Summer easing in gradually; restrictions ease

It's a bit of a shock to realise that my last post was early in March. Time seems to expand and contract more randomly than usual in these Covid-dominated years.  The weeks go by, and the main topics of conversation with everyone cover the epidemiological situation in various countries, the different vaccines, and the pros and cons of cloth or disposable masks.  We check numbers of new cases daily, we chat online with our family, and we wonder if we're ever going to be able to travel again...

Back to March, and one of my first signs of spring advancing well is a freesia blooming: 

Not many of my freesias flowered this year, and those that did have all reverted to this bright pink which has very little scent. Perhaps I should buy some more in the autumn. 

In March, we were allowed to have up to four visitors in our homes, theoretically for up to three hours at a time. We were able to send up to two text messages per day asking for permission to exercise, or go shopping, or to visit friends. The limit of four visitors didn't entirely make sense, since it meant that we were able to visit out closest friends (who are, currently, a household of six) but they could not all come here at the same time. 

We were also still allowed to exercise outside with one other person, so I continued walking by the Salt Lake with my friend Sheila first thing, three times per week. We realised that we take the flamingoes rather for granted once they have arrived and established themselves for the winter. But I did take one photo:

It rained, off and on; not excessively, and thankfully there were no leaks from our roof. And, as always happens in March, the yellow shrubs and wild flowers bloomed - and I managed one relevant photo of 'yellow month' too: 

It was quite chilly, sometimes, first thing. But we reminded ourselves to be thankful...

Now that we're part of the local Anglican church, we celebrate according to the Western calendar, which is out of step with the rest of the island. So there was a service on the UK Mothering Sunday where we were given little posies:

And Western Easter, on April 4th: 

But I'm leaping ahead of myself. On the last Wednesday of March, the monthly outside book sale at the church was allowed to happen for the first time since the end of November: 

A week or so after Western Easter, Richard was on his way out when a neighbour across the street called him over, and said he should have some lemons. A tree was absolutely loaded with fruit, and if they're not picked then next year's blossom won't be so strong - and there's also the risk of hundreds of rotting lemons all over the ground. The neighbour was giving bags of lemons to everyone who would take them: 

This happened twice. I froze lots of lemon juice in ice cube trays, for those occasions later in the year when I need a tablespoon of lemon juice and don't have any fresh ones. I froze larger amounts, too, in the hope that maybe one of our sons will be able to come out at some point, and I will make lemonade to celebrate. I no longer make lemonade it as it tends to give us mouth ulcers. 

I made lemon cake, and experimented with three different kinds of dairy-free lemon curd, including two vegan ones which were quite successful, if a tad runny. I made candied lemon peel... and I dehydrated as many lemons as I could:

I froze them in small tubs, and made the happy discovery that just one slice of dehydrated lemon in a jug of water gives a very pleasant lemony flavour. 

My birthday approached; last year we couldn't see anybody at all, so I wanted to celebrate with our friends - we are always invited to birthday meals for them, including the children. But we couldn't have more than four people in our house. They came up with the brilliant idea of us going to theirs instead - so we bought takeaway chicken, potatoes and salad, and I cooked a supermarket spanokopitta, and made extra salad and a pineapple cake with dairy-free cream cheese topping. And a dairy-free lemon cheesecake. Yes, we still had lemons...

We had leftovers, too, for a couple of days afterwards.

It was around this time that I realised our patio plants were starting to look very dry, so I began watering again first thing, three times a week, on days I don't walk with Sheila.

But the Covid case numbers in Cyprus were looking very bad. Vaccination was taking a while to be rolled out, and we were seeing over 700 new cases per day reported; this is an enormous number for such a small country. The UK was doing better and better, with their extensive vaccine programme, but the hospitals in Cyprus were getting overloaded.

So as the last week of April and the first week of May were Easter holidays for the schools (Greek Easter being May 2nd) the government decreed a two-week lockdown: just one outing per day allowed, no visitors in houses, no church services, all shops shut other than those selling food, and pharmacies. The April book sale was cancelled, and while the Orthodox Churches were allowed their Holy Week liturgies and a mass for Holy Saturday, with an extended curfew until 1am that morning only, there was no congregation allowed in Sunday services for two weeks. 

