There are less than four weeks until the tea party. One of the silver linings of this year’s event being ‘online only’ is that I can risk using some of my energy on baking in the run up to Sunday 17th May.
For the first few years I couldn’t manage any baking at all for the tea party. And then I could bake on thing. And then the next year, I baked two things. It is incredibly risky for me though; doing something as taxing as baking so close to such a big social event.
This year is different! There is far less preparation and organisation needed and so I can indulge in more baking than usual. Last week I made a gluten free orange cake. It did not go well! The week before I made a gluten free lemon and poppy seed traybake, half of which is currently in the freezer ready to defrost come Blue Sunday. As there is so little else I’m needed for at the moment I can rest and recover slowly after each baking adventure.
This week, it’s coffee and walnut cake! The current ‘lockdown’ is actually allowing me more freedom than you’d imagine. With no visitors, no appointments and no meeting up with friends, I able to do more than usual because less time is needed to rest before and after a visitor, for example.
I halved the recipe (or at least I did) because Mr Tree Surgeon doesn’t have a sweet tooth and they’ll only be eating cake come Blue Sunday.
Baking is never without incident though! Even when eggs are like gold dust due to panic buying, my brain doesn’t always register how incredibly wasteful it would be to drop one. The signal from my brain to my hand seemed to get lost somewhere along the way and my hand didn’t grip it as it should have.
And when making the butter-icing, it seems there was great confusion between the bowl of icing ingredients and…the bin. The last of my icing sugar was therefore, very carefully, sieved into the bin. Laugh or cry! That’s brain fog at its best
M.E. myself and I 