A Royal Stuff-Up. Literally.

No, this is not a post about me meeting a member of the royal family and saying something dumb. Interesting I should say that, actually, because I did have a dream the other night that Prince William called me up and asked me out. I don't know how I knew it was him, but I just did, because somehow I could also "see" him on the other end of the phone, and he looked a lot more like his hotter, 16-year-old self (that is to say, he had hair) than his less attractive 28-ish year old self. I was not, however, delusional enough to believe it could really be true, because after we'd chatted and flirted and agreed to go out with him, I kept saying "Is this really Prince William? Really? Is this really Prince William?" Ahh, good to know that even in my sleep I'm a babbling, incoherent mess around men!

So, now for the REAL story.

Today I finally decided to have a crack at royal icing. I'm talking the fancy-schmantzy, beautiful piped stuff you often see on old-fashioned wedding cakes. I happen to think that style is absolutely gorgeous, but the masses appear to be addicted to rolled sugarpaste icing for some reason that I can't quite explain.

I know it was dumb of me to think that this was the sort of thing that anyone could possibly be naturally talented at, but in my heart of hearts I hoped that I was the Da Vinci of royal icing. How wrong I was. No, as it turns out, I am more like the Picasso of royal icing, or perhaps even the Dali. Sigh.

I can't say that I'm actually surprised that it all went horribly, horribly wrong, because I have never had a lesson in royal icing, and no amount of reading will prepare you for the shock. I also don't think it helped that I found four or five different variations on the recipe, and I suspect that I ended up using the kind most commonly found in floodwork on gingerbread men or for gluing gingerbread houses together. Next time I intend to make a cake out of a cake decorating book and follow the instructions letter for letter, word by word.

Having provided a very suitable excuse for the crappiness of my icing (besides the fact I'm just not used to holding a piping bag), I am now less reticent to share the embarrassment that is the cakes I decorated (I baked two miniature ones to practice on, and two cupcakes). Remember that the icing is far too runny to hold its form, and with that in mind, I kind of did okay. I was seriously wondering whether I'd delusionally thought I could do certain techniques with royal icing that can normally only be done with buttercream, but the Wilton section on royal icing put my mind at ease. It also showed me that I whipped it for about five to seven minutes shy of what I should have. Oh well, live and learn.

First up, I attempted to cover the cakes smoothly in plain white icing. FAIL. Then I had a crack at a rigid scalloped border. Suffice it to say, runny icing was never going to do the trick, therefore FAIL.

Also, I managed to get the Wilton gel food dye on my hands because, even though I bought vinyl gloves for the purpose, I totally forgot to put them on. FAIL.

Then I tried a technique known as cornelli lace. This actually isn't so far from what it's supposed to look like, so it's kind of an UN-FAIL! :) Except that because my smallest tip is a #2, it's a lot fatter than it should have been. Also, again, I suspect this technique would have worked better with a whipped icing like buttercream (at this point I begin to wonder whether you can whip royal icing into a fluffy frenzy. It makes sense that you could, because it is effectively a somewhat unbalanced meringue - and more on that later. Never having whipped royal icing for as long as you're supposed to, I have no idea whether, when you do that, it whips into a gorgeous, fluffy frenzy. I do intend to find out, but for now there is royal icing from here to kingdom come (by which I mean all the way across my kitchen), so I think I'll wait a while to find out).

And then I attempted to... ooh there's a name for this and I think it's lacework but I'm not certain. Basically it involves piping the icing onto baking paper laid over a template, letting it dry, and then gluing it to the cake with more icing. Being slack, I decided to freestyle it, which ended with the design being a bit sloppy and also a little phallic. FAIL. (Secondary fail due to inappropriately sized icing tip.) And then I got impatient and put it in the oven (which was off, but which had recently been on) to dry, and that's where my thought that royal icing is actually like meringue came into play, because instead of just drying, it darkened and rose, much like meringue. FAIL.

So this is what they looked like. I'm a little bit embarrassed by them but I'm posting them as a reminder to myself to be more patient.

Try not to laugh too hard.

City to Bay Fail

This morning, I sprang out of bed at 6:15am, keen as a bean to participate in the City to Bay fun run (or, in my case, fun walk - 3km will do me, cos the 12km would have done me in!). I was at the station by 7, ready to catch the 07:10 train into town, and then the tram down to the Morphettville Junction Centre, where the 3km leg started. I was questioning my sanity a little, because nobody else seemed to be up at this hour.

At 07:15 the train had not arrived, so I re-checked the timetable, and as it turns out I had been reading the Saturday timetable (working all day Saturday seriously screws with your head). No wonder nobody was at the station! So I came back home, did the dishes and went out again. The second time around, the train platform looked eerily similar...

... but this time the train showed up. Following some ticketing validation issues, once in the city, I got on a tram - like all the City to Bay information said I should (it spoke of a ten minute disruption of services while the 12km leg kicked off) - and the driver promptly told me that it wasn't running to Glenelg like normal, and that I needed to catch a bus from in front of the casino. So I moseyed down there, and, with a bunch of people also waiting for a bus, also discovered (from a volunteer who seemed to know as little as we did) that buses weren't actually running from there today because of the event.

Myself and two others who were trying to get to the same place then headed the four or so blocks to Grote St to catch a bus from there, as directed. When we got there a sign told us to head to Pultney St, which is on the other side of town. At this point we decided that if we couldn't get a tram from Victoria Square as we crossed it, that we would throw in the towel, because by now it was ten past nine and we had to be down there in time for a 09:45 start (and they recommend being there half an hour early).

So me, Lorraine (an Irish lass) and Harry (her husband) headed off for Hindley St (the only place in town likely to be open for drinking) for a pint of beer. Unsurprisingly it was the Irish lass' suggestion. At 09:28 we were sipping a nice cold pint of Draught at the Princes Berkely Hotel, surrounded by people still drinking from the night before, and served by a bartender who appeared to be either exhausted, or on drugs. Suffice it to say we got a few comments and whistles showing up in gym gear with our race numbers attached, but we managed to discourage the drunkards and found a quiet seat up the back (unfortunately close to where two dishevelled punters were making out by a pool table). I suppose it wasn't a dead loss because we must have walked close to 3km attempting to find public transport!

So this is what the City to Bay looked like for me this year:

Note that the glass is plastic.

Morals of the story:

1. Don't rely on weekend public transport in Adelaide to function sufficiently get you where you want to go (the fact that my train ran an hour later than I thought probably made it close to impossible to get into town and down to the race start on time, and that's WITHOUT the tram issues). You'd think they'd coordinate PT a bit better when there's a major public event involved, but no. I have used better public transport in developing countries.

2. Make friends with strangers - it makes what would have otherwise been a total write-off of a morning far more interesting.

3. Don't drink at the Princes Berkeley. The floors a sticky, the glasses are plastic and the patrons are seedy (no surprises there, though, because it was one of the only pubs open on a Sunday morning). Again, I've been to cleaner pubs in developing nations.

The End.

Story Time - Making Out Like Bandits

In a recent post, I promised to tell you a story about “making out like a pair of bandits.”

Actually, it’s less of a story and more of another example of how bent my mind is. 

When I think about the phrase "making out like bandits", I think of this:

And then I think of pash rash, because bandits always have an abundance of dark, scratchy stubble, right?? (and, according to the above impression, poor taste in clothing and headwear)

Just thought I'd share. That is all!