, I meant.

And cakes really do taste better when the flavour has had a chance to mature. They are even better the next day, but who has that kind of patience?

Think I will give the ice cream a try then.

I've been fascinated by the idea of red velvet cake for a while but amd not sure about the chocolate/vanilla crossover - I like a chocolate cake to really taste of chocolate.

I may be swayed by the frosting though !

Have you ever tried making whoopie pies Twigs?

Spiro, if it helps you can think of it as a madeira cake :) My recipe is from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. They have cream cheese frosting on top and I thought I would dye it a very subtle pink, to complement the red cake, but it's come out looking like Pepto Bismol :) I found some red edible glitter in my Tin Of Cakey Goodness though, so they look very pretty and sparkly!

Whoopie pies - what are they? I've heard of them but they sound suspiciously likle they would have custard or blancmange in...? (no food that wobbles, remember? :) )

Speaking of ice-cream, there was a fantastic ice-cream shop when I went there with DrTwigs, pre-kids. They had a huuuuuuuuuuuuge number of flavours and really interesting ones too like lavender, beer, black olive, tomato, thyme... the lavender one was delicious. Oh look, [[http://www.fenocchio.fr/eng_parfums.html they have a website!) LOL at some of their translations into English :)

Pepto Bismol icing, now there's an innovation!

Even so, I feel in serious need of cake, right here, right now.

Whoopie pies are little flat sponges which you sandwich together with a kind of marshmallow buttercream - I was just curious as to your opinion if you'd done them. They look beautiful but are quite a faff to make and we weren't that keen when we had them as they taste quite 'fatty'. I think we made 12-16 and ate 2 and half, but each to their own I guess.

I am off for a quick sweet dReAm about JP 40 winks, before I have to cook dinner.

Here you go, Massive

Re. that cake pic - of course you all know what 'arris' is Cockernee rhyming slang for, yes?

I've made myself ROFL having just realised what that cake message would mean in East London :) )

I'm an expat, so i can't think what you mean Twigs

Luscious though the pic is, that blue icing does me 'ead in.

Massive? Innocent?

Twigs is it one's bottom? I may not be an EastEnd girl but I know how you pronounce arse in our fine city.

Let's hope it's a peach flavoured sponge!

Arris = short for Aristotle
Aristotle = bottle
Bottle = short for bottle and glass
Bottle and glass = arse

My Dad called it an 'arris for years before it occurred to me to ask him why he called it that :)

LOL @ peach flavoured sponge! Actually, I nearly made peaches & cream cupcakes from the same book...

I made a chocolate & peach trifle for the royal wedding bbq we had. Just layer up choc swiss roll, tinned peaches, chocolate custard & whipped cream with crumbled flake & amaretti biscuits on top. Very 70's but yummy!

At last - after lots of news of deaths & diseases, finally some good news.

An old colleague of mine who was told when he was very young he probably wouldn't be able to have kids of his own has just posted details of his partner's12 week scan on Facebook!

I used to make a trifle like that, Spiro, though without the amaretti, which we didn't have oop north. Or we did but I was not sophisticated enough to know where to find them

How great is that about your old colleague!

::Staggers in::

Lovely cake porn, although we spent so much in the patisserie in France I'm a bit orf cake at the moment.

::takes own temperature and sends for doctor::

I have good news of my own - my Health Scare turns out to be nothing significant - but also bad news too. We've just heard that one of Girl's school friends has died very suddenly. I was steeling myself to telling her tonight, but my mum has sown doubt in my mind by suggesting it's better to wait until term starts. I still think I should tell her now - I think it will be too much of a shock if we leave it until school starts again (or even, as my mum seemed to be suggesting, leave it to the teacher). Any ideas?

Great news re your friend Spiri and also you Maud (I dont recall you mentioning it before ). I think you should tell Girl about her friend, much better coming from you at home where she can cry and get a hug from mum than be told in a school assembly and not have you there.

Oh Maudy, I didn't realise you'd had a heath scare. How horribly worrying for you all. So glad you are ok, you must be so relieved! How dreadful about your daughter's friend though :( I'm not sure what I would do. I'd be tempted to leave it a bit longer and let Girl enjoy what's left of the holidays but defintiely tell her before school starts - maybe a day or so before she goes back? Poor thing, I hope she will be alright when you tell her.

Well, Bloke decided we should tell her as soon as he got home, which we duly did, and she then revealed that she'd known since this morning (she went to play with a friend who already knew, but friend's mother was sure they hadn't talked about it). So there you go.

I didn't mention my Worry before ::head in sand emoticon:: so you hadn't missed anything.