Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

For my birthday I was given a copy of Harry Eastwood’s Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache. The premise of this book is that you can cook cakes and delicious things using vegetables instead of lots of fat and other undesirable things. Like wheat, which suits me fine!

Visually, this book is stunning. Every picture makes you want to run out, buy more ground almonds than you can shake a stick at, a couple of tons of carrots, butternut squashes, potatoes, and other baking-compatible veggies and make them, one after the other. The instructions are clear and straightforward. Except that somewhere the instructions mention honey where there isn’t any in the ingredients list, but I’m sure that’s solvable…

So, having basically read this book, cover to cover (yes, I know recipe books aren’t really meant to be read this way), and having drooled over each and every recipe, I decided to make something. I chose Chocolate Chocolate Chip cupcakes as I had most of the ingredients to hand, and what I lacked could be provided by my reasonably limited local shop (for the most part. I’m using chopped up chocolate buttons instead of chocolate chips). Yes, I am lazy, why do you ask?

And then, I started grating. Grating, grating, grating. The thing is, grating doesn’t sound too much work, but it is, in fact, hard. And finely grating over 200g of carrots is a) boring, b) knackering, and c) painful. However, I muscled through, because, ultimately, I wanted cake. I will admit that some of it was slightly less than finely grated, and frankly, I am prepared to live with the consequence of some obviously carrotty bits in my cupcakes, preferring still being in posession of my finger tips and sanity!

Right now these cupcakes are sat on my kitchen bench, cooling. They look gorgeous. They smell amazing. And the bits of the mixture that cooked onto the pan (I’m not a tidy spooner!) tasted delicious! Once the second batch is done (I’m not going to waste the mixture, so there are three extras in the oven as we speak!) and they have all cooled I will make some icing and top them off with that and a giant chocolate button each. Then: we eat.

Despite my griping about the grating, I strongly suspect these cupcakes will be well and truly worth it, but I’ll get back to you one way or another.

All These Things That I Have Done

Lately there has been much spinning and a little knitting. Here are pictures of both. First, the yarns.

1. Camel Silk. I spun this straight from a blend bought from Wingham Woolcraft. It’s shiny and beautiful, and lovely and soft.

2. This is a black jacob top mixed with some light grey BFL.

3. This is some fawn coloured alpaca also mixed with light grey BFL.

4. This is black jacob, white swaledale, and some yellow dyed merino.

5. Chocolate brown alpaca plied with light grey BFL.

Is all good! I like some better than others, but I’m proud of them all! This is all about playing with things and seeing what happens, and sometimes good things happen, and other times less good things! I have my favourites, but I’d be interested to hear what other people like best!

I have absolutely no idea what I will do with these mini-skeins, but never mind. I’ll find something!

And then, the socks. These are Spring Forward from Knitty Summer 2008. I would really recommend this pattern. It’s absolutely beautiful, and much easier than it looks! The yarn is Natural Dye Studio’s Dazzle in Mimosa.  And they are lovely and soft.

Further Adventures in Wheat-Free Baking

This weekend I learned about a new blog, Gluten-Free Girl, and with it a recipe for Peanut Butter cookies entirely lacking in flour. I got quite excited, and resolved to make them. Sadly, I hit a snag. American recipes and their cup measuring tendencies. Nothing in baking confuses me more than trying to use a recipe written in cups. As far as I can tell cups contain a different amount depending on which country the recipe originates. Plus, it is a volume measure, which makes it very difficult to convert to weight. I’m afraid I have abandoned many a delicious sounding recipe due to past experiences (almost exclusively negative) that occur from accepting the idea that a cup is 8 ounces or however much someone tells me it is on that day.

So, I took a more lateral approach this time. I googled “gluten free peanut butter cookies” and while Gluten-Free Girl’s recipe came up, so did another one, happily a UK version, measuring in the grams that my kitchen equipment allows me to use reliably.

