Then I started seeing other dresses on Ravelry. Oh, man, there’s some sexy stuff out there. I have a serious knitty-boner for this black dress by Gudrun Johnson. (Here’s the Rav link, if you want to lose hours.) Ravelry seems to be groaning with knitters who have made this dress and are deliriously happy with the results. Ludicrously happy. And rightly so: they’re beautiful.

Then I found Sparkle! (Rav link and sorry about the exclamation mark, it’s part of the pattern name), a resurrected Vogue Knitting pattern. I can’t explain my crush on this dress but I LOVE IT. It resembles nothing I own and I can’t imagine picking it off the rack in a shop without anything but a derisive sneer. But it completely arrests me and I want to make it. I think I would probably make it plain. At first.

So the next thing I know I’ve spent an hour comparing reviews, doing maths to calculate yardage, weighing up prices and filling online shopping baskets only to abandon them in online aisles for the online staff to put back on the online shelves (I’m not proud). I haven’t bought yarn in a really long time: a few years ago I took a bit of a look at my stash and thought “yeah, that’s enough to be getting along with”. So I forgot how seductive and slippery online shopping is. One minute you have a clear goal and a budget: the next, you’re dancing on the shredded pieces of your shopping list and singing your credit card number to the tune of “High on the Hill Lived a Lonely Goat Herd”. I got to the checkout and had a “HOW much?” moment, and walked away.

I sat in the yarn cupboard for a while. It started as a “Yeah, this yarn’s okay for now. Maybe when I’ve worked through it I can buy some more yarn…” visit, a sort of gloomy reminder of all my current yarny commitments. Grump grump grump, no new yarn for me. Then I got into the cupboard and it was like meeting old friends. And remembering all the other things I want to knit. YEAH!

I can knit EVERYthing! AHAHAHAHHA! Coffee Tunic! Sexy Vesty! Kilt Hose! Hats! More skirts! Oooh dear. It’s been a while, but I know the Startitis boogie when I feel my heels shuffling. If I didn’t move quick, I’d come to my senses surrounded by half-finished terrible ideas and that would just be annoying. So I grabbed the nearest yarny chum and needles, and cast on the sexy Coffee Tunic in black. That took the edge off. Digging out a couple of socks that are soooo close to being done it’s silly helped, too.

I don’t need to order dress yarn. I don’t need to knit another dress. I am excited about my socks and the Black Coffee tunic. But butter my butt and call me a biscuit if I’m itching to make more dresses.

VIVA LA FLOGNARDE!

Then I made pesto.

Shallotzachoppin

Then I made hummus.

This is a caption to a photo of pastry baking.

Then I made a roast eggplant, capsicum, feta, pesto and shallot quiche.

VIVA LA QUICHE!

I’m thinking of baking bran muffins.

I also made yoghurt and soda and iced tea and refilled all the water bottles in the fridge. I feel like I’m trying to make up for a massive gambling debt I don’t yet have.

I’m a bit surprised by this sudden burst of energy: nothing incredible happened today, I didn’t have extra coffee, I didn’t accidentally snort cocaine while blowing my nose (true story). But I got home and zing; my cooking superpower unleashed itself like a fat cat bursting through a paper bag. I could reflect on the day to figure out the trigger, and then plan to revisit the potential causes of this buzz, or I could run with it. Run like a toddler’s nose.

For a while after I got diagnosed with Addison’s Disease, I tried to keep a close eye on what variations in my day may have caused fluctuations in energy and enthusiasm, hoping to find the magic formula to secure a flawless day. Porridge + 6 glasses of water + a light walk mid-morning + wine with lunch + a good fart at 3pm + an early night with warm soy milk = ??? Now I just try and roll with it. Some days I’m up and bounding along, and I can really run with that; other days I’m tired and just want to hang back, snapping my fingers and looking cool from the sidelines; other days I’m shit on a cracker and everything sucks. It happens. Rock’n'roll. So today I got a bit of a buzz on the way home from work, felt my eyes clear, my head focus, my toes straighten, and I jumped on that pony and rode it all the way to a busy kitchen. Tomorrow I might be wrecked and stupid. If future-bethini isn’t feeling great tomorrow, she doesn’t need to sweat it: past-bethini’s got her covered.

