Cooking Wednesdays - Damn This Morning!

I love daytime telly, especially This Morning, but obviously being at work all day doesn't allow me to watch it.  But, they recently decided to do some weekend programmes, with highlights from the week and a few extra bits too, so I caught one of these back in November when Gina D'Acampo was making a pasta bake.  I decided it looked good, so set about making it that week for my cooking wednesdays.  It was epically huge, I probably should have halved the recipe, but instead ended up with tonnes of pasta.  I quite liked it, although it was definitely the wrong ratio with way more pasta than the meat could cope with.  My mum ate it, and I ate it, but Ian just picked at it, and then refused to eat anymore than the mozarella cheesy bit.  This opened a big can of worms about how he never eats the food I cook, and he told me he didn't even like pasta.  I did wonder what he thought was in a pasta bake and why he didn't stop me from making it, but I was more concerned by him telling me he doesn't like chilli - the dish I make quite a lot! So fussy! 

So, because of Ian not liking/eating it, this is being labelled a disaster, even though I'd say it was perfectly edible, and not that bad really.  

Not a Carrot Cake!

I here a lot of people talk about how they like carrot cake all the time, so I thought I'd try and add it to my repertoire.  Now, I don't like carrot cake, so this is clearly proof of how much I love my friends.  I got out my trusty Mary Berry book, found the carrot cake recipe, and set to work.  This has carrot, banana and walnut in it.  It's got a yummy cream cheese frosting too (with chopped walnuts in it). 

The only thing is.... my friend tells me it's not a carrot cake.  Which is a shame because I actually really liked this cake! Apparently carrot cakes should have cinnamon in them.  I just followed the recipe, so I blame Mary Berry (although, I also thank her for a lovely recipe at the same time).  The cake went, and all agreed it was good, but that it was not a carrot cake.  So my search for a carrot cake recipe continues. 

Baking disaster - scones

In March I decided to make scones - I'm not sure exactly why.  I was clearly in a 'let's make scones and not think' mood because I followed the recipe and decided to ignore my common sense and poor the mix onto the side to knead as the recipe suggested.  If I was smarter, I would have gone 'hang on a minute, this is far too runny, maybe I'll add more flour before doing that' but I wasn't and I ended up with a work surface covered in scone batter (and a Carrie covered in it too!).  I rescued it as best I could, sticking what I could back in the bowl and adding more flour.  I waited until it was a better consistency then tried again.  I didn't have a round cookie cutter, so I used a bell shaped one from my christmas set. I'm not sure these were very successful, they were a little dry, but with a lot of jam and butter, they disappeared soon enough.  I refuse to be beaten though, so expect another attempt in the future.