Icing is all around me!

I had a tantrum in my kitchen this morning worth of Gordon Ramsay – but minus the swearing Ma, I promise.

The reason for my diva strop was my kitchen. Firstly, the oven is like something out of a 1950's Barbie Dream House and it makes baking cakes very difficult. It has two elements on each side and is so small that my gratin dish doesn't fit in it. I found this out once after I'd filled it with flapjack mix. I stubbornly decided to cook it with the door open – the flat was toasty warm that day.
Secondly, it’s colder than a polar bear’s nose!

So anyway, this morning I got up at 6am, wrapped myself in about 20 layers and set about icing the cakes I’d made at 6am the day before – I really do enjoy baking and I’d love to be a modern-day Martha Stewart, just without the criminal record.

My icing is a top-secret recipe – it’s a complex mix of butter and icing sugar and involves lots of dancing around with the electric beater… usually!
However, last night I'd left the butter out to soften for the icing but this morning, when I picked it up I nearly got frostbite in my fingers. How can you make melt-in-the-mouth icing with butter that would be more suitable as a house brick?

So I popped the butter on the radiator – New Housemate must think I am quite bonkers – and while waiting for it to thaw I sheepishly apologised to him. You see, when I got in last night after dinner with Climbing Boy, I forgot that there were stairs in my flat and promptly fell down them. And I don’t fall gently – I think I sounded like an epileptic elephant as I tried to stop the fall, arms flailing wildly, bouncing off the walls as I went.

Clumsy me!

Once the butter had softened I started to beat it, but it started to cool down again and before long I was beating a lump of solid butter and icing sugar. It was disasterous and my arm got very tired. I persevered though, I added hot water to the mix, I put the bowl over the kettle and then I had my tantrum.

However, I am pleased to report that the cakes are now iced with somewhat stiff, whipped and peaked icing and decorated with tiny pink sparkly bits. I have fed them to my colleagues and they are all still alive and well – so that’s a good thing.

But it’s left me hankering after a proper oven. I think I would like one more than possibly any other consumer purchase in the world. Even more than a Bugatti Veyron, which to be fair I could never park and would probably crash in the first week. There is actually a pink one in existence – it’s disgusting. Everything but cars can be pink.

There is no point to today’s post as my mind is all over the place. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I had butter icing for breakfast?