So, I now have a batch of cookies cooling in my kitchen, and I am very pleased with them. Having said that, I would do things a little different next time. I would use unsweetened peanut butter (which I usually eat anyway, but today happened to have the ordinary sweet kind). I would make the biscuits quite small. And I would cook them for ten to twelve minutes, not eight.

They are fascinating to cook, though, as when they come out of the oven they are incredibly squidgy. So much so that you have to let them cool a bit before you can even move them to a cooling rack (or, in my case, a plate which doesn’t do the job nearly as well. Must buy cooling rack!). It is only as they cool that they solidify into something recognisable as a biscuit. This is not something the version of the recipe I used tells you, although I expected it, partly from the Gluten-Free Girl recipe, and partly just because what exactly out of a peanut butter, sugar and egg combination is going to provide solidity while hot? Quite.

I will definitely make these again. They’re so sweet that I think they’re best with a cup of tea to dilute the overwhelming sweetness a bit, but they certainly douse the sugar cravings.

Bottled Water

I saw this news story about how Bundanoon, a town in Australia, has banned bottled water, and I thought “Yay! Good for them!” And then felt a guilty stab at the many plastic water bottles that surround me. I have them at home, I have them at the office, I leave a trail of water bottles wherever I go.

In fairness to myself, most of these haven’t seen the original water in many a long day, and have been filled from various taps of my acquaintance. But the fact is that, ultimately, these bottles are still going to have to go somewhere. Yes, I will take some of them to a recycling point (wouldn’t it be easier if plastic bottles were part of residential recycling collections!? I’m told it will be later this year, in my area, but in the meantime…) but for some of them, frankly, that somewhere will be landfill. And wouldn’t it be better if, rather than recycling them, I just never had them. If I had a nice reusable water bottle that I took everywhere with me and filled from lowly taps? Well, yes. I’d save myself some money too!

So, that’s what I’m going to do. Over the next week I am going to hunt out some nice, practical, reusable bottles. I’ve seen some lovely ones in camping shops, so it isn’t like I have to settle for something utilitarian and ugly just for my principles! Basically, there isn’t a good reason not to do this. So, I shall!

Stats

One of the things I like best about WordPress is that it gives me stats without my really needing to do anything. I could do it myself (and have done in the past), but I’m not that fussed about it, so am happy to take the easy option!

I like knowing how many people come to my blog and, above all, where they come from. For example, yesterday someone came here from Twitter. I would love to know who and why, but I probably  never will. I even logged into my Twitter account (which I don’t use, I signed up out of curiosity and it’s not really my thing) to see if I could find anything. No hints. Also, I get a lot of people searching for songs and/or poems where I have used them for subject headings. I suspect these people are a little disappointed by my lack of information! I also get many people searching for Cthulu dice, with which I cannot help, and for reviews on the books I’ve talked about. Many of my readers come from Ravelry, even though I’m not particularly active over there, which comes as a constant surprise. I love that the stats let me know all this!

An especially favoured feature is the one that tells me what my average daily visitor count has been year by year. I like this because from it I know that my daily visitor count is, slowly, rising. This is not a particularly popular blog, and that’s fine by me (not that I’m against popularity, it’s just that isn’t why I do this!), but it’s nice to know that over the three years the blog has existed, more people have been finding something interesting to look at.

Book Review — Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

A few days ago, on the train, I finished reading Kate Atkinson’s first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. This was an impulse buy in Waterstones when a third book on the 3 for 2 offer was needed, and given that, a choice that worked out very well indeed!

It tells the story of Ruby Lennox by Ruby Lennox, all the way from conception well into her grown up life. Amidst this story she flits back and forth to the lives of her ancestors. Both stories are very well told and full of so many characters that you would think the writer would struggle to keep them all three dimensional — but she doesn’t struggle at all! Each character is clearly its own, and realistically none of them are wholly good or wholly bad. The story of Ruby’s life, and her family’s keeps you hanging, as you realise that something is slightly awry with what you’re reading.

