As I mentioned before, things are changing. I'm going to shift back to freelance work for a while as we sort out our wedding plans and whatnots, and get everything a bit more organised so that we're more normal and less frantic, less panicky and generally less out of sorts. So, I've finally got around to getting Bakercourt business cards printed: blogger, writer, occasional baker. 

Today was a brilliantly beautiful and sunny day. And, just our luck, we had a braai planned with the lovely Mr and Mrs Agnew so we could take full advantage of the heat, sunshine and pleasant afternoon. And, also, Graeme's brother Stuart arrived to stay for a few weeks. And we had Graeme's work folk over on Friday night for a really, really good braai with lots of delicious treats and excellent company with Stewart and Chris (and Stuart arrived midway too). And we went to a very bustly and fun 50th birthday party last night. And, I resigned from my job on Wednesday. And I got glasses. And we haven't yet made our wedding invitations which are now a little overdue. So today was the end of quite a week.

I baked.






















These are the poppy seeds which I'm preparing for the Hamantaschen in celebration of Purim. I was inspired to bake these little hat pastries by Ms Deb from Smitten Kitchen who baked these delights in her New York Kitchen with this recipe.

















The poppy seeds look like the grey-white stones of pebble beaches ... but I'd hazard a guess that they're infinitely better tasting ;)

















The filling is a rather complicated blend of poppy seeds, raisins, orange zest and milk but it's oh-so delicious.






















Here's the finished product. It didn't hold its shape very well, but it's more or less what I remember them to look like and best of all they were delicious! The dough is a lemony shortbread type of dough and the filling is a rich orange and buttery poppy seed mix. I think the dough could have been harder (or perhaps should have been harder because the recipe warns against cracking dough) but it turned out just fine.

















There were also orange madeleines to be had; I adapted the from the Rosebud Madeleines recipe I made last week but I substituted orange zest and squeezed orange juice for the rose water.
















Here's an orange zest madeleine next to Graeme's miniature espresso cup. Yum.

















Ah, and in the spirit of keeping with Purim and all things from the typical Jewish kitchen, here's a delicious batch of miniature challah to have with the braai.

















They're an excellent variation of the Kenwood Basic White Bread recipe made with warm milk instead of water, and glazed with an egg yolk-and-water glaze. A 'normal' challah recipe is an egg-based dough with honey and oil - it sounds delicious, I'll have to give it a go soon.

I've been looking for a madeleine tin for the last six months, since I first happened upon Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. She has a recipe for 'rosebud madeleines' which are beautiful little dainty baked goods that are the sugar-coated lace doilies of the baking world. So, you'd think that it would be fairly easy to happen upon a madeleine tin in London - the land of the baked goods, really - but oh no, that won't do at all. John Lewis, you might think. No, they've been sold out for the last six months. Robert Dyas, perhaps? No, they don't stock those - although the rest of the baking tins are on a 'buy one get one free deal', does that help? Marks and Spencer? Selfridges? No, and no again. If you want a madeleine tin, it seems, you have to resort to the internet. But that's sooo expensive, and so full of inferior baking tins and silicon whats-its.

Or, maybe, just maybe - Bath.

Because Bath has the most amazing store in the world: Kitchens. We discovered it last year as we were walking around the beautiful streets and shopping arcades. And, as a back-up plan, they also have a Lakeland store with two levels. And we all know what that means.

















It means that I'm the delighted owner of a Faringdon Madeleine Tin (which I had to travel 206km to find). It also means that after much moping, I've finally whipped together a batch of Rosebud Madeleine batter.

















I'm a messy baker, but it makes the baked goods taste better, I promise.

And you know what? They came out beautifully.

















They're light and spongy and dusted with icing sugar magic. They're flavoured with rosewater essence which is light and fragrant and particularly nice with coffee (surprisingly), but I think they'd be considerably nicer with orange or lemon zest, or a thick vanilla extract. (G says the rosebud madeleines smell like potpourri, not terribly flattering!)

















