Yesterday – Ady spent most of the day cutting vast swathes of the croft with the SNH machine. I walked down to the village in the morning, bought some bits from the post office and picked brambles. In the afternoon I made jam including the 300th full size jar (and the 140th mini jar) which brings me to done with jam making for this year I think. I had about 5kg of brambles from last year in the freezer this year which got added to the tally so any more we pick in the next week or so will be frozen for next year. Scarlett and I watched some animal documentaries and a couple of episodes of Junior Bake off.
Today – In the morning Ady and I walked down to the village, put a wash on, picked some brambles, collected yesterdays post, got some stuff from the freezer and put some stuff in there. We came home for lunch and then Ady went out to rake up all the cut stuff from yesterday while I did baking. Scarlett helped me and we made 2 loaves, 8 rolls, chocolate chip cookies, ginger cookies, cup cakes – chocolate, chocolate orange, lemon, and ginger. We had no eggs so found an egg less recipe. The oven thermostat has broken so it only has one heat now – super hot! which as we mostly bake bread is not too much of a problem but does mean we can only cook things like cakes at the very bottom and therefore everything takes ages. I finished the rainbow bag and made a start on a glasses / phone case.
Ady and I spent some time talking about future plans. Not really ready to share them just yet but good to feel we have a proper plan again. I’d been feeling a bit drift-y.
we use a cold shelf in the roasting oven to block some of the heat. It may be that playing with putting the cake on a rack in a tin and having a full sized tin above you can create a sort of baking oven within the roasting oven?
found this on an electric aga webpage “How do you bake in a City 60 when the top oven is at roasting temperature?
Same way as in a conventional 2 oven Aga: put your cake tin or apple crumble or whatever into the large roasting tin. Hang this from the 4th, lowest, runners in the roasting oven and slide the cold plain shelf onto the second runners above. This creates a baking oven inside the roasting oven, shielding the cake from the heat coming from the sides, back, base and roof of the oven.
The lowered heat lasts for about half an hour, after which you move the roasting tin, complete with its contents of cake , to the simmering oven below. The hot tin raises the temperature in the simmering oven so that you don’t get thermal shock making the vcake sink as you move it from one oven to another. Don’t forget to take the plain shelf out of the roasting oven to cool for next time.”