A slice of heaven

A few days ago, I did what I had never done before - I made petit fours for forty guests at a wedding.  I wouldn't have called them such, but apparently that is the posh term for them.  I call them little bites of chocolate heaven.  But who am I to judge?  The grooms dithered, shyly (or is that slyly?) asked, and I was happy to do so.  At least that's what I said.  My wedding present to you.  That was before I made them.

It was supposed to be an easy job.  After all, I'd made them all before.  At least once.  Okay, one I hadn't made twice, and one I'd made often, a long time ago.  But they weren't hard.  All I needed were a few days, some easily-sourced ingredients, and a couple of coldish nights.  Simple.  That was before I made them.

I got off to a flying start.  Mars Bar slice and Posh Rocky Road?  Those I'd been making for Christmas for the last couple of years - and the filling of the Mars Bar slice is one of those things that I make when I'm feeling the need for something crunchy and chocolately - which is about once every couple of months.  So no problems with Mars Bar slice.

It would have been nice to say the same for the rocky road.  It started well: chop the turkish delight, the marshmallows, the macadamias.  Break up the Green & Black's white chocolate and melt.  Simple.  I had a 100 percent success rate in chocolate melting.  Not this time.  For the very first time in my life, I burnt chocolate.  This is not boasting.  This is luck.  There was a late evening rescue mission to Sainsbury's.  The next two batches worked better, because I melted the chocolate the old-fashioned way - in a bain marie.  Anyway, I was halfway there.  And I had four days to go before the wedding - well, you don't want to do these things too early, do you?

Rumballs were next.  No heat needed.  No melted chocolate.  Just a bunch of ingredients including crushed arrowroot biscuits.  Which weren't at the local Sainsbury's, so I sent the Erstwhile and the Son to Tesco.  They returned with my biscuits - and a television.  I put this minor distraction behind me.  Biscuits got crushed, rums got balled.  I washed my hands so often that I could have been mistaken for an obsessive-compulsive.  Still, here I was, Thursday night, and I had all day Friday and Saturday morning to go, and three of four were cooling nicely in the laundry.

Does anybody know just how many recipes exist for Cherry Ripe slice?  I don't, but I found out I had at least six in my cookbooks alone.  I discovered this when I couldn't find my copy of the recipe, which I had tucked away in a safe place after I had last cooked it, two and a half years
ago for an Australia Day barbeque - January in Berkshire being the perfect weather for a barbeque.  But now, when I needed it, I could not for the life of me remember where the safe place was.  All I knew was, each time I looked into one of cookery books or cooking magazines, it wasn't the right one.  I spent fruitless days looking for ground hazelnuts just in case I had to use another recipe.  There was a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.  I had to get this one right.  My whole cooking reputation rested on it.

It was in the laundry.  In a box full of bits of paper that had stuff on it that I thought might interest me.

Just as I remembered, it was a simple recipe of easily-sourced ingredients.  I just hadn't remembered the baking part.  No probs, I said to myself after a very large scotch, I have time.  I made one batch on the Thursday night.  That would be cooled by Friday morning, I'd do the second batch Friday, so by Friday evening the petit fours could be all cut and bagged, to be delivered to the blushing grooms on Saturday morning.

'Can we pick up the party favours Friday afternoon?'  Such an innocent text.  Such a mad scrabble.  The second batch of slice cooled while three men - Erstwhile, Son and groom - carefully packed the other slices into little cellophane bags, standing at the ironing board in my living room.

But they got done.

And did the petit fours go down well?  They looked great, and tasted better.  The grooms thanked me, I got all teary, and there's a lovely bottle of wine waiting for me - after the Christmas party, when I can come off my fitting-into-the-tight-dress-for-the-Christmas-party diet.  Oh, and some rumballs.  Some very expensive rumballs.

And some have cooking thrust upon them

There is an iconic image in cooking.  An older woman - gentle-faced, flour up to her elbows - smiles beatifically at a young child (sex indeterminate) as the child is introduced to the magic of cooking.  Initiate and novice, together; passing on the knowledge of how to turn flour, sugar and eggs into pretty cupcakes with butterflies on top.

I was not introduced to cooking like this.
 
My mother cooked.  I watched her - in much the same way as a wild animal prowls around the outside of a fire.  She didn't do it because she loved it.  She did it because she loved us, and my dad could only cook steak and bacon and eggs.  She didn't want us to die of cholesterol poisoning.  I suspect that she wanted to be a bit more hands-on about our demises.  I know that my brother was top of her hitlist.

As for Grandma, I can remember just two dishes she cooked: tripe and onions - Grandad's favourite, but an acquired taste; and an interesting fruitcake that involved shoving a bunch of ingredients into the sink, turning on the tap for a while, then squishing the resultant mess into something resembling a cake.  It was called sinker.  Based on the way it sat in my stomach, it was probably the reason the Titanic sank so fast.

Nanna?  She wasn't much for cooking.  We used to eat a lot of take-away when we visited her.  Kentucky Fried Chicken.  We liked visiting Nanna.

I did Home Economics at school.  All the girls did.  Boys were forced to do all the good stuff like woodwork and sheetmetal and tech drawing, while we looked on in envy.  It was obvious that the boys were going to do real-world stuff involving machinery and jobs, while we girls would discover, all over again, that the way to a pay packet was through a man's stomach.  We were supervised, however.  A necessity, as we were in charge of knives, hot stoves and not many brain cells.  Fairly simple cooking, in fact.  Our Home Ec teacher preferred needlework.

The first time I cooked unsupervised, I wasn't supposed to.  Mam had promised to watch me (loose translation:  fix up whatever went wrong or got damaged) while I made spaghetti bolognaise for dinner.  But only after her nap.  The time for her to get up came and went.  I got bored.  There was a recipe.  I was good at following instructions.  By the time she eventually came downstairs, apologising for oversleeping and expecting raw ingredients and a disappeared child, I was a cook.

It was a done deal. 

I didn't cook often in Malaysia - we had a cook/amah, but once we arrived back in Australia, Mam went out to work.  Now I was thirteen and cooking for a family of six.  There were conditions - if dinner was hot on the table at half-past five, I got fifty cents.  If it was hot on the table at five thirty-five, I got nothing but thanks.  Luckily for my mother, I was punctual - the money she paid me for cooking the evening meal, she frequently had to borrow from me later.

Make no mistake,  While being a cook was never my intention, I actually enjoy it.  My problem is, after so many years feeding people, that it would be nice if the people I am feeding have some inkling of what they might like for dinner.  I'm not asking for much.  Once a week would be enough. Once a month?  A year?  Hello?  Are you lot listening?  I'm asking you for the 11264th time - what do you want for dinner?