I love crumpets. M and I have reached a point where we make more things from scratch than we buy ready-made, and now a lot of ready-made stuff has a weird preservative taste, crumpets too. So it’s been yonks since I had those lovely toasty delights full of chambers that fill with melty butter and honey (mmm) or butter and Promite (MMMM) or even – call me crazy, but it totally works – tabasco, tomato and grilled cheese. YES. Ahem. Anyway, haven’t had them in a while; want to find a way of having them without getting the rubbery-chemically ones from the supermarket (also thereby avoiding the necessity of wearing pants on the weekend); cue Pinterest. I found this recipe on Always With Butter and — well, did you click that link? LOOK at those babies! They’re faultless. Enchanté.

Crumpets are essentially a hyper-hydrated, un-kneaded yeast batter: this recipe used 2¾ cups of water to 3 cups of flour, which, if my maths isn’t totally fucked here, is about 163% hydration (also I just realised that when I cooked them, I only used 2½ cups of water, oops-la!). A regular ole bread dough round these parts is about 70%. The high hydration and long resting time both contribute to the gluten development, I gather: when I got around to the dough it was sturdy and stretchy, which is surprising for an un-kneaded dough.

So it’s Saturday morning and I’ve got the batter proofing and I’m boogying around the kitchen, then I realise I have neither egg rings nor cookie cutters, the two implements generally recommended when cooking crumpets. What’s a pantsless wonder to do?

Chop chop

With trusty kitchen scizzahs, the remains of a shipping carton, a stapler and some foil, I fashioned my own.

Crafty is cool! I should know!

M suggested I wouldn’t need rings; that, like pancakes, they would reach a balanced state where the batter’s surface tension would keep them circular and relatively even — I disagreed, citing the hyper-hydrated batter, waving my maths at him and kicking him in the kneecaps.

Homemade Crumpet Ring. (Elevation B)

I was shocked (SHOCKED) at how robust and springy this batter was. I had anticipated something like pancake batter. I began to feel bad for kicking M in the kneecaps, since it was starting to look like he might have been on to something. Compare:

Crumpets in rings, crumpets free-form.

The front one, though blobby, was definitely keeping together. I apologised to M’s kneecaps. You fry the crumpets until they have pretty well cooked through from the bottom up, forcing bubbles of air slowly to the surface, which makes the potholed top. I don’t think I’ve quite got the hang of it: my first few were waaaay overcooked on the bottom.

Liberated crumpet!

When it’s pretty well cooked through, from the bottom, flip the crumpet and cook the top, just quickly. I think I may have been a little impatient. Instead of little potholes, mine are all sealed over:

Alas, sealed crumpets! Whither art the potholes we love?

But split them open and voilá!

GASP

Chambers! Chambers ripe for filling!

JAM TIME

Chambers melty with honey!

HONEY TIME

Crumpetty goodness! Huzzah! Split them open and toast them: man, so cool!

A tower of overtoasted crumpetry!

These aren’t perfect. I won’t be updating my LinkedIn account with “Can Make Crumpets” anytime soon. But I am encouraged! I can kinda see how things are supposed to work and I’ve got a feel for what I want to change next. This is the last two, when I was felt like I got the hang of it:

Final near-triumphs

So the next time around:

1. All in rings: free-form works fine, but I like the round ones best.
2. Adjust pan temperature: I think I want them to cook all the way through from the bottom up without burning — not sure if that means a higher or lower heat. I’ll try both. Not at the same time.
3. A little less in each ring: quite a few came out waaaaaay too thick and sponge-ous.

The important thing is that there will be a next time around. These went really well, but I reckon I can do even better.

