My dear Emily, sorry for having neglected you for so long.
I don’t really have a proper excuse or explanation for it; you know how these things sometimes happen.
Over the Christmas break I had friends here at home (as well as some family – the whole thing was kind of.. ‘revolving doors’ for a bit) and as a result spent many hours of happy domesticity cooking with people, watching Jamie Oliver shows with people, and of course, eating too much in the company of people. I must report that I we used the recipe I gave you for mulled wine to make mulled cider: it was a treat.
Surprisingly, by the time the Epiphany turned around (in France we celebrate it with the eating of a special pie of puff pastry and almond filling which I love) I already had taken down my droopy Christmas tree; possibly this is a first.
Under said tree for me this year among others was this beautiful yarn:
–that I immediately used to knit pleated armwarmers from a Kristina McGowan pattern. I am madly in love with them and wear them all the time.
But since then, I have to be honest, I haven’t had a good time of it craft-wise. Nor in the kitchen, actually! Last week I used your wonderful banana cake recipe, twice, and twice I found myself with a flat, compact cake. Very moist, and edible of course, but nothing like the wonderful photograph in your blog post.
Then yesterday, determined to enjoy my knitting again, I put aside all the WiPs that bore me and cast on for an experiment in pure merino, so I could relish the nommy elasticity and softness of wool…
Only to frog it all today, after coming to the inescapable conclusion that it was only going to net me an unwearable garment. Also, I’m not convinced by these stripes.
So there you are: no particular news from this side of the planet. Sorry for this very disappointing update… I hope things are going better in your area!
Oh noes!
Re: the cake, do you think the flat/compactness might be related to the different flours in different countries…? Do you have self-raising flour in France? The recipe sometimes calls for some baking soda, too, I could look up the proportions…
xoxox
We do not have self-raising flour here, no, but I made sure to use baking powder in a reasonable proportion matching other cakes I baked in the past… still, yes, the only reason I can see for the flatness is that my baking powder was either too old or insufficient in quantity somehow. Oh well. Someday I’ll get it right.