Playing Catchup

Today's efforts on the baking front were, I must say, somewhat half-hearted. It's not through lack of desire to complete the challenge or even through detestation of the idea of baking, I am in fact surprisingly still enjoying it!

But Alas, a weary teenager struggles to really get stuck into making a cake after a terrifically long day out... shopping with the girlfriend. Guys out there will be nodding in agreement and girls will be shaking their head in a disapproving way. Guys simply just don't have the stamina for a full day's shopping without constant encouragement, feeding (includes sugar/caffeine rich drinks), comfort breaks (this can include trips into shops of a non-clothes nature) and of course, the all important victorious end result (when the lovely girlfriend finally tries on a piece of clothing she: A) Was looking for B) Likes & C) Is not too pricey.

So after a tiring day wandering many of the shops in Peterborough (most of which were explored twice at least!) I got home and could barely stand let alone whip butter and sugar into a frenzy! Yet, my mind switched on suddenly and screamed at me: "DON'T YOU DARE GIVE UP NOW!!" Yesterday, I had decided to forgo the baking and catch up another day but it was clearly going to be a massive effort to catch up by baking three day's worth of recipes in just one day, so my mind engaged with the task afoot and I began whipping butter and sugar into a frenzy.
Today the task was a Spiced Apple and Currant Cake - I think Apple-Currant Cake sounds better but apparently my book sucks at coming up with recipe Names aaaand recipes (see "Almond Cookies with a Cherry on Top" for more uninspiring recipe names!) - and also a small task to finish off the rest of my Hazelnuts and also complete yesterday's recipe "Hazelnut Bars."

In my last post I teased about a potential "mini-challenge" in built in my other challenge, and today's task of baking two seperate things in one day was a sort of challenge which could help me prepare for that... And I must say that it was rather a lot easier than I expected. Yes, there was an issue finding extra ingredients and weighing up and whatnot but the main area in which I provided useful was on the washing up front. It was so easy to re-use some bowls from one recipe to another, after all butter and sugar won't spoil a recipe involving butter and sugar!

I also successfully practiced the art of mini baking (ie Baking with recipes 1/4 so there is only enough for one or two people.) with the help of my mother's handy 1/8 of a teaspoon measuring spoon I could successfully get super accurate divisions of awkward measurements, woo! And once again, I have had literally no other problems to report, remarkable considering the chances of error were doubled with my quantity of recipes!

The Results:

Mmmm Appley

Mmmm (insert pun about nuts) -ey

As you can see, they look pretty damned good! The apple cake was especially delicious, it was so very moist and juicy yet not soggy (don't ask me how on earth that works!) and although the hazelnut bars were a little underwhelming in comparison, they really did work well. Though I was a little surprised at the result, which resembled a tiny sponge cake in consistency, I fully expected a biscuit like tecture but it was far closer to being lots of square cupcakes. But I am thankful for finishing the last item with hazelnuts as a main ingredient; I have pretty much run out of Nut related puns, towards the end there I was really scraping the bottom of the sack for them...