ALMOND SLICES, CHEATS METHOD1

Until recently I always made my own pastry shortcrust, puff or sugar paste but no more.
There are a number of different brands of ready made pastry on the market an so long as you buy the all butter ones no one will ever guess the awful truth. With this in mind here is a recipe which benefits very much from not having to make pastry from scratch.

I pkt ready made short cut pastry
|Apricot jam
3 oz chopped walnuts or sliced almonds

grease a Swiss roll tin and set the oven at 175oC, then mix together

4oz caster sugar
4oz icing sugar
4 oz ground almonds
2oz semolina at ground rice
a few spots of almond essence or vanilla essence if preferred.
1whole egg
1egg white

Line the Swiss roll tin with the pastry and spread with the jam. Spread the almond mixture over the top it does not have to be a perfect cover as the topping will spread. Sprinkle to nuts on the top and bake for twenty minutes.

Remove from the oven and cool in the tin before cutting into fingers.

This has been a baking day with most of the day taken up with either actual baking or preparation for tomorrow. To begin with we celebrated the start of our week off with a breakfast of blueberry muffins, orange juice and a pot of good strong tea after which my son went to rest, Pa went to the village and I cracked on with the chores.

Bread was first on the list and four loaves were needed today, two split tin loaves, a large bloomer for the boys next door and a special cross topped loaf for tonight’s meal ,such as the one which appeared on yesterdays blog. While the bread rose I tackled the breakfast dishes and the sticky bread pan, and cleared the kitchen for the next job.

With the bread in the oven I took a portion of the spur dough starter I began yesterday and added some flour and water, the remaining mixture I stored away in the fridge, as I shall not need it for a day or two. Tomorrow I shall have my first attempt at making bread with the “Sour dough Pete” mixture, if it turns out badly it will not matter too much as we shall have plenty of bread left for tomorrows meals.

Lovely smells wreathed the kitchen as the bread came out of the oven and the Almond slice went in and while it baked I cleared the dishes yet again and then made myself a well earned cup of coffee. Three O clock struck as the almond slice came out of the oven and with a couple of hours before dinner I spent a little time going through some very old recipe books I recently acquired. I prefer old recipe books to knew ones if the truth be known, they tend to be far more straight forward and down to earth, not so much of the “Omelettes a la pouffe celebre!” if you see what I mean!

Actually that is not a fair comment I knew a gay chef some years ago who made the best steak and kidney pudding in the entire world, I kid you not.
Tonight we shall all go early to bed, my son because he was at work last night, myself as I did not sleep at all last night;plagued by arthritis I spent the night watching films and stroking the cat. Pa too is tired after a day of feeding the birds and doing the bins. There are so many feeders that it takes ages to get around all of them and he keeps adding new ones all the time, he loves his wild birds so much bless him.

My bed is waiting for me complete with a cosy rug and a hot water bottle, I have had my bath and made the hot chocolate so now with your gracious leave I shall snuggle down under the covers, perhaps to sleep, I do hope so.