Wood Pussies

[VikingVagine]

Carrying on from Chat.

Evening Wood Pussies! I have enjoyed catching up with all your Prospero adventures.

Eddie 20% - what a result!

Huevos Tell us more about this frozen lemon curd meringue sandwich concoction, it sounds intriguing. I'm envisaging all sorts of freezer catastrophe, do you wrap it in cling film before freezing or what?

I noticed talk of dairy-free chocolate cake upthread, well I made the vegan chocolate cake I was chatting about last week and it was a triumph! I thoroughly recommend the recipe.

Some snaps & link to the recipe here

Thanks everyone for pastry advice :)
I think I had it in my mind that you should use the smallest amount of water possible, which is what I did DD and DS were badgering me at the time, so I did whatever was the quickest

It rolled out OK after a couple of hours out of the fridge. Mince and onion tart/pie in the oven now, looks nice so far - pastry is certainly a nicer colour than JusRol which has been my standard til now. We'll see :)

ViviPru - the meringue thing is simply two 20cm meringues sandwiched together with a mixture of whipped double cream (300ml) and lemon curd (jar and half of Sainsbo's TTD stuff [lush]). Then open freeze and then pack away until needed, up to 3 months apparently. I shall wait til Saturday Then out of freezer to semi-defrost for 2-3 hours, it is half creamy, half ice-creamy, absolutely divine but such a doddle to make (first time I have made it though. But a MIL classic :) )

oh pastry making is one of those things that is very frustrating to do when you have children underfoot, you do need to concentrate.

I think Jus-Rol is perfectly all right but there is a conspiracy to pretend it's as good as home-made, and it's just not.
When I made puff pastry from scratch I was amazed by how much better it was than bought stuff. I still buy puff because it is such a faff (would never buy shortcrust), but the home-made really was amazing.

Update to my attempts to deal with Amazon wrt the missing non-existent mill. I emailed today to say I no longer had the packaging and that having done some online research that it seemed the mill didn't exist and they were misinforming customers yada yada yada they replied just now with this:

I?m sorry to hear that you've had a problem with your Kenwood Prospero Compact we don't seem to have any alerts for missing mills with this product if it was listed it should have been with it.

We?ll be glad to help as much as we can but first we'd suggest that you consult the manufacturer to check whether this is a known issue, we no longer have stock that I could get checked. They'll have specialist knowledge of their own products and in many cases they may be able resolve the problem immediately over the telephone. If not, they may be able to get your missing mill shipped out quickly. They'll be able to advise you whether a return to us is necessary.

So tomorrow I'm calling Kenwood to prove to Amazon that there's no mill with the KM265.

Has anyone bought one recently? I want one and I want it now and I want to pay the least for it. Think the KM265 would be best for me.

apologies to the expert bakers who have probably heard of this type of frosting but
you have to try this the ingredients are so so wrong, but the results are brill.

Made some fab chocolates cakes and this for the top. A recipe made for the Prospero as the quantities aren't massive and it needs mega beating! It's gorgeous

I am so going to make chocolate cupcakes and try that tomorrow!

Oh the one thing I will do differently next time is use caster sugar instead of granulated and just beat it for ages, it was a faff checking to see if the granulated had dissolved

Evening all! Very much enjoying reading all your adventures in Kenland. I was in sainsburys today and the prosperos were up at around £180!! So great bargains bagged here. The big reduction was on a Kenwood food processor, but obviously you don't need that now! And I am going to wait till I am rich enough to get the fp attachments for the Chef.

Chef has been busy- tried breadsticks from the recipe book I got with it, disaster! They didn't rise at all so I obviously did something wonky with the yeast. They were doughy and chewy, yuck!

Had more success with the lemon drizzle cake someone mentioned up thread- delicious! And I did literally nothing apart from lob things in and switch it on. Took aaaaages longer than the instructions said though.

Re rubbing in butter, I asked about this on MN before and got given the genius tip of grating the butter straight from the fridge!

Thank you to all those who have posted links- my list of things I want to make is getting very long!

Bah! Everytime I tell DH what I'm planning on baking next he says he doesn't really like whatever it is I'm planning so won't eat them. That's why I made you the blardy Victoria sponge before I tried any exciting recipes silly man! I don't care now what you will and won't eat!

dh was like that. till I realised I' spent about 6 months solid rotating the same 9 dishes and had given up.

Now I cook, I decide. He tries it, and if doesn't like it,we don't have it again.

What is nice is he is not a pudding or cake man, so on the odd occasion he feels compelled to have a slice of something it it all goes I know it must be gooooooooood

I'm now eyeing up the Tala piping set on the lakeland website......cupcakes need to be made!!!! And i have some refund money from Amazon burning a hole in my pocket on my credit card

My Dad was visiting today, is it wrong that I regaled him with my tale of the returned Sainsbos prospero and the subsequently repurchased Amazon prospero? Accompanied by the grand opening of the cupboard door to show Eddie in all his glory

What is nice is he is not a pudding or cake man

That would be nice. After EVERY meal, DP invariably turns to me and says "anything for pudding?" He's always disappointed when I snap with mild irritation Muller rice? Disappointed, but in an accepting way.

I wouldn't mind but we both work form home full time so you'd think he'd have noticed if I'd spent the afternoon whipping up a croquembouche.

I'd love to dear, but someone's got to keep us in roofs over our heads

Hmm, I don't know what Lakeland is, doesn't exist n France. Am I going to regret looking at it online?!

I got the tala piping set :) it's good.

DH made clementine and walnut biscotti, and I made amaretti biscuits. Biscotti = good, amaretti biscuits = awful.

I love walnut biscuits. We seem to have a lot of walnuts in the cupboard, too....

VV you won't regret it but your credit card might.

Time for some trumpet blowing......my pastry was fab! Thin and crispy, buttery, tasted lovely :)

Talking of Tala (already have piping set, so no urge for that), what's the Tala measure jug thing you were all talking about on the last thread? Why use that instead of scales?

Might need to make scones today - could anyone link to a recipe? Conventional rather than lemonade, at first at least :)

Thanks

Caz10 great tip about grating the butter straight from the fridge! Do you then leave it to come to room temp, or do you k-beater it straight away?

Simple scone recipe here just be careful not to over handle/knead the dough!

Well done HuevosRancheros!

still haven't tried pastry in Ken.... he will be mixing my HFW sweetcorn fritters tonight though.

Straight to kbeater!! I actually cba to hand grate and just usually chop into small lumps and the chef seems to manage- but I think you prospero ladies have a grater attachment? (!)

I think having to grate the butter first would take longer/create more washing up than rubbing in by hand TBH, I might stick with the FP for pastry (we only do it a couple of times a year anyway).

huevos, the tala measuring thing is just nice to use! I bought it for its aesthetic value but use it all the time. Just because.

I fancied the Tala measurer because its just sooo pretty it has US cup measurements in, and I find that I tend to use a lot of US recipes. But WhoKnows recommended some melamine cup measurers which I still need to have a google of...