They're beautiful baked goods, I'm rather pleased I happened upon them. Here's another picture in case you wanted a second look. Just in case. I thought that the madeleine tin was going to be a whim purchase, something I wouldn't use that often, but they're so quick and easy to make that I think I'll happily bake these fairly often. Besides, they're particularly good for using up the leftover ingredients with the largest quantities of ingredients weighing in at 1egg, 50g of butter, 40g of sugar and 45g of flour! Recipe here.

Finally, after a year and a half, we bought a braai. It's a gas braai, but it's still a braai and not (gasp of horror) a barbeque.

Today is the end of our week-long holiday. Going back to work is not something I think of with fondness, there's an awful lot of hullaballoo that's going to happen in the next few weeks, but I'm happily looking back on our little sojourn. The universe was conspiring as we were planning it: work happened, our plans to go to Italy fell through because of financial constraints, we still have wedding invitations to make and send out... but we were okay. We hired a car, packed a bag, and headed to Oxfordshire.

I've got so many anecdotes to share with you that I'll have to split them up into bite-sized posts. I'll start with Bath and Sally Lunn's Bath Buns.

If the name isn't enough to sell it to you, we ventured to the beautiful city of Bath on a whim. G's grandparents hadn't yet had the opportunity to see the Bath empire, so it was the perfect day trip - and we were a mere forty-five minutes from the spa resort, established, as Wikipedia tells us, in the wee early days of AD 43.

















There is much to see and do in Bath, but we were there for a few hours and we had a distinct plan of action: have a look at the general architecture, visit Kitchens and Lakeland, walk around the shopping district, see the Royal Crescent, and have tea at Sally Lunn's.

















Sally Lunn's is a rather famous tea house. The last time we were here we dined at Jane Austen's Regency Tea Rooms so G and I thought we'd try out something else. This eatery has a lot of history, a Baked Bun legacy and a secret recipe that is passed down from generation to generation with the deed of the house.

Sally, a French refugee, arrived in Bath in 1680. She found work at what is now Bath's Oldest House, and today her baking legacy lives on in the form of her baked buns - which you can still purchase from her old kitchen gift shop for £1.60, or from the tea shop above her kitchen for around £4. You can see the building in the scanned postcard above; I bought it from the Sally Lunn gift shop, down in the basement of the building amongst the ancient, exposed foundations.

Sally Lunn's is very narrow. The roof is low, the wooden beams of the building are exposed underneath the thickly-applied white paint, and the deep red, maroons and yellows of the Sally Lunn legacy are plastered across the interior decor. There are framed maps and drawings haphazardly hung on the walls, and the tables (of which there are many) are squeezed into Tetris shapes surrounded by (mostly) comfortable chairs.

The buns are rather surprising baked goods. I had expected something like a currant scone, but what I got was something altogether different. You can see from the postcard above that they're more akin to oversized hamburger buns.

















You get half a bun (horizontally sliced) when you order from the menu. There are a lot of different options - sweet and savoury - that vary from clotted cream with strawberry jam to the one I chose: cinnamon butter with clotted cream.






















They heap the topping on to the bun, and top it with a slice of orange. The bun itself might look like a hamburger roll from Woolies, but it had a denser texture that was heavier and sweeter than the ones you might eat for lunch. The cinnamon butter was a bit overpowering, but I scraped some of it off to suit my personal tastes and it was quite enjoyable. My tea companions each opted for scones instead:

















That's clotted cream in the top left, not butter. Clotted cream, as I may have mentioned before in a previous post, is a deliciously butter-thick cream (think: marscapone without the cheese) which you get with scones or other baked goods from tea shops, but which you can quite easily pick up from a supermarket. They really should export this stuff to South Africa, it would do brilliantly.






















