Firstly, this is the last day of life in my twenties.
Over the last ten years I have qualified as a teacher, worked as a teacher, become a Primary Mathematics Specialist Teacher, met Mrs Pitts, married Mrs Pitts, said goodbye to my Mum, moved into my first house, found 730 geocaches… and those are just things that spring to mind.
I’m a totally different person to the one of ten years ago, hopefully I’m a better one too.
Secondly, I hadn’t realised that yesterday’s blog post had now made the 2013 post tally overtake both 2012 (with 13) and 2008 (with 24). The 30th post will move this year further up that particular league table. I will happily admit that I am loving this 365 project so far. I haven’t resorted to finding things online to fill a post too many times yet either!
Now then, tradition dictates that food is taken to work on your birthday and to fulfil this obligation, I (with Mrs Pitts’ help) have been baking. Three creations have been made: a toffee cake, a ginger cake and a tray of 24 chocolate brownies.
At the risk of turning into a recipe laden blog (see Day 20), here’s how the brownies were made.
Ingredients:
- 225g butter, diced, plus extra for greasing
- 500g plain chocolate
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee granules
- 1 tablespoon hot water
- 3 large eggs
- 175g caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 100g self-raising flour
- 175g pecan nuts, broken into pieces
- Cocoa powder, for dusting.
The oven was preheated to 190°C and a cake tin was greased and lined with greaseproof paper.
175g of plan chocolate was chopped into chunks and set aside. This would be added later. The rest was placed in a bowl with the butter and melted slowly over a pan of hot water, stirred until smooth and the left to cool.
The coffee was dissolved in the hot water. Then the eggs, coffee, sugar and vanilla extract were lightly whisked together in a bowl.
After that, the chocolate and butter mixture was gradually whisked in. Then I broke the whisk.
The flour, nuts and chocolate chunks were folded in after cleaning myself up and being told off by Mrs Pitts.
The mixture was poured into the prepared tin and baked until it was firm to the touch, not for the 35-40 minutes stated in the recipe.
The evening was filled with a lovely meal with Grange Moor Brass Band at Orlando’s in Grange Moor. Meat balls, a pepperoni pizza and a toffee crunch pie was just the ticket after a hard day’s baking!
We finished the day off with a cache to fill a calendar gap, GC425D6, taking us to 731!
