Sunday bakes - 'Little treat for the train' lemon macarons

The weekend I made these treats was the weekend of the wedding of one of my best friends. It was a beautiful day, full of happiness and love. Congratulations Ruth and Dave, I hope you have a wonderful future together and I look forward to seeing you enjoy all the good times you have ahead. 

Now for the train ride home, and the extra train ride down to Cornwall, because after the wedding I was also off on holiday. 

So here's a little treat I made for the train to get me through the long hours of travel. 

Ingredients
6 oz icing sugar
5.5 oz ground almonds
120 ml egg whites – about 4 eggs
5.5 oz granulated sugar
2 tbsp fine lemon zest
50ml water


Filling

Lemon juice and zest of about 4 lemons
3.5 oz butter
7 oz caster sugar
3 eggs, plus 1 extra yolk

Method
After sifting the almonds to get rid of any larger lumps, put into a food blender with half of the egg whites, the lemon zest and the icing sugar and blend into a paste with about 15 long pulses. 

Put the rest of the egg whites into a mixer and whisk up until the egg whites hold soft peaks. At the same time put the water and the sugar into a saucepan and heat gently. The sugar will dissolve and when the water starts to boil. Use a sugar thermometer and the mixture will be ready when it reaches 110°. Keep the mixer whisking as you pour the sugar syrup into the eggs slowly. Once you have finished pouring, keep the mixer going as the mixture gets glossy and slightly stiffer. Keep whisking until it is cool.  

Fold the almond, lemon mixture in together with the egg whites until you have a smooth mixture. Place this into a piping bag and pipe evenly onto a greased baking paper sheet. I add a little more grease because the paper does not seem to be quite enough. Draw a circle with the piping bag about 2 cm diameter and then hold the bag in the center and pipe out to make a small dome. 

Leave the disks out on the side for a couple of hours to form a slight skin and then bake at 170° for 14 minutes. 

In the meantime you can make your lemon curd filling. 

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and place over a saucepan with boiling water. Heat the mixture until the butter has all melted. Whisk up the eggs and yolks together a little before adding to the melted butter mixture. Heat very gently, stirring every now and then until the mixture coats the back of the spoon. Leave the curd to cool. 

Choose disks that are a similar size and spoon some curd onto the flat side and sandwich the two together. 

Eat these little disks of sunshine while on a train, with a good book, on your way to a great holiday.

I do, now do I?

So last night was a lot of fun. Highlights of the evening include:

   A pair of friends donning Mitchell-brother masks and dancing in an unlit alleyway behind a pub, drawing a group of spectators, who after this had continued for several minutes, grew a little uncomfortable and backed out of the alley again.

   Another pair of friends discussing the inconsistent and ill-considered policies and statements of UKIP and their followers, but used bad sarcasm so the group of inebriated clowns (costumed clowns, not a reference to their behaviour) behind us seemed confused and slightly angry.  

All in all, a successful night of revelry. 

This morning a friend of mine tweeted about an article on the BBC website looking at the issue and history of women taking their husband’s name; a topic that I have mixed feelings about.

I think that it’s every person’s right to make that choice for themselves but the sheer number of women who still change their name, I think, shows that there is a hangover culture of possession.

The reasons behind name changing today are clear and practical, the wedding ceremony is a public declaration of love, fidelity and family and many people see the sharing of a name as a continuance of that declaration and unity. But just mention the idea of the name being shared could be the maiden name of the bride and the reaction you get is quite surprising. Men and women who seem fully committed to gender equality baulk at the idea of the groom changing his name, even if they have no issue with the bride keeping or changing hers. It seems to still be a woman’s issue, change your name, don’t change your name, but don’t ask me to change mine. This is starting to sound a lot like a culture where being married fundamentally changes who a woman is, but the change for men is less profound.

It would certainly be unusual to receive an announcement at work that a man, who had recently been married, will now be working under a new name and you will need to update all your contact details for him because his email address will be changing in accordance. Though that is not to say it is unheard of, the above mentioned friend’s family all use her mother’s maiden name.

Perhaps a sign of how ingrained the culture of ‘maiden’ names is would be that one of the most commonly asked security questions when you forget your password is ‘what is your mother’s maiden name’. That the given name of your mother should be so secret means that, not only must your mother be married, she must also have taken your father’s name. As a child of a married pair of parents with the same surname this had never really occurred to me as strange until recently. When you look at it again, in today’s culture where families come in all shapes and sizes this question seems almost ridiculous. What exactly would you put if you, for example, had two Daddies? And certainly the concept of security would be called into question if your mother’s maiden name was just your name.

Until I read the article this morning I had not realised that this was a British tradition which had spread. I was aware that in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries often the tradition was for a child’s surname to be made up of a combination of both the mother and the father’s names. Whilst originally the first name had to be the father’s surname this is no longer the case and it’s quite common for the names to be changed round to whatever sounds best (I find the name with the most syllables first). With that in mind perhaps it’s time we start looking to other cultures for ideas on this thorny issue. That would certainly be my plan, even if it’s not a pressing concern for me right now. 

You can read the full BBC article here.

Pearly petals

My lovely friend Ruth is getting married next year and look what arrived in the post today!

I love it and I am so excited to be a bridesmaid for the first time. Whilst I have issues with the origins of marriage and many of its traditions there is a lot about weddings that I enjoy. Mostly the flowers I think, I like flowers. Except the generic roses that are everywhere, they are so bland and scentless, they make me sad. Somehow we have killed off the very thing we prized. But there are hundreds of different varieties of roses and I would like to share a few of my favourites. 

The Ambridge rose

Scepter'd Isle

Corvedale

Queen of Sweden

The Lark Ascending

So much more interesting than the petrol station kind.