meta

Yo dawgs. This is all about to get meta because I am about to (shamelessly) blog about a blog. Although – is it really meta if I’m not blogging about this blog? If this were a play, and it had a play in it, that would be metatheatre, so I suppose the act of referring to the writing of a blog within a blog is metablogging. But then, blogging is not quite as immersive an experience as theatre and usually more self-conscious by its very nature. So maybe one cannot apply the same critical parameters to the two media.

That was just to prove to myself I haven’t forgotten how to speak (or write, if you’re going to be fussy about it). The truth is that while it takes a clever and creative bean to market stuff effectively (and I’m not saying I’m one of those people, just that I’m working in that field and this strikes me as being the case), said marketing bean often has to communicate at the level of the lowest common denominator. Pretty soon a marketing bean of any calibre who has realised this starts to notice that their ability to string complex sentences together is waning.

I can feel mine slipping away from me and I am fighting to hold on to it.

Which is where blogging comes in, because on t’internet I can free the kite of my writing to the winds of my imagination and let them both soar where they will (while hopefully remaining tethered to the String of Sense, and keeping far from the Hedgerow of Twisted Logic). I can witter and twitter and blather and rant, and run circles around words and stretch meanings like bread dough when it has got to the pleasingly-elastic stage and has stopped sticking to every surface with which it comes into contact.

That’s what I like doing on this blog, ohoh yes. I like picking a theme and waxing lyrical for a bit, pootling around the edges of words and getting sidetracked on things I find interesting. This blog has always been a ‘writing’ blog, far more than it is a ‘pictures’ blog. It’s more like a journal than a photo album. So that’s why I’ve started a second blog for all my foodie-experiments. Here it is: cakesbyalfred.wordpress.com

 

That’s it. It’s that simple. On this blog, I will write stuff about my life (which I don’t have very much of in any case) and on that blog, I will post pictures and talk about recipes. That’s not to say that there won’t be any crossover, of course – perish the thought! But certainly, if you prefer salivating over cake to salivating over my prose style, you’d be better signing up to email updates at wordpress, and you can, forthwith, ignore me on here. If you like both, well then you are a lovely person and I love you muchly.

Ok. Metablog over.

One final aside, not to do with this topic, but to which I will surely return: if you haven’t read Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to be a Woman’, do so immediately. Even if you are not a woman (perhaps especially so, in that case). Not only will it make you cry with laughter, it will also make you weep with delight at her writing and surely too, it will make you think.

Right. That really is it.

For now.

feet

Hi guys. Sorry for the silence. I've been spending my evenings engaged in alternative creative activities. As you can see above. Yes, those two badboys right there are chocolate, almond and raspberry macaroons. And they are delish. 

Yesterday I made lemon macaroons - with homemade lemon curd, obvs (what sort of amateur do you take me for?). 

At the weekend I made chocolate macaroons with a hint of orange. 

What, you may ask, has occasioned this sudden frenzy? 

Well, I'll tell you. It's feet. 

Now before you go getting grammatically correct on my ass, let me explain a little bit of macaroon terminology. The crispy bits round the outside, right, are called the 'shell'. They are made of almond, two types of sugar + egg white, plus a flavouring of your choosing - eg cocoa powder, lemon rind, pistachio etc. The bit in the middle is the 'filling' (see, it's easy, eh?). Now then. This is the tricky bit. The domed part of the macaroon shell does not have a name as such (you can call it the 'dome' if you want to be fussy). BUT - the bottom, where dome meets baking tray - is known as 'feet'. Macaroons have feet. What will they think of next, I hear you cry. 

Well then, the achievement of feet on a macaroon is widely held to be the hard bit about making them. I've had a bash at macaroons before - last Christmas, with Emily, when we made lemon and coffee and chocolate macaroons, ate them all, sugar crashed wildly and spent the rest of the afternoon basically comatose on the sofa - being one occasion. I've also attempted them more recently. However, due to oven temperatures (agas are just a bit too hot for most macaroon recipes), equipment etc I have not succeeded. My macaroons have been footless. Or possibly feetless; I don't know how many feet each macaroon has. They always seem to be referred to in the plural. Anyway. Onwards. 

So. On Sunday, I trialled my new, wider piping nozzle. And lo and behold, when I checked my macaroons - glory be, there they were! Feet! Feeeeet! I nearly cried with happiness. They were perfect. Even Paul Hollywood couldn't have criticised them that much. 

I had to make more, to check I hadn't imagined it. So I made lemon ones. Now, I don't know that the addition of the lemon rind and the removal of the cocoa powder was absolutely 100% successful but nevertheless, they still tasted great and the FEET were back! Yes! 

Buoyed by my recipe altering success, I was flicking through my recipe books this evening when I realised I was being drawn, irresistibly, to macaroons again. So I added extra almond essence to just about everything, a bit of flaked almond, and then some raspberry to lighten it all up. And whaddayaknow, FEET AGAIN! Not only that, but the flaked almond on the top of the shells looked pretty dayum professional. I felt really smug. So I took an artsy picture with my posh teaset and posted it on every social networking site of which I am a member and now here I am, gloating about it. Gloat gloat gloat. By the way, did I tell you I made choux swans? Yeah. I did, too. And they looked great, with their little whipped-cream piped tails. 

My baking star is rising. My mojo has returned. And I probably shouldn't have eaten the leftover ganache. G'night, lovelies.