To anyone this may concern, now or hereafter:

[desperance]

Beating a really stiff cake-batter, a month after hand-surgery? Is hard. And ouchie.

Also, opening a teeny-tiny bottle of almond essence? Next to impossible. Absolutely impossible, without application of large tools. Happily I do have the tool required.

Also, I don't believe that quantity of cake-batter has ever come this close to overflowing the tin before it even goes in the oven. I have built up ramparts of greaseproof paper in expectation of rising, but there might yet be a disaster. And I can't quite figure out why, because I don't believe I misweighed anything, there were no calculations or conversions necessary and I'd be surprised if my cake-tin had shrunk in the heat. Or indeed in the cold.

Comments

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of the scene in Woody Allen's "Sleeper" with the instant pudding.

Beware.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

You could always have eaten the excess before baking. Barbaric, I know, but . . . mmmmmm

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hee. We used to fight over the right to lick out the bowl, when my mother was baking. She ended up having to divide spoils: somebody got the bowl, everybody else got a spoonful of mixture.

You're right, I shoulda thought of that. The cats would've.

Come to think, the cats are probably licking out the bowl right now.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Our mother used to use the electric mixer, which with me and my brother had the perfect characteristic of having two detachable beaters to be like doughsicles.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Luxury! The most tech my mother has ever aspired to (and she's 88 now, and has no intention of changing her ways) is a hand-whisk. Which she wouldn't let us lick...

[handworn.livejournal.com]

God love her. We have a 1920s enamel stove of her era that you have to light with a match, and which has no temperature control for the oven. Doing things the old way is well worth it.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Indeed. This very afternoon I was beating my cupcake-batter with an electric whisk, and remembering how my mother made cakes constantly with a wooden spoon, and thinking two things: (a) that I was v glad to have electric tools; and (b) that her cakes were, y'know, better...