This is a flyer I picked up from the gift shop. I'm surprised that they advertise it as 'award winning' - - the service wasn't particularly good (we were served cold coffee by unfriendly women), the atmosphere was quaint and cosy (which is a nice way to say that it was a bit cramped) and we were rushed out because there was a long queue outside. That being said, it was still a good 'Bath Experience', something I'd recommend to anyone who is interested in history (or anyone who is interested in baking, at least!) - just try to go early in the morning or mid-afternoon to avoid the lunch rush. Do pop downstairs and have a quick look around the museum: you can see the exposed foundations which record the various phases of history and Sally Lunn's bricked oven. You can also buy jars of their butters - Maple and Pecan, Cinnamon, Ginger, Chocolate and others - as well as their tasty jams and take-home buns.

This week I was offered two theatre tickets in exchange for a review. 'Would you like to see Wicked tomorrow night?' they asked. I'm sorry - what? I have to write a review for you and I get two tickets to go and see the best rated musical currently showing in London's oh-so famous West End? A review that I would undoubtedly write unprompted anyway? Are you kidding? YES, PLEASE!

So, yes, whilst this is not a sponsored post, the tickets were certainly gifted for a review published elsewhere.

We rushed off after work to the beautiful Victoria Apollo Theatre where we picked up our tickets and found our seats armed with a slushie (this is what we back home call a 'slush puppy'), beers (G) and chocolatey snacks (disappointingly, there weren't any hot snacks so we settled for Crunchie Nibbles and Pringles). The stage was spectacular and really raised my expectations for the quality of the production. After a quick internet search, I found an image to share with you:


Look! A dragon! And gears, cogs, and a sparkling Emerald City. Surprisingly, the stage crew manipulate the dragon which sways, roars and flashes with very bright lights.

My favourite aspect of the production was the sheer scale of the whole enterprise. Every stage drop was carefully thought out, the props were magnificent, the costumes were sparkling and apt, and the story was a considerable improvement on the novel it is based upon.

It tells the story of The Wizard of Oz from the other side of the coin; Elphaba, the 'Wicked Witch of the West' and Glinda the Good are best friends in school (after a rocky start) and they soon discover that the Wizard and his cronies are plotting to overthrow a minority group within Oz. The Wizard plots against Elphaba, frames her as 'wicked' and each element of the story we all know is given an unusual twist. It all fits together rather well, although the storyline was certainly secondary to the performance and stage.
















Here's a quick look at the costumes for the Ozzians in the Emerald City. This photograph (from the official site) certainly doesn't do them all justice! They are spectacularly green with coordinated hats, shoes and glittering accessories.






















Glinda the Good wore a different dress in every scene, travelled through the story in a bubble, and kicked her pretty pink heels up at any given moment as she expressed how wonderful she was.






















Elphaba was cast beautifully, her outfits were definitely of the Wicked Witch variety, and she sang really very well. I was amazed that her 'green' stayed on for the whole performance, and I often wondered whether she was touched up with green dust whenever she stepped off stage.

On the whole, the performance was beautiful although I felt it was rather long - I distinctly remember wondering whether there was going to be an interval, or whether they had decided to skip it and get through the rest of the performance without a break. About ten minutes after that thought, they suddenly left the stage and the lights went on - - interval, followed by another thirty minutes of performance.

I'd recommend this production to anybody who wants to experience the glorious West End with an established performance that's been running in the same theatre for five years - and it shows! 

It's a great shame of mine that I've only read two of Ms Austen's novels - Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. So, faced with an ebook reader and so many free ebooks (courtesy of the amazing Project Gutenberg), I found myself diving headlong into Hartfield with Emma.

You can't help but be caught up in the way her characters speak and think; it carries over to your day-to-day conversations, it pulls you in and suddenly - oh so suddenly - it is so very easy to be suddenly finding yourself gasp with horror at Harriet Smith's newest quest, or raise an eyebrow at Frank Churchill's dubious behaviour. And the piano, oh! The piano. Who didn't see that coming?

As this was my first foray into ebook territory, I was denied the pleasure of looking at the cover of the book every time I opened my bag. True, my iPad's new cover is very appealing, but it certainly doesn't hold a light to Regency artworks, neatly-set typeface, and brilliant colours. That being as it is, I've decided to select my own cover from the very many that exist in the Emma collections.





















