This was a foolish and cavalier attempt to ‘fast-track’ my baking skills to an appreciative level.

Firstly, the sesame cookie thing all coalesced into one big cookie in the oven.  Furthermore, it got stuck in the baking tray and I had to scrape it off (with a paint scraper of all things!).  Then I concentrated all my efforts into making a spice cake and it rose beautifully in the oven with the yummy whiff of baked cinnamon, all-spice and clove.  But, then when I tried to bang it out of the tin disaster struck and the centre flopped out of the tin leaving a crater in my cake!

I have never been much of a baker especially of cakes and biscuits and now I have two very important tasks to fulfill!

Firstly, as a follow-up from yesterday’s post on cassava, we did finally get 4 cups of farm fresh home-made tapioca flour from 10lbs of fresh cassava.

I want to bake a tapioca bread(Argentinean or Korean!) made from this but I have only one chance since I only have 4 cups.  I really don’t want to mess it up since we went through such a labourious process to get it.  Hence the reason why I was trying to bake other things to get a bit more experience.

Secondly, Gnome has made a special request for home-baked Panettone(traditional Italian Christmas cake).  I have looked at the recipe and it involves a long drawn and complicated procedure with yeasting, letting it rise 4 times through-out the day over about 8 hours and the kneading of tacky, gloopy dough.  This is a real challenge and I have 7 days to make the perfect Christmas cake for him which will hopefully remind him of cold winter nights in Italy by the fire hearth waiting for Santa! Aaaarghhh!!! I hope I can do this!