This holiday, I have been mostly baking...

 

After a wonderful few weeks at home, I'm back in France, full of home comforts and having satisfied my baking cravings - for now anyway!

To say I made the most of our oven would be a massive understatement. Dozens of cupcakes, Jamie Oliver’s tried, tested and utterly failsafe chicken and leek pie, my traditional Christmas sticky toffee pudding, macaroons, cake pops (more on those later!) and apple pie with homemade pastry (my first attempt at pastry in many many years) – I think it’s safe to say that I certainly took advantage of having an oven for the two weeks I was home. Even if it did break twenty minutes after we’d finished Christmas dinner. Uh oh.

Now, onto these cake pops. They're being tipped as "the new cupcake" when it comes to trends in the baking world. Well, no disrespect to cake pops, but personally I don't think they'll steal the place I have in my heart for cupcakes, but they are certainly satisfying in a way that cupcakes aren't. Provided you have the ingredients necessary - even better if you already have the batter made - little cakes can be yours in four minutes, thanks this wonderful little gadget, which my parents kindly bought for me this Christmas. 

source

I can highly recommend a plain vanilla sponge, dipped in white chocolate and then dessicated coconut. I currently have about 13 cakes' worth of chocolate chip sponge batter - Ellen and I made some to take to snack on during the film we went to see earlier this evening, Les Intouchables, which, if you get a chance to watch, you really must watch. It's fantastic.

While it may not be a proper oven, and I won't be able to make cupcakes or pies or macaroons in it, it'll certainly tide me over until the next time I'm home!

Procrastination? I'll do it later...

This seems to be how my brain works:

10.45 - At 11am, I'll start working on this essay.

10.55 - Need coffee for with writing essay.

10.57 - Kettle boiling, coffee and milk in mug. Need biscuits for with coffee. No biscuits in house.

10.58 - Ooh. Cornflour, butter, flour, icing sugar... Shortbread?

11.55 - Oops.

This is not the first time I've made something to avoid writing an essay - I made an entire lasagne essentially from scratch last year to avoid having to sit down and work. The hilarious part about my making shortbread today is that I've just been invited to an event at my university called "Putting off procrastination". Now that, Alanis Morissette, is ironic...

The thing is, shortbread is so much more fun to make than sitting down with an absolute tome of an anthology, trying to write about depictions of the Passion in Medieval lyrics. And it's so obscenely easy to make, and provides such a quick pick-me-up (particularly when it's Valentine's Day and instead of walking hand-in-hand along a river, having a picnic, swapping presents etc you're writing an essay) that my little brain can't help but go, making shortbread? Why not! even though the pile of notes and very bare-looking Word document open on my laptop is testament to all the reasons why I shouldn't be making shortbread...

The recipe is simple enough, although I halved the quantities to make my life a little easier:

• 16oz of flour, cornflour and butter
• 8oz of icing sugar
• some caster sugar to sprinkle

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC and grease a long tin - mine's one of those long flan tins with the removable base
2. Sift together the flour, cornflour and icing sugar in a bowl.
3. Grate the butter in - this works particularly well if your hands tend to be on the warm side (I've been given the nickname Radiator Hands by many) - even better if you freeze the butter beforehand so it doesn't melt.
4. Rub the butter into the mix until the flour stops looking white and starts looking more golden and crumb-y.
5. Gently press into the tin - use the back of a spoon to work it into corners and even it out if you have to.
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes, then once you've taken it out, dust it immediately with caster sugar and use a sharp knife to cut it - this will make it easier when you eventually come to take it out once it's cooled.
7. Leave it to cool in the tin, then remove and try to resist the temptation to eat them all straight away ;]

Done and dusted. It really is so so easy to make and one of those things that really does supply instant gratification.