A tropical timestealer...

Before anyone gets confused I’m still on vegan week. This blog is very very late. I haven’t even attempted the danish yet but I will try to catch up as quickly as possible. If you follow my Instagram stories, you may have seen that I actually did vegan week over a week ago. While it felt like it took forever to bake, I can safely say it hasn’t taken over a week. I have been busy decorating this week, so haven’t got round to finish off the blog I started. So, just to remind you vegan weeks technical challenge was a vegan tropical pavlova. I have to say I don’t know much about vegans and if I’m being honest I know I’ll never be one, so I’m not too bothered about finding out much. What I will say is shopping for them is even worse than shopping for the normal technicals. Since GBBO began, I swear I have done more steps than I have done so far this entire year. While a lot of these have been by pacing up and down the kitchen, they have mainly been in the bloody supermarket. Shopping for this technical though, was by far the worst. The first mistake made was by going with my son. I thought I’d be ok as I was with my bestie and her little girl too. Second mistake, sharing a trolley. While her little girl was happy to sit in the seat, my son was not. He has refused this for quite some time now, therefore I have fully embraced the ‘out of control mum shopping’ look. I often give him very loud warnings of “if you don’t hold on, you’ll be back in the seat”, or “if you tread on my strawberries again, you’ll be back in the seat”. This is mainly for the benefit of other shoppers, as both my son and I know there’s more chance of him putting me in the seat and pushing the trolley around. He will never go in the seat again! In order to keep both kids entertained we plied them with the free fruit that Tesco provides and started browsing the clothes. Who doesn’t love a bit of Tesco clothing? What’s best is that I can kit myself out with an entire outfit and when my husband checks our online banking, he’ll be none the wiser! Unfortunately, by the end of the clothes section the fruit had ran out. In the last couple of weeks my son has decided he’s an acrobat. In the shop he learnt a new move. How to get out of the trolley. Thankfully potty training is on hold because the move he did to get out would certainly have proved very painful and would probably have prevented him from being a father also. Third mistake, letting him get out. While my friend continued her relaxing shop with the trolley, I didn’t just have to find random ingredients like xanthum gum, vegan butter and cream of tartar, I also had to control the acrobat. Yes, that’s right the moves didn’t stop there. There had to have been at least 10 roly poly’s. I’m amazed he didn’t sustain a head injury doing them on that floor. I tried to do one back last year and felt like I’d given myself slight brain damage. DO NOT TRY IT IF YOU’RE OVER 18! So with him tucked under one arm, random items under the other, as I couldn’t locate my mate with the trolley and then had to stop and ask someone where certain items were. I’m sure I looked like the typical free spirited, out of control, vegan type of mother! After a very awkward till experience (awkward because my son had crawled under the trolley, stopping me from moving it. Perhaps his disappearing act?), we immediately went for a wine and lunch to recover. Acrobats continued in pub. Very embarrassing but downed wine and scoffed food quickly to get out of there. I was absolutely shattered that evening, as I had four cake orders for the next day and I had been baking and sugar crafting for the past couple of days. I’d also been ill with what felt like a kidney infection so standing was not ideal. Still, I’d just spent a fortune on lots of fresh fruit so I thought I’d start while making dinner. I was roasting a chicken in the main oven so decided to use my side oven. So what if it’s not fan, I’ll just have to wait a little longer. Timer set for 2.5 hours. Aquafaba into the mixer. Aquafaba...why on earth wouldn’t they just call it chickpea juice? Why on earth would anyone know that this would make a good substitute for egg whites? WHY ON EARTH WOULD ANYONE BE VEGAN?? When I started whisking it, the smell was making me feel sick. But I suppose egg whites don’t exactly smell lovely. I added the cream of tartar and after about five minutes, I couldn’t believe they were actually starting to look the same as egg whites would. I added the sugar a tablespoon at a time and then once I put the vanilla seeds and xanthum gum (by the way it took about 25 minutes to locate this in Tesco) it was ready to go in a piping bag. I don’t know how they make that look so easy on TV. For some reason I get it everywhere. All over the outside of the bag, all up my arms. I even had some on my face. I’d already cut and put some baking paper and put it on the oven trays, so I then began piping it on. As you know, I’m not the athletic type but this was ridiculous. I actually gave myself cramp while I was piping. Dave would have been a great help here, if only there hadn’t been a fall out and he wasn’t lying in the bottom of the bath! Finally I finished and popped it in the oven and set the timer for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I tidied up, set my dinner table, checked on the roast chicken and poured myself a glass of red (just to remind you, it was Friday night...as if that makes a difference). I began to make the coconut pastry cream. Coconut milk in the pan, with the sugar, salt and vanilla extract. Low heat to bring to the boil. I mixed in the cornflour, which I’d forgot to do with a bit of the coconut milk first, so ended up having numerous lumps. This is something I always forget! But I couldn’t be bothered to restart so the lumps would have to do. Then once that had thickened I took off the heat, added vegan butter and desiccated coconut. Bugger, I was supposed to have toasted the designated coconut first. Never mind! What I did like about baking in my side oven, was that I could actually see through the glass because it’s much cleaner. I continuously checked on meringue, even though it’s the only thing I’ve baked that pretty much looks the same coming out as it did going in, pretty boring to watch really. I had way over an hour left on the clock and was thinking that I was all over it. I was starting to think about how I could write in my blog that I’d not only managed to do the technical but I’d also done it as well as cooking dinner at the same time. I poured myself another red and for the first time in two days sat down. Still plenty of time on the clock, I got up to make my mango coulis. Blitzed the mango in a food processor with some icing sugar and some lime juice. The end. I have never made it before. How bloody easy it that! I’ll sit back down and have another wine then. With the meringue due to be done, I put the white chocolate on to melt. I have to admit, I forgot vegan chocolate when having the most stressful shop ever. Luckily, I had some normal white chocolate that I could use. No vegans in my house. I cut up the fruit. Alarm went off, meaning meringue was done. Now, I’ve never made any type of meringue before but I have eaten plenty. Therefore, I instantly knew that it was nowhere near baked. It had been in there for over an hour and was still more of a liquid. Great...blog won’t be as smug then! Crap crap crap oven! I turn the heat up and put them back in. Another 40 minutes goes by. The melted chocolate is solid. The fruits is looking rather dry and the time is nearly up. On the plus side, the child is asleep and the chicken is cooked. Time for a nice peaceful meal with my husband. I transfer the meringue back to the main oven. I’ve exceeded the time by an hour but the meringue is finally done. I add coconut yoghurt to the coconut pastry cream and add this on top. I sack off the white chocolate idea, as I’ve pretty much scoffed most of that while waiting. Plus I can’t be bothered to melt it again. I add the fruit and some coconut to the top. I have to say it looks pretty good. I dish up some for both of us and am amazed how much I like it. A little disappointed when asking my husband if he likes it. He responds “it’s ok”. Usually he loves whatever I make. I didn’t realise he doesn’t like coconut. We’ve been together almost 10 years, so not sure how I didn’t know, still it makes me feel better. So another week of not doing it in time. However, it’s because of my rubbish oven and not me. Also worth mentioning that a couple of days later the other oven packed up. I loved that we had a range oven when we bought the house, however, now we’ve got to buy a new one I’m not loving the price of them. No cooking or baking from me until next Friday. Luckily the technical this week was all done on the hob, which is fortunately still working. I’ve ordered the pan, as I’ll be walking round Tesco forever trying to find one of those. Fingers crossed!