Yes, I'm quite aware that it's an audio book, but, since we're ignoring that this isn't the version I actually read, I think the discrepancy is allowed. Besides, I rather like this version of Emma, she fits all of my expectations. She's beautiful and well-dressed, young but still rather thoughtful.

The plot was less complex than I had anticipated but it didn't leave me wanting. It is easy to read, easy to follow, engaging enough to make you think of it when you're not reading it yet casual enough for it to not demand every spare moment. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Emma annoyed me terribly when I first began reading the novel, but I soon found her far more entertaining and enthralling than her female contemporaries and it all turned out rather well - by about half-way through the novel I was interested in reading more from her to see how her thoughts and opinions progressed. Knightley,  on whom the irony of his leading male role and name are not lost, is a bit of a drip, but he turns out rather well too. Of course he'll never be a Mr Darcy, but how do you better someone who has a six-hour BBC drama dedicated to his story? Robert Martin was a rather predictable plot element, and I liked how Emma/Austen adapted her prose to reflect the change in her character's insights.

I'm not going to warble about Emma and her Knight(ley) but I thought I might digress briefly to think about Bath (in Emma's case, Highbury, which I think to Ms Austen looks rather the same).

















She conjures up the most amazing dwellings in her writing, and indeed this may very well be a fascinating area of research - buildings that rather come alive as you read them into existence. The estates, cottages, streets, priories - they all seem so very real, described down to the most minor details, outfitted with artworks, chairs in every corner, round tables (chosen by Emma herself) and other furnishings. Perhaps my favourite part of visiting Bath (aside from being a tourist with my mother and aunt, of course) was finally seeing the bustling streets where Jane walked, where she wrote, where she socialised...

















And, of course, the tea. We enjoyed a delicious afternoon tea at the Regency Tea Rooms where we all enjoyed Lady Catherine's Proper Cream Tea and where the pleasure of 'taking tea' really comes to light. You sit around a table sipping your preference of delightfully aromatic tea, politely eating scones with jam and clotted cream, and you have to talk. You must, because that is what you have come to the tea rooms (or in Emma's case, to her neighbour's home) to do. It's really very pleasant.


You could imagine Emma, in her afternoon leisure, sitting at a small table like this with Mr Woodhouse, being served tea and scones (with very little jam, he'd say). Even the staff are dressed to period with their pinnies and caps.

















I daresay even Graeme enjoyed a bit of Regency delights! I rather like the way that Jane, on the far wall, overlooks the tea rooms as we all step into her world for a few moments.

The ebook experience could have gone either way; I feel I need to pace myself through Jane Austen's collection (there are, after all, very few novels to work through) but it was a wise choice to start off my ebook experience with something that was going to be so predictably enjoyable and reassuring. The British Library Treasures App I mentioned in a previous post certainly heightened the experience as well, creating a more tangible reading experience (though paradoxically considerably less tangible, hidden beneath the gloss of the iPad screen!) with photographs, manuscript extracts and tidbits of Janeite history. The ebook certainly won't replace the real book - iPads don't smell nearly as nice - but they're convenient with their compact size and ability to make digital scans of your favourite extracts at the press of a button. Plus, as an added bonus for the ebook team, almost all the books I want to read are already out of copyright so Project Gutenberg provides them all readily and for free. Not yet an ebook convert, but I can appreciate the merits.

The only foreseeable ebook downside for me is that it's oh-so-easy to carry around many books at once (my current ebook library is sitting comfortably at 45) and with that comes the temptation to open up a new book at a new chapter at any given time. The temptation to read isn't so bad; it's the fact that the characters end up meeting each other in my thoughts if I don't give them time to settle down. In fact, Emma very recently met with Viy from Gogol's short stories - 'Viy', Gogol writes, 'is a colossal creation of folk imagination. The name is applied by people in Little Russia to the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids reach to the ground.' I think they were a bit confused, but got along amiably after a spot of tea.