Sunday 23 December 2018

Christmas baking

and Christmas cooking and Christmas food...
I'm over it. I want to be a grinch - at least momentarily.
Today I need to make something we call "honey crackles" and some people call "honey joys". Middle Cat insists I must make them. Christmas will not be Christmas without them. They are even more essential (in her mind) than the mince pies the Senior Cat loves.
For those of you who don't know these little delicacies are made from cornflakes, honey, sugar and butter. Yes, cornflakes.  Cornflakes are closely related to wood chips in my view.
You put the cornflakes in a large bowl. You put the honey, the sugar and the butter into a saucepan an heat them up until it has all melted into a sweet liquid. Wait. I am coming to it.
You pour the sweet liquid over the cornflakes and you mix it together. Right? With me so far?
I can cope with all that.
Then... you have to put this mixture into little paper cake containers or patty pans or whatever you care to call them. You are supposed to do this on a basis of one table spoon into each little container.
And this is where I fail miserably. This stuff is sticky! It sticks to my paws. How does it get there? I have a tablespoon in one paw and a teaspoon (to scrape the wretched stuff off) in the other. It should all be so easy. I swear those cornflakes can dance!
I try getting my own back by putting them in the oven. That is supposed to make them stick together.
I spend hours clearing up the mess, washing the saucepan and the bowl and the implements I  used. Wiping down the bench and the sink and washing the floor takes half a day. I still find stickiness a week later.
I do this every year...just once a  year. Does Middle Cat realise how much I love her?
 

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