Custard

Because frankly, no home-made pudding is complete without home-made custard.
Recipe for Meringue to follow very shortly…

Also, recipes for puddings to pour this on would be equally delightful.

Egg Custard (Creme Anglaise)

300 ml full cream milk
300 ml cream (double)
6 egg yolks [hence the meringue... what else do you do with 6 egg whites?!]
3 oz caster sugar
1 vanilla pod. (or: a few drops of vanilla essence…)

1. Heat the milk and cream in a pan until they just about boil. Add the vanilla pod, leave to simmer for 15 minutes so the vanilla infuses.

2. Meantime, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until it is all blended. The mixture should be slightly lighter, and thickened. Do this in a big bowl. You will need it.

3. Remove the vanilla pod/ignore the vanilla essence (you can’t get it back now). Gradually add the milk+cream to the egg+sugar mixture. Stir each little bit until it’s totally blended before adding the next one. Continue until it’s all mixed together.

4. Return to the pan and heat slowly. Be VERY CAREFUL: if you heat it too fast, the egg will decide it wants to be scrambled egg instead and will curdle. This leaves you with liquidy, sweetened scrambled egg. Which still tastes fine, but looks and feels a bit weird. As yet, I have no idea how to stop it curdling. I was also hampered by the fact the milk frothed up… watch out for that one…

5. Bring it to the boil, or until it starts to bubble a little, then pour into a jug and serve.

This recipe might not yet be totally accurate. I will check later…

I’m Not Dead pt 2

Having finally cornered my willing volunteer on a day when neither of us has been too ill to stand up (many long stories in that one – and thanks for this entry due to the lovely H)… here is part the second of I’m Not Dead.

For this one, I’ve been using Snazaroo water-based paints (the colours I used were Black, White, Bright Red, Bright Yellow and Bright Green – the last two are entirely optional though) and Special FX Wax, which is a bit like mortician’s wax only easier to apply and water-soluble so you can get it off more easily afterwards – you can get all of them direct from Snazaroo here http://www.snazaroo.com along with all kinds of other bits and pieces that are just so much fun to muck about with!  I’ve also been using the fake blood I made last time around, for which it’s really useful to have a dropper,  just for ease of application.  Next time you eat sushi (or as in my case are sat next to someone eating sushi), steal the little plastic soy sauce container from them once they’re done.  It’s so handy.

Anyway, what you need to do first is make a mound of the wax slightly longer than and wider than the cut, and smooth the edges in so you can’t see them as much.  This doesn’t have to be perfect, because it just looks a bit like you’re peeling skin (or so H told me!) but, y’know.  Enough for it to blend in with the real skin.  Like this:

And then with your spatula, or the blunt side of a table knife, you score down the middle to make the cut.  It doesn’t need to be as far down as the skin, depending on how much wax you’ve stuck on, and how deep you want it to look:

Then, you need to mix some of the Bright Red and Bright Yellow with a lot of White to make a very pale skin colour, and just dab it around the cut, over the wax and the skin, so that it makes the skin look paler – a bit like with the grease paint cuts before.  Then, you mix some Bright Red with a little bit of Bright Green and Black to make it less pinky and a bit darker, and paint right the way along the groove in the wax, up the sides and everything.  Like before, you can fleckle this with a bit of darker red (like the cool red, only you have to mix it yourself this time), by which time it looks a bit like this:

…and if you’re really going overboard, mix some Bright Red and Bright Yellow, and smudge that in a bit too:

And now you can use your blood, which is very exciting!  Just fill the cut right up.

The rest is history.  You’re welcome to think about blood trajectory, or smudge it about the place a bit, really, the more the merrier!  I have to say, by this point, H and I got a bit overexcited, so I lopped one of her fingers off and we went to terrify next door – whose face was an absolute picture.  Sadly, however, she’s now got the hang of the fact that any horrific injuries on our corridor tend to be something to do with me.  Oh well.  Fun while it lasted.

(We splashed a bit more blood on after the photo and it looked a lot better, promise!)

Water-based, painty love xx