Anyone had a Senior Moment Lately?
Good morning everyone, hope you are all well and staying safe.
Just thought I would share a humorous, lighthearted moment of something that occurred yesterday, and which had HWMO in stitches.
I know I have mentioned it before, I love baking cakes and puds etc but making pastry?
Absolutely bottom of the class! This is strange, as my Mum had fabulous pastry-making skills, but there we are, my excuse is that I have very warm hands and as everyone knows, warm hands do not make for good pastry, so I gave up years ago. But hey, not to worry, I bulk buy packets of Jus-Rol shortcrust, puff and Filo pastry from the supermarket and no-one is any the wiser once the item is baked,(and the packet quickly and discreetly dispatched to the bin every time).
Anyhow, goodness knows where my mind was yesterday. I set out to make an apple and blackberry pie (defrosted frozen blackberries). I took the two blocks of shortcrust frozen pastry from its paper wrapping and put the wrapper into the bin. I did the usual routine, spread the flour, rolled out the pastry, wrapped it around the rolling pin and laid it gently into the 10-inch fluted pie tart tin, oven preheated to 180, scrunched parchment paper at the ready, baking beans to hand ready to blind bake the pie crust, so far, so good. I then popped it into the oven to blind bake for 15 minutes. That was fine, removed the beans and paper, and popped it back into the oven for a further 5/7 minutes to ensure the bottom of the pie crust was well done. (No-one wants a soggy bottom!)
After I put the pie crust back in for the final 5/7 minutes, Timer on, I walked into the front room to catch the news. After about 3 minutes, HWMO called out as he walked through the kitchen, I rushed out to see what had happened and found him staring at the oven which contained my pie case. I couldn’t believe it! Instead of my usual lovely pie crust ready to put the prepared fruit into,I was staring at a monstrosity that had risen from the middle shelf to the actual roof of my oven!! In fact, I would go as far as to say, if I was entering this into a Yorkshire Pudding competition, I would be walking away with a first prize!!
I just couldn’t understand what had gone wrong with the shortcrust pastry. That is, until with a red face and HWMO not helping by standing there laughing his head off, I removed this monstrosity of pastry crust from the oven and realised the bloomer I had made. I had picked up a packet of Puff Pastry blocks from the freezer instead of Shortcrust!! I should have known as shortcrust is a blue pack, Puff pastry a green. But there we are, yet another senior moment, which seems to be becoming a lot more frequent these days.
Of course, it ended up in the bin. Even I know that Puff pastry pies still have to have a shortcrust base. (Doesn’t help that HWMO is still chuckling about it today and repeating “That was classic”.
I will never be allowed to forget it!).