I have spent almost all of today engaged in baking of various descriptions, but mostly occupied by the astonishing amount of fiddling about that it takes to make mince pies.
This actually starts in January, when I collect up any soaked fruit that didn’t get used in cake or chocolate manufacture in the run up to Christmas, add about a hundredweight of the most interesting dried fruit that I can find, like papaya and melon and pineapple, as well as the obvious raisins, chuck it in a dish with lots of ginger and cinnamon and pour cognac over it until it is covered, then stash it on the top of the fridge with cling film on the top. Last year I had some pears soaked in home made schnapps so they went in the batch as well.
Around about July I mix in more cognac and a packet of suet and seal the whole lot in Kilner jars until Christmas, which, of course, is now.
The resulting product survives the cooking process so that your mince pies are still alcoholic when you take them out of the oven. This is really good, because apart from anything else it means that nobody will notice if you mess up the pastry bit, which is the tricky bit to get right, because of being too busy discovering that here is a food which will act in a supporting capacity to your glass of sherry, rather than as an absorbent.
Elspeth’s husband, who knows about scientific things, said last year that this was because the fruit had actually formed a chemical bond with the alcohol because of the length of soaking. At least, I think that was what he said, but actually I just nodded and agreed, and may not have been paying attention properly. He ate several of them, anyway.
I made fifty, which is the first batch, there are usually a few. The first is the most tiresome to do, because it is from scratch. I have pre-made pastry for the others and shoved it in the freezer ages ago, because I know perfectly well that I will be fed up of making mince pies after the first fifty, but it probably won’t be long before I need to because Mark has eaten five of them already.
Whilst I was at it I made some bread rolls which seemed a bit solid and lumpy to my mind, but will be all right warmed up in the microwave and eaten with a great deal of butter, and also gave an interview to a man from the local radio station who came round wanting to know things about taxis. He asked me if I would mind speaking live on the current affairs programme tomorrow morning, and I agreed before I realised that this meant he would telephone me at five past seven in the morning.
This means that we are going to have to get an early night, but it doesn’t matter that much, because it has rained very hard all day and work is still very quiet, so we won’t miss much. Taxi rank evenings are really quite dull at the moment, although good for catching up on library books.
I thought we might break the evening up with a swim, and rang the Holistic Loveliness BeautifulPerson Health spa to see if they had separated the lake from their swimming pool yet, but they haven’t, which means that we still can’t go and exercise and will just have to carry on getting fatter and lazier for a while.
“Why don’t you get your super-fit daughter to write you a home fitness programme?” suggested the unsympathetic youth on the other end of the phone, who does cross-fit and has encountered Number One Daughter. “Or you could come to the gym here. We won’t laugh.”
That seemed unlikely to me and I declined both suggestions very firmly. I am concerned about the effects of excessive mince-pie consumption on my bottom, but certainly not concerned enough to involve Number One Daughter in the reduction process, she has awful ideas about fitness and thinks that if you do not feel sick then you are not trying hard enough. Also I have never achieved a press-up in my life and have no intention of starting now.
Maybe I had better leave the mince pies for Mark to eat.
Who wants to eat mince pies with pears and home-made schnapps anyway?