My Dadini always said “Man cannot live by bread alone: he must have a bit of crumpet.” But I think he was talking about something else.

MORE JAM TIME

When I started writing this list, I decided there were two sub-lists, really: Things I Want To Learn How and One-Offs.

Thus, in 2012, I’d like to learn how to make:

• Raisin bread: full of raisins, dried peel, and spices. For toasting! Raisin toast with fresh figs and blue cheese is one of life’s greatest food things.
• Pain aux raisins: those awesome sultana-riddled snails of croissant pastry.
• Fresh plain pasta: this will be a good one to have. Right now, when I want pasta, I have to sit around whining “I wish I had some pasta right now, boy do I ever” until M takes pity on me and mixes up the dough. And frankly that’s hurting my throat.
• Bread rolls: for lunches! I’ve made bread rolls in the past, but they’re never quite right. Never quite as soft as I’d like them to be. So that’s got to change, DO YOU HEAR ME?
• Wholegrain bread: I love wholegrain bread, crunchy with seeds. Time I flexed those kneading fingers and got some for myself. Anybody else surprised at how many farinaceous challenges I’ve got here?
• Crumpets: like the ones you get in the shops, with bubbled-open tops, but without the weird preservative smell and  rubbery texture. WithbutterandhoneyOHGODYES.
• Polenta: smooth and creamy or baked and firm? Both, I think. I want to get a handle on this stuff. Especially now I’ve read a few blog posts referring to the smooth/creamy variety as a breakfast dish. I can imagine that with cheese and cooked spinach being particularly nourishing; or, better yet, with stewed fruit and toasted nuts. YEAH!
• Eggplant: it may seem slack (not to mention grammatically questionable) to list a single ingredient as something I’d like to learn how to make, but what I mean is that I want to explore eggplants further. Get me my pith helmet and lab coat! My eggplant repertoire is currently moussaka, baba ghanoush and ratatouille, and while all these are delicious, I think I do more.

I’ve also started keeping a list on Pinterest of my to-cook list: when I see a recipe I like the look of, I pin it. Leading me to the following list. In 2012, I want to try making:

1. Quince paste
2. Yoghurt cheesecake
3. Baked felafels
4. Cornbread with chilli and corn kernels
5. Stromboli! (Which I’m fairly sure is traditionally spelled with an exclamation mark and a joyful hand gesture.)
6. Pickled carrots

Whoa, okay, steady on. If I keep this up, I’m going to have an enormous list and no time to make yoghurt. Let’s draw the line there: I can already tell you this is a long, long way from being an exhaustive list of what I’m going to cook this year. But there are some skills to be learned, and adversaries to conquer (you better believe I’m looking at you, crumpets) and cooking wine to be guzzled wept into sipped while laughing delightedly. Game faces, people. 2012 is on.

1. Referring to food as naughty, sinful, etc. This isn’t the Dark Ages: I think we can stop tying values of good and evil to the freaking bread basket. These value judgements are not useful. Fer Christ’s sake — no, scratch that: for the sake of compassion, decency and, oh, hey, let’s go crazy, maturity, let’s chuck the whole “naughty” thing, okay? It’s twee, stupid, and gets me into a big angry foam. What’s that? Why? Well, I’ll tell you.