This is the first book in a long time that I have tried to eke out and to savour. I didn’t want it to end, at all. So much so that, having finished it, I went out and bought another Kate Atkinson book, Human Croquet. It’s eminently readable, and full of lovely touches like anthropomorphism of teddy bears and pre-birth narration. Overall this book is lovely, touching, and well worth a read!

Adventures in Spinning

Last night I did my first piece of post Woolfest spinning, and now have a mini-skein to call my own. It’s about 70/30 natural white Swaledale and black Jacob. I love the look of it. It is variegated greys with occasional elements of the two original fibres. It is, however, not a particularly soft yarn. It feels quite wirey in places. Neither of these comes as a surprise, as they are both quite robust fibres in their own right. I’m thinking it might be a good combination for a knitted (or felted!) bag, or something. Definitely not for clothing, unless you want to be itching a lot!

Here is the fruit of my labours:

As I say, I love the look of it, it’s all salt and peppery. It also fascinates me that although so much more of the fibre was the white swaledale, the colour is so dark!

Embracing Monogamy

I have never been into knitting project monogamy. I’ve generally tried to keep things to a sane level, but that hasn’t always happened either. Lately, though, I’ve been becoming more monogamous. It isn’t that I am knitting something so utterly engrossing that I can’t put it down, so it doesn’t come out of enthusiasm.

I think, actually, it has come partly out of my increasing knitting ambivalence. I still enjoy knitting, but I have been experiencing a change in how I feel about knitting, about the knitting community, and about the place of knitting in my life. Essentially, knitting is not the key relaxation place it once was. I find much about the online knitting community intensely irritating. And I just don’t love knitting as much as I did. I still enjoy it, I sometimes still crave it, but it isn’t the same.

The other part, I think, comes from a sense of the value of my time which grows as I begin to seriously contemplate the end of my PhD, and the notion of my life afterwards. 2010 will be “All change, please!”, and so there is the idea of potential, of being able to change how I do things, what I do, when I do it, and where. There is a light at the end of the tunnel which emphasises my current situation. I don’t have much time to play with right now, and so not seeing results for the hours I put in is becoming increasingly unpalatable. If I do something (or nothing!) I want to get out of it as much as possible. Working on three or four knitting projects at once means I take a long time to finish something, I don’t feel like I’m making progress (you know, this is starting to sound like the PhD…), and that frustrates me because I need to feel like I’m moving forward.

And so I find myself in a situation where I am mentally queuing my projects. I want to finish the Spring Forward socks I’m working on now. I want to knit the baby jumper for a colleague of my Mum’s. I want to knit the pair of socks I promised my boyfriend’s mother. I have absolutely no desire to be working on all these things at once. In fact, the idea makes me feel distinctly panicked.

It is very strange and unexpected to me how my reactions to knitting has changed over the past couple of years, and actually, I suspect it is well documented by this blog, started at the height of my knitting fervour but now something I get a lot more pleasure out of as knitting becomes a decreasing part of its subject matter.

Woolfest 2009

As some of you may know, Woolfest took place over the weekend just gone. For those who didn’t know, Woolfest took place over the weekend just gone. Woolfest is pretty much what it sounds like. It is a place to buy wool (although not exclusively!) for spinning, knitting, weaving, felting…whatever you might want to use wool for. It is also a place to buy the various accoutrements for these practices.

I went last year, and I had a very nice time indeed. So this year I was keen to go back. As a result, on Saturday morning my boyfriend and I drove up (actually he drove and I…didn’t. Because I can’t!) to Cumbria to visit Woolfest.

We began with a wander around, without the intention of buying very much at first — recconaissance is always good! Then later I did the major part of the buying on my own while he read his book. I am now in possession of a large amount of fibre for spinning, a set of beautiful little carders, a small niddy noddy (my current one is huge, and not always what I need), and a lovely book on carding. I was happy.

