Mrs Malarkey

Tag: baking

  • Instagram is making me fat.

    Instagram is making me fat.

    I really think Instagram is trying to make me fat.

    Unlike apparently half the population, I don’t follow celebrities, fitness influencers or people who photograph themselves standing in front of expensive cars or worse still those annoying people with the fake nails that insist on tapping on things. My Instagram feed consists almost entirely of bakers, bookshops and people who live in beautiful cottages with enormous kitchen tables.

    Consequently, every time I open the app, I’m confronted with freshly baked Lemon Drizzle, enormous Chelsea buns, beautifully iced cakes and books arranged beside steaming mugs of tea all with the obligatory candle(or candles) burning away in the background.

    The trouble is, after approximately five minutes of scrolling, I develop an overwhelming desire to abandon everything I’m supposed to be doing, you know, boring things like work and the like, shut the front door, put on an apron and spend the rest of the day baking. Preferably in a kitchen with a large wooden table, a vase of freshly picked flowers and a rather charming view of the countryside.

    In reality, my kitchen table is covered in things that need sorting out, there’s probably something crusty and burnt in the oven that needs cleaning off and I’ve just discovered we’re almost out of butter. Still, this doesn’t stop me imagining myself producing magnificent cakes and rustic loaves whilst the rest of the world carries on without me.

    Then there’s the book side of things. Apparently, one cannot eat a homemade Treacle Tart without simultaneously reading a lovely book, preferably beside a window with rain gently trickling down the glass.

    I can see the appeal. I really can.

    In fact, I’ve reached the conclusion that if I spent as much time actually baking and reading as I do looking at other people baking and reading, I’d be considerably happier. Although probably three stone heavier and with a serious cholesterol issue.

    I really need to put my phone down.

    Just as soon as I’ve found the recipe for that gloriously sticky looking Sticky Toffee Pudding.

  • Recipe finder

    Recipe finder

    Somewhere on this Internet page there’s a recipe

    I’ve got three eggs, half a packet of butter and some apples that need using.

    What I’d like is a cake recipe. Nothing particularly ambitious. Something I can put in the oven before the apples grow legs and walk off. I search online and find a promising picture and click.

    Apparently, this cake reminds the author of a little cottage in the countryside. That’s lovely, but I’m in the kitchen wondering how much flour I need. The recipe author is now explaining that autumn is her favourite time of year. Mine is rapidly passing while I look for the oven temperature inamongst all the blurb.

    I do understand that somebody has put time, effort and money into creating this recipe and I’m grateful they’ve shared it, and I don’t expect them to do all that for nothing. I’m happy for there to be the odd advert, I’d just prefer them not to move or float into the bit I’m reading.

    Eventually, I spot “Jump to recipe”.

    What a fab idea. We could perhaps have started with that. I press it and arrive at the ingredients, which briefly remain still before an advert loads and shifts everything down. I was looking at 175 grams of something or was that a cup. Bloody hell now I’ve got to convert American cups into grams – where’s the calculator when I need it?

    Oh Yay! Another advert. I’m looking at a woman who wants to know whether I’m paying too much for broadband. Almost certainly love, but you’ve caught me at a bad time.

    Once I’ve found the flour again, I begin. This is when the practical difficulties of reading a recipe from a phone become apparent. My hands are buttery, the screen keeps going dark and I’m trying to scroll with the only clean bit of my little finger. I wipe my hands, put my glasses back on and try again.

    What I miss is being able to put a recipe in front of me and trust it to stay there. A book has its faults, particularly when it insists on closing itself, but a bag of sugar will generally settle that argument.

    I don’t mind a story with a recipe, either. If I’m sitting down with a cup of tea, I might enjoy reading about how it came about. When I’ve already greased the tin, I’m rather less interested in the afternoon your aunt first made it.

    For now though, I’ve copied the ingredients onto the back of an envelope. The writing gets a bit cramped, but I can read it, and nothing has moved for several minutes. I’ve made cakes before I think to myself. Lets just pop everything into a bowl, give a good mix, pour it in the tin and see what happens.

    The apples are finally in a cake and I find myself thinking a recipe book is so much less faff.

  • QR Codes on a packet of biscuits

    I thought eating them was the full experience

    I’ve been looking at it while the kettle boils, trying to imagine what might be at the other end. More information about the biscuits, presumably, although the packet has already told me what’s in them, who made them and how many I can eat before I have to start being dishonest with myself and hiding the evidence before the kids come home.

    I’m not sure what else I need to know.

    They’re biscuits. I know what to do. Nobody has ever handed me a custard cream and watched me turn it over in bewilderment, hoping there might be a short instructional video. Yet here we are, I’m being invited to take our relationship with the packet online.

    Perhaps there’s a competition. That would at least explain it. I can understand being asked to do something for the chance to win a holiday, although I’d prefer it if buying the biscuits counted as sufficient effort on my part. I’ve supported the business. I’m getting crumbs on my jumper. Surely that ought to put me in the draw.

    What I find harder to understand is the assumption that I want to become more involved. This seems to happen with almost everything I buy now. Somewhere between standing in Morrison’s or Tesco, choosing a product and putting the packaging in the recycling, I’m invited to join a community. It’s very kind, but I already have people to talk to. Some of them are in WhatsApp groups, where they’re currently taking seventy-three messages to decide whether half past six would suit everyone.

    I’m not sure I have room for the biscuit people as well.

    There might be recipes behind the code. I appreciate the thought, although my main biscuit recipe involves opening the packet carefully enough that I can fold the end over afterwards and shove it back in the cupboard so it doesn’t look like the packet has been opened. On an ambitious day or if I’m feeling posh, I might put them on a plate.

    Of course, nobody is making me scan it. I can leave the code alone and get on with my tea, which is what I generally do. There are useful reasons for QR codes, too. If I’m trying to put something together I’ve bought from Ikea and a diagram will stop me attaching the legs upside down, I’ll happily point my phone at it. It’s the sheer number of invitations that gets me. Every ordinary little purchase seems to offer further reading, a survey or an opportunity to tell someone how I felt about it. I’m beginning to think that buying the thing is merely the introductory stage. The real work starts when you get it home.

    Sometimes I don’t have feedback. Sometimes it was a perfectly satisfactory biscuit and I’d like us both to be allowed to move on.

    There’s something lovely about a cup of tea precisely because so little is required. You sit down for a few minutes, perhaps with someone whose company you enjoy, perhaps in the blessed absence of anyone asking you anything. The phone can stay where you left it or in my case, lost it.

    That’s where mine is staying this morning. The kettle’s boiled, and I’ve already spent longer thinking about the packet than the manufacturer could reasonably have hoped.

    If there’s something wonderful behind that little square, I shall have to miss it.

    The custard creams are very good from this side. Yum.