1. Guilt and eating. We can do with less of that. Unless you’ve been living at the bottom of a compost heap for the past thirty-odd years, you might have heard that there’s a few people out there with food hangups. Even if you dodge full-blown anorexia, orthorexia or bulimia, it’s possible to be pretty disordered about food, following unhealthy patterns of bingeing, self-loathing, self-reproach and jumbled thinking that leaves you frizzy with anxiety about the avocado on your sandwich. “I nearly ate a Milky Bar earlier today, but instead I went to my dubstep-treadmill class, so I’m a better person.” Food shouldn’t be about how valuable you are as a person, unless you’re Lucrezia Borgia. It’s hard enough to chill out in the middle of a crazy-busy working day without somebody looking pointedly at your goddamn morning tea and hinting that you’re a bad, less-than-worthy person because you happen to want a Tim-Freaking-Tam.
2. Identifying something as a sin means another agent is in the position of forgiving. If your eating is a sin, it’s because some external agent has identified it as such. So some external force also has to forgive you. No. No way, José. It is not up to another external agent to tell me whether my eating is right or wrong, morally acceptable or morally condemnable. I don’t require another person to accept what I’m eating. I eat it because I want to eat it and this shouldn’t be an issue. Driving your car to work is, arguably, a greater moral concern than eating a carton of caramels every day, but nobody calls that sinful, indulgent or naughty.
3. Branding particular foods gives people the social sanction to negatively judge you. If you see someone eating a wedge of cake, suddenly you’ve got the right to assume that action is an illuminating example of their weakness and overall poorer social worth as a person because cake is naughty or wicked. Stop that, it isn’t nice. What a rotten way to talk about people.
4. Equating pleasure with sin is weird. Unless you’re a seventeenth-century European Puritan, you’ve probably figured out that pleasure and living ethically are not mutually exclusive. Love playing soccer? Reading a good book? Jet-skiing? Playing with your kids? Why are those pleasures not wicked, sinful, indulgent? And if the foods that are wicked and sinful are so good — and let’s face it, you’re unlikely to ever see a recipe for a Truly Sinful Dressing-Free Cabbage Slaw, are you? — what are the morally acceptable foods? Is it bran? Vitamin supplements altogether removed from food sources?

This is a feminist issue — not exclusively, but significantly. Look at it this way: what kinds of foods are usually marketed and labelled as naughty and sinful? Chocolate, ice cream, cakes, desserts. Less frequently: cheese platters, mashed potatoes, filet mignon, risotto. None of those are particularly scanty on the calorie side of things, but it’s the girly treats that are branded sinful, wicked, etc.

C’mon, food bloggers: referring to something tasty as wicked is just stupid, cheap and immature. You can do better.

2. The expression “you won’t even miss the meat” (usually with an astonished exclamation mark). Here’s a news flash, broadcast on all channels: some people can struggle through life without the meat. Sometimes they even go without meat for, oh, days at a time. Some true freakazoids go years – YEARS – without meat. Somehow they still manage to cobble together a meaningful existence. Sometimes they even seem happy with their food, even take pleasure in cooking and eating. How do you think they manage? I’ll tell you: meat, frankly, is not obligatory. Even most dedicated meat-lover types don’t eat meat with every meal. You don’t see Cocoa Pops with “tasty enough to make up for lack of meat” on the side of the box, do you? Cheese boards don’t come with whispered apologies for the absence of sausages, do they? Fruit salad doesn’t need a “WARNING DOES NOT CONTAIN MEATS” byline on the menu, does it? What about apple pie? Guacamole? Crackers? It’s not just vegetarian foods that cop this kind of talk: you also see “you won’t believe it’s healthy!” on anything not-horrifically bad for you, which suggests that healthy food is never anything but some sort of drear obligation, endless chewing on flavourless chaff. For crying out loud, people, can we lighten up on this sheer amazement that something could not contain pork chops and still somehow manage to be enjoyable?

I have other quibbles, such as the ubiquitousness of bacon and sriracha in every single food-related discussion anywhere on the Internet and the swarm of Oreo-stuffed baked treats that seems to be sweeping across the blog-o-world (seriously: how busy are you that you can’t take the time to eat your cupcake and then your Oreo?) — but honestly, those are quibbles about other people’s preferences and they don’t really impact me, except my slightly increased risk of eye-roll strain. But the other two are seriously bothering me. If you’re writing about food, think about the language you’re using: think about the messages you’re sending and the judgements you’re making. Yeesh.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail – Bill Bryson