Having said that, I think the whole thing was really marked much more by experiences. Seeing all the sheep, alpacas, etc. I have to say that some of them looked deeply unhappy. It was a warm and muggy day, and so not the greatest day to be an unshorn sheep in a small pen.

I dare say they were ok really, but I bet they were happy to get home! There were some alpaca rabbits too, which looked, frankly, terrified. Perhaps it was just the heat, but it did seem a shame for them to look so unhappy.

One thing I loved was that Ashford had a stand there. I don’t remember whether or not they had one last year, at that point I was just beginning to use a drop spindle, and really wasn’t interested in taking it any further. However, they were there this year, and I think that was great. They weren’t actually selling — they didn’t need to be, everyone else was selling their products — but they had lots of their products to look at. They had a selection of wheels, a drum carder (which was being demonstrated), books, examples of fibre, lazy kates…I suspect examples of the greater part of their production line.

Especially fascinating for me was the chance to see the new four speed flyers in person. When they first came out I was very excited. My wheel is rather old and has only two ratios, and I was filled with a sense that of course I needed a four speed flyer with a sliding hook mechanism, rather than those question mark shaped hooks you screw in. But what I discovered at the weekend is that I don’t like the look of the flyer. It’s just too modern for me. If I had another wheel, a more modern looking one, I would probably go for it. But it would look completely wrong on my old fashioned little wheel!

I also got to meet Elizabeth Ashford who completely threw me by a) being Elizabeth Ashford — it never occurred to me that there were actual people called Ashford, at least, not any more (I’m pessimistic. I assume little companies are bought out by bigger companies and become completely dehumanised) and b) asking me whether I had my own sheep. I really liked her though. I liked the fact that they were there, I loved that she included my boyfriend in the conversation rather than assuming that only the woman would be interested/involved in spinning etc (he isn’t involved particularly, but there’s no reason to assume that!), and I loved being told I could have a go on one of the wheels. The thing about something like this is that it gives a company a face, and makes you feel that when you’re buying from them you’re buying from someone who was nice and friendly to you once. Which never hurts.

Throughout the day I was also looking at the various wheels on display, and found that I love mine more than any of them. When I was looking into buying one I was leaning much more towards a Kromski Sonata, but I couldn’t find a second hand one, and so bought an Ashford Traveller. And now, I’m glad. The Sonata is nice, absolutely, I just like mine better.

And here, just for good measure, is a wooly animal montage!

All things considered, it was a wonderful weekend, and a wonderful Woolfest!

Book Review: The Return, Victoria Hislop

I have just finished The Return, by Victoria Hislop. This is a book with two connected stories. One dealing with a woman called Sonia who loves to dance and goes on holiday to Spain to do so. The other deals with the experiences of the Ramirez family who run a cafe (of which Sonia becomes a regular in the modern day) during the Spanish civil war.

The story about Sonia I did not like. I found it (and Sonia) quite annoying. It was distinctly unconvincing, yet highly predictable, and decidedly unnecessary as far as the second story was concerned. In fact, I really felt it devalued the other story, and the book as a hole. The second story was (as far as I can tell) well researched, it was interesting, held my attention, and taught me a lot about Spain’s history. I was happy to learn as Spain is a country I have never actually been to and one I know very little about. Overall, I really enjoyed this part of the book.

I think it is a shame that the author chose the modern day framing device. The story of the Ramirez family would have stood alone without it, and would have stood with greater strength, I feel. The modern day elements made the whole book feel less realistic and I found it very distracting.  As the bulk of the book is focused on the Ramirez family, with Sonia’s story occuring mainly at the beginning and the end of the book, I have to admit that by and large, I enjoyed this book, and in fairness, this is more than I expected from the blurb on the back. But to say so rankles, just a little, as I maintain it would have been a better book had it just focused on the Spanish Civil War story.