Types of baking

I have recently discovered that I adopt different styles of baking dependent on circumstance and my mood. I've already blogged about "replacement baking" when I used baking as an excuse not to run in the rain and then the other weekend I started off with "preparedness baking", followed by "emergency baking" when the prepared cakes got used for an alternative purpose.

The story went as follows: it was Mother's Day weekend and I'd invited my in-laws for Sunday lunch, but thinking they were likely to stay for some tea in the afternoon I decided to be organised and make some cake on Friday evening. I opted for orange fairy cakes, a nice simple recipe - first time I'd made it with orange although I've made it using lemon in the past - and once I'd finished icing them and topped them off with little sugar flowers, they looked most appropriate for a Mother's Day tea I thought!

But then Saturday morning came and we had a phone call from our friends and their three children saying they were in the area and so perhaps they could pop in to say 'hello'. Always lovely to catch-up with friends, but not so good on the organised cake front since these are the friends from where the name 'zoecakes' originated and so it would have been very poor form not to share my latest creations with them. There was no time for baking pre-visit since we had gym plans (the cakes don't work themselves off you know!) and so the MD cakes were brought out. Happily they went down very well, but then the rest of my afternoon was spent in "emergency baking" mode - I opted to make Rock Cakes for a change, as it seemed a little dull to be making the same cakes twice in as many days, not to mention the fact that I didn't have any more oranges. Can't really go wrong with Rock Cakes and so my good daughter-in-law halo remained intact by the end of Sunday afternoon, other than of course the geocaching scuffles with my father-in-law after lunch, but that's a whole other story...

Foreign food

This weekend Mr Bad Wabbit and I are going to Barcelona - Mr Wabbit will be running his seventh marathon, as mentioned once or twice in his recent blog postings, and I will be sampling some Spanish hospitality, oops sorry I mean cheering him from the sidelines. Actually I will be doing both and I am understandably quite excited about the prospect - always nice to be able to see your hubby achieving his goals and I do enjoy eating!

Whilst Spain is not exactly renowned for it cakes, à la this blog, I'd probably need to go to a French patisserie for that, I am rather fond of tapas and sangria. It's tricky to pick a favourite dish, although chorizo in red wine is always a winner in the Wabbit household and for me spanish omelette evokes memories of when I worked in Spain several years ago. Based in an office full of Spaniards I'd made an English friend when out for a walk one evening as I'd spotted his English newspaper and wanted to know where I could get one for myself - I never did buy my own paper in the end as he generously offered to give me his once he'd finished it. So we established a habit of meeting after work for him to pass on his paper and to share a beer in a local cafe which was always served with a pincho of tortilla de patatas. Since then I have often tried to make Spanish omelette, but I've never managed to make it as light and fluffy as the ones I had then.

The different food tastes around the world never fail to amaze me - on a work trip to Houston last year we were taken to a restaurant that specialized in chicken-fried steak! It did also serve the more well-knowned option of fried chicken, but I thought 'when in Rome' and opted for the steak... I wouldn't want to criticise other people's choice of food but for me it was just bizarre and seemed to be a waste of a good piece of steak, so it won't be gaining a place on my top ten list of favourite foods. And even worse I was so full after all the batter on my steak, that I had no room for pudding!