More than anything in the world right now I want to go bushwalking. I have a fruity French dessert cooling on the bench; a cup of tea beside me; an awesome job and a shitload of books and knitting to play with, and I want to chuck it all in and go bushwalking. That’s what this book does (although I admit the urge is never far from the surface with me). I think this is one of Bryson’s best books. He combines his excellent sense of humour with involved research and human study. The relationship between him and his hiking companion, an old friend who, in intervening years has developed and recovered from alcoholism and gained a lot of weight, is really interesting and touching — the characterisation of his friend is fantastic. There’s introspection and analysis, as Bryson looks at why he — or indeed anybody — would find the hike so appealing and satisfying; and this is woven around a history of the trail, travel observations and commentary on the natural and man-made surroundings. It blends together really well.

Coraline – Neil Gaiman

What an awesome book. Short and juicy, with not one excess word or scene. It’s creepy, exciting and fun and it rocks. Coraline and her parents move into a new flat with a mysterious door that opens on to a brick wall. One night, Coraline hears the door swing open and discovers a passageway leading to a parallel world, where bizarre caricatures of her parents (and the other people in her world) live. They encourage her to stay, but she returns home: shortly after this, her parents disappear and Coraline has to go back through the door to rescue them. Totally cool and exciting.

American Pyscho – Bret Easton Ellis

I did a teensy bit of work experience in a bookshop in 2000, when American Pyscho was first blowing everybody’s mind, and it had to be shrink-wrapped on the shelf, lest some innocent browser missed the title, cover art, blurb and back-cover reviews and didn’t realise the book was moderately confrontational in its psychopathic violence and was accidentally traumatised while flicking through the pages. There are some startlingly violent chapters in here (pardon me while I clutch my pearls) and some pretty mean sex violence as well, but frankly, it works. The narrator is a classic rich yuppie riding the high that 80′s New York promised to that lot: I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for certainty it’s an accurate portrayal, but it feels very authentic. The obsessive fixation of the author with his daily routine, his clothes, his life, his coworkers’ and friends’ appearance; the details are overwhelming, suffocating. The lifestyle he leads feels hectic, desperate, shallow and occasionally terrifying. If I tried to live the way he does, well, I’d probably end up a bit odd too, but mine would manifest in obsessive cake stomping or something, not brutalising people. The question that hangs over you the whole time you read is “did he or didn’t he?” And there’s a lot to throw doubt on everything he claims to have done. Something I found really interesting is that I desperately wanted him to be an unreliable narrator. Even though I knew he was fictional, all his victims were fictional, I was already so emotionally attached that I really, really wanted him to be all fantasy. As a reader, that’s a testament to Ellis: he created characters so real and believable as to evoke understanding, if not outright sympathy, so that I wanted the horrific things to be fantasies. To summarise: violent, yes, but compelling, clever, interesting, and really thought-provoking. The themes of materialism and the lies of success really echoed and left me churning them over and over well after I finished. Pretty awesome.

Interesting (or not) (possibly not) (probably not) side note: the last Bill Bryson book I read was also about discovering America, small town America, called The Lost Continent. I read it immediately adjacent to Kerouac’s On the Road, which is also about discovering America; and as some sort of complement, read Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, an intensely English-flavoured book. This time around, I’m matching Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods with Bret Easton Ellis’ American Pyscho and contrasting it with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. An interesting blend, fer sher.

Big Red Pot

Okay, maybe not more. The wok and the enormous mixing bowl probably are equal contenders. But I love that dern pot. Originally bought for the purposes of making no-knead bread (you heat a big, cast-iron core like this baby in the oven for a while before the bread dough is ready, then sling the dough in and the lid keeps the steam in and you end up with a beautiful crispy crust) (note to self: cook that bread ASAP), there is very little this pot doesn’t do now. Couscous, pasta, soup, rice, curries: it does it all. Stovetop, barbecue, oven, anywhere good times are had. Lately it’s been getting a lot of exercise serving my other big red love at the moment:

