Important update from Twitter

especially relevant to wildeabandon and treeandleaf: someone named Fergus Butler-Gallie, who is clearly high on Anglicanism, has written a '1662 and all that' quiz for a church magazine.

Was asked to produce a Christmas quiz for a church magazine and (with apologies to Sellar and Yeatman) decided to make it as silly as possible: pic.twitter.com/uBChWaWmef

— Fergus Butler-Gallie (@_F_B_G_) December 21, 2020

I particularly enjoy "12. Draw a line (very carefully) between Rome and Geneva" and "14. As far as is possible whilst observing social distancing, perform an Oxford Movement." Although 6 gets points for its deployment of angles/angels.

Food report

I could talk about work, or socials, or family, but let's not.

1. Fruit cake, or, My Best Work This Millenium: Two loaf tin fruit cakes made, iced with almond and fondant, given ribbons, wrapped in paper and then tea towels and then put in cardboard cradles and dispatched to boss and phd-student-colleague. Boss sent a photo of her son cradling it reverentially: looks like one end got slightly dinged in transit but contrary to my mother's horrified predictions, it was not ruined by being wrapped in paper.

1.a. Fruit Cake 2: Gluten Free Boogaloo: I made two loaf tins of gluten free cake. My intended victim turns out not to like cake, so I was planning to freeze one for later work purposes. However, I cut one open in an attack of cravings the other day. I had thoughts of icing HALF of it, but it didn't make a clean cut. Perhaps I will just eat two fruit cakes all by mineself.

2. Rum cake balls: the offcuts from the tops of said cakes (levelled, and then turned over, so the baking bottom becomes the flat top surface for icing) got whizzed in the food processor, then mixed with brandy and cream and made into balls last night. This morning I dipped their tops in white chocolate and nestled them in patty pans. Two sets have been dispatched in cute tins to friends in Geneva already. I have three more tins and some more victims to come.

3. Project: vegan coconut ice. Not all of my intended victims like cake, so I set about making vegan-ised versions of "traditional" (to me. Note the high incidence of cold fridge treats for Australian summer) Christmas treats. This recipe including making one's own coconut condensed milk seems to have worked out pretty well, but we shall see tomorrow.

4. Project: vegan white Christmas. I have learned an important lesson about not melting vegan white chocolate in the microwave. I ended up with separated fats, some bits of crispy caramel, and chunky other bits. However, I had some leftover coconut condensed milk, and had found 'kokosfett', which seems fairly similar to copha, and first tried whipping it (only half was soft enough), then melted some, mixed in the chocolate mix, added coconut and some icing sugar, and then proceeded from there. Remains to be seen if this turns out to be food or not. I added some melted margarine at the last minute because it ended up too dry.

Based on these experiments I THINK, if I keep the kokosfett at room temperature and then maybe slightly heat it in the oven, I can make Toni's cake using a mix of a solid margarine block designed for baking and kokosfett. The trick is creaming the "butter" and sugar: I found a recipe for buttercream icing made on copha, so it seems it can be done.

Also I have stock in the slow cooker again, plans for a casserole type thing tomorrow, and assorted possibilities for xmas.