by DJ Kirkby (Wed Dec 16, 2009)
I come
from a long line of women who make great pastry. It's all down to the fact that
we have cold hands, according to my Grammie Kirkby. While still young enough to
hold onto her apron strings, I learned that cold hands keep the butter
from melting while it's being blended with the flour and that, I'm sorry to
say, is the only secret to great pastry. I would prefer to think that it is due
to my hours of practice, but I can't tell a lie.
So I
apparently inherited the talent, but women blessed with lovely warm hands are
perfectly capable of acquiring the same effect simply by plunging their hands
into ice water. Seems a bit extreme when you can pop to the shops and buy
readymade pastry but stranger things do happen in some women's search for that
elusive title of ‘domestic goddess.'
One thing
I didn't have an innate talent for was baking desserts that had the courtesy to
come out of the pan without a very liberal application of grease. I
think my cakes and breads must have been extra sticky. Or perhaps I was just
clumsy. Whatever. More often than not, I became preoccupied with working out
some complicated bits of dialogue in my novel-in-progress while mixing the
batter and forgot to grease the baking tin until after I'd poured the batter
in. At which point, of course, it was too late.
But cake-making
salvation finally came my way after my poached eggs were given a little
silicone boost.
You see, for
years I found the work involved with turning a simple raw egg into the final
glorious soft poached end product incredibly difficult and
endlessly frustrating, no matter how delightful they eventually turned out. Sort
of like my sons. If I tried to make them the old fashioned way by cracking them
into swirling boiling water they ended up resembling shredded rags. The eggs I
mean, not my sons. When I tried to use those plastic moulds in boiling water,
they boiled dry. I was constantly thwarted in my attempts to poach an egg. It
was at this point that my husband came to the rescue by purchasing the very
first of my silicone enhancements.
If you
are now thinking ‘Tsk men, what are
they like, so predictable' and ‘what's
that got to do with cooking?' I can completely understand your
sentiments. But, I am not ashamed to tell you that I went from zero to two
E-G-G cups and I've never regretted it. Not only do they look great but they're
relatively inexpensive, easy to clean, pop back into shape with ease after use and
are likely to outlast me. Which is more than all those expensively silicone
enhanced glamour models can say.
I've now
expanded my silicone collection to four egg cups, three batter scrapers, a
pastry brush, twenty four muffin cases, a cake tin and a bread shell. I'm happy
to say that my breads and cakes slip out of the silicone shells with ease. My Grammie
Kirkby never needed silicone to produce her endless cake and bread delights but
I'm more than happy to show off my silicone enhancements with pride. I may have
been lucky to inherit my ‘perfect for pastry' cold hands but I take full credit
for discovering the fact that that the secret to perfectly shaped baked goods
is as simple as buying a set of silicone bake ware.