Rat-a-tat-red

Ratatouille. Through an odd set of circumstances we needn’t go into right now (although it involved a gnome, some compromising photos and me being in the right place at the right time), I ended up with an abundance of zucchini and eggplants. When life gives you lemons, you make preserved lemons. When life gives you shitloads of the nightshade family, you make ratatouille. My ratatouille recipe is beautifully simple: roughly chop eggplants, zucchini, capsicum and onions and tumble into your big red pot. Add a cup or so of pitted olives if you have them. Then add two tins of tomatoes, and a generous mix of the herbs and spices that fire your big red love. If you’re me, it’s paprika, cumin seeds, white pepper, salt and more paprika; then you go out and snip some thyme, basil, parsley and marjoram from the garden. Quantities are a little vague: chop up enough to stop said herbs going to seed. Mix well, then add more spices and herbs because you’ve just realised how much ratatouille you’ve made. Seriously, one eggplant, one zucchini, one onion and one capsicum doesn’t seem like much until you get chopping, then it pulls some weird loaves-and-fishes shit and BAM you’ve got a big red pot of big red everything.

Mix well — throw in an empty-tomato-tin’s worth of water for good measure — and put the big red lid on your big red pot. Bake it for about two hours or until you have to go do something outside the house and switch the oven on. Once hot, my big red pot will keep on baking for quite some time after the oven is switched off.

I’ve been making truckloads of this stuff. It freezes really well, so an awkward abundance is magically transformed into stockpiled provisions. We’ve used it:

• puréed as a pizza sauce;
• tossed with pasta;
• mixed with black beans and chillies for burrito frijoles;
• tossed into shakshouka;
• as a cold salsa on wraps;
• served with crusty bread as a fantastic meal all by itself.

Seriously, about twenty minutes’ chopping, then ignore it in the oven for two hours, and you’ve got meals for over a week. Awesome. Tonight I came home and M had taken it to the next level of big red glory:

Oh my big red stars...

Layer ratatouille with lasagna sheets and cheesy sauce, then top with cheese and bake for an hour and you have a lush hot lasagna fit for a bethini.

A brief snap before the elusive lasagna disappears into its natural habitat...

Holy crap, so awesome. You wouldn’t believe how lush, flavoursome, cheesy and delicious this was. The noodles cooked to a firm perfection, the provolone savoury and stringy, the ratatouille thick and rich. Big red love.

Oh, while we’re talking about big red loves:

Red red red red red red red

Recycled Red Redux rolls readily on! Nearly up to the waist already.

And so the legend was born. Inspired by Napoleon Dynamite, a friend of the awesome ilk invented the Dang Quesadilla.

Take yourself some tortillas — homemade unless you’re a lazyboneroo, and I’ll get to that in a sec — and spread half with chopped banana and a crumbly sharp cheese. Fold each tortilla over itself and fry or grill until the cheese is hot and melted and the banana hot. Then top with tomato salsa and sliced avocado and tangy yoghurt (if you’re not me, you can go right ahead and have sour cream there: if you’re me, sour cream = puking).

Sweet quesadilla skills

Take a bite. Holy cow, that’s some good quesadilla right there. The sweetness of the bananas mixes with the sharp salty cheese and adds depth to the salsa and avocado. And the textures are an incredible blend: melted cheese, soft banana and avocado, salsa and crunchy tortillas. It’s crazy-happy-good stuff. Seriously delicious. Do it! Do it nooooow! And make me one.

Now, about those tortillas: why aren’t you making your own, dag-blast-it? They’re super easy and a gazillion times better than store-bought, I’m telling you. For two really big tortillas: take a cup of plain flour, a teaspoon or so of baking powder and a generous teaspoon of salt. Add boiling water, a little at a time, working it into a dough. You want it damp enough to keep together, but not so damp that you get bits of dough stuck to you while handling it. Adjust with a kiss more flour if you need to. Knead it on the bench for a wee while, until it feels thick, cohesive and even: the longer you knead it, the more likely you’ll end up with soft, chewy tortillas. Leave it to rest for a bit; maybe ten to twenty minutes. Then divide into two balls and roll them out super-flat and super-thin. (Pro tip: spray a bit of cooking oil on the bench before rolling them out — it makes the super-thin target just a bit easier.) Dry fry, until those distinctive dalmation spots come up: flip and fry the other side. Give your tortillas a second on a plate wrapped in a plastic bag, or wrapped up in a teatowel — they’re a bit stiff when you first get them out of the pan, and the steam will soften them. Aw yeah. The only real disadvantage is that once you start making your own, you discover the store-bought ones smell weird. Seriously.

Make yourself a Dang Quesadilla!

Now, I hear or imagine you asking, what if you’re the sort of poor unfortunate who is sans cherries? Or, as the French say, sans cerises? Say, for example, the cherry season has ended with its usual suddenness. Now making Clafoutis is no longer a clever way of indulging in the abundance of cherries you’ve got cluttering up the fridge, it’s a million-dollar luxury (note: cherries now cost a million dollars). So what do you do, what DO you DO?

Why, those aren't cherries!

Don’t pop your monocle, bro: that up there is the start of a Flognarde. (Current crowd favourite for best word EVAH 2012.) A Flognarde is a Clafoutis made with anything other than cherries.

Delicious close up of non-cherries. And also some cherries.

Word got out among the bird community that the cherries were ripe: I picked a kilo bag, and then five days later went back and only got nine cherries. Nine. Those birds work fast when they want something. So I pitted my nine last cherries and then moved on to the next abundant fruit in my fruitiverse: the plums. Last year was our first summer in the house, and I was delighted, nay, ecstatic, to discover half a dozen plum trees: greengages, red plums, mirabelles (I think), and a mysterious mini-plum. This year I knew where to stand when the plums started to fall. The mirabelles — yellow skin and flesh clingstones — are particularly abundant, so into the bowl they went, chopped and pitted. I sprinkled the lot with sugar and sherry and let it stand while I had lunch, then poured the custard batter over it: 3 eggs, 60g flour, 60g sugar, dash of vanilla essence, teaspoon of baking powder, and ½ cup of soy milk. Mix it all up and pour over the fruit. Sprinkle some chopped toasted almonds over the top and bake for around an hour:

Pronounced: flog-NAARRRRD

And there’s your Flognarde! If you use moo milk instead of soy milk, use more: I used less because soy milk thickens differently and more slowly. The original recipe, from Athena Plichta‘s blog, uses 300ml of moo milk. I found using that much soy milk made it damn near impossible to set — soy milk lacks the slight fat content of moo milk, which contributes to the setting process as it cooks.

Soy or moo: dude, it’s goooood.

Somewhat squished from enthusiasm, but good.

It’s not a Clafoutis, so don’t expect it to taste like one. It’s a Flognarde, baby! It doesn’t have to meet your Clafoutis expectations! It’s busy being fantastic ALL BY ITSELF. I think this would be Flognarde Aux Prunes (Avec Cerises), but now we’re just being fancy. Perhaps too fancy for our own good.

You could do Flognarde with lots of fruits: any kind of berry would be fantastic; tropical fruits like mango might be a little weird; apple might be a little boring but okay. I think this would work really, really well with apricots: oh man, yes, that would be terrific. I’m dribbling a little just thinking about it. (I also dribble when I’m not thinking at all, so it can be hard to tell. Don’t feel bad.)

Need something tasty? Why not FLOGNARDE?

This gets a million thumbs up. Or it will soon: please send your thumbs to Million Thumbs Up Campaign, GPO Box 230000, Spoonfullyville.

A happy corridor of baked-ery

Fucked if I know, but it was fast, easy, and they taste good. Plus I revelled in my independent adulthood and ate the jam straight from the jar. Stand back, bitches.

Jam. It's got what bethini needs.