Bizarrely, though - or perhaps they knew that this would happen anyway - we were allowed one exception to the 'no visitors' rule, on Greek Easter Sunday. Better still, rather than being limited to four visitors, groups of up to ten in total were allowed to gather. So our friends came over for the first time this year, for a Sunday afternoon of games, a DVD for the younger ones, and a shared cold meal which ended with rather a lot of chocolate:

I was able to book a vaccination for a week ago, and today, at last, Richard has managed to book one too  (for tomorrow).  Vaccinations are happening rapidly in Cyprus now, and over 40% of the population has had the first one.  Case numbers are going down again - between 100 and 300 the last few days, with the hospitals doing much better - so the two-week lockdown came to an end on May 10th, and the SMS permission requirement has been shelved. 

Instead, people need 'safe passes' to go to certain places - big retail shops, church services and other potentially crowded venues. We could have rapid tests, but don't fancy waiting outside in the heat, in long queues, but as we can go to most shops anyway, we're not too worried. In a fortnight's time I will be 'safe' anyway, due to having had my first vaccination three weeks earlier. 

At the end of April, we had something of a heatwave - it was up to thirty degrees, a couple of times, during the middle of the day. It stayed reasonably cool overnight, and it wasn't humid, but we did start using the ceiling fans - for a few days, until it cooled down again. We had been using our winter-thickness duvet (9 tog and 4.5 tog held together with paperclips) for months, but on May 1st I removed the thin one, giving us just the medium one. A week later I switched them, and washed the medium one so it could be packed away until the Autumn. Just a week after that, I put the thin one away too, so we just have a double duvet cover. Even though it's cooled down since the end of April, thankfully, we don't seem to need more. 

We also put away some of our winter clothes, and dug out our shorts and tee shirts. I'm gradually washing jackets and packing those away for the autumn. And whereas the temperatures have often soared into the mid-thirties again by mid-May, it's not happening this year. So far, anyway.  Last year, my Facebook memories inform me, it was 39C in the shade on May 19th. This year, it's a mere 26 degrees today, with 28-29 predicted for the next few days. Jeans would be fine, but having moved to the shorts part of the year, I'm somehow reluctant to switch back again. 

It's good that the temperatures aren't too extreme, because Richard's boat is currently out of the water having its 'dry dock' maintenance, something he plans to do every other year. He had hoped it would be lifted out a couple of months ago, but arranging it all took much longer than usual. His Kingfisher Yacht Cyprus blog gives photos and descriptions of what he's been doing, if anyone is interested.

We need to clean our air conditioners within the next couple of weeks, and I should give the curtains their annual wash before it gets too hot to think. If only it would remain like this, sunny and warm but neither too hot nor humid... 

Muffins or cupcakes?

Our two years in the United States (1992-1994) made us somewhat bilingual as far as British/American words and phrases go. On the whole I use British phrases - a lift rather than an elevator, trousers rather than pants, car boot rather than trunk, and so on, although I don't necessarily even notice when friends use the other versions, or when I read them in books. And with globalisation, and popular culture, and of course having had several good friends from the US, there are some words where find myself adopting the American usage. 

So, for instance, movies and films are pretty much interchangeable, in my mind. I use both words, for variety, if I'm writing about one. And I realised recently, when asked a question by an online friend, that I use the word 'cupcake' to describe small cakes (often iced/frosted) in cases, whereas, growing up, I would have said 'fairy cake', or possibly just 'little cake'. 

And then there's muffins. 

As a child, I knew muffins as bread-like flattish things, a bit like crumpets, which would go in the toaster or under the grill, and could be eaten with butter. However I had almost forgotten they existed until we heard that, in the United States, they are known as 'English muffins', because their 'muffins' were baked items that resemble cupcakes - or fairy cakes - in appearance, although they tend to be larger, and can be savoury. 

Nearly three decades later, I haven't seen an 'English' muffin in years, and now use the term 'muffin' to refer to the American items. I've seen them in supermarkets (in the UK), and even in some restaurants or cafes, sometimes referred to as 'American-style muffins', but sometimes without any adjective at all. 

I mentioned on Friday that we had bought some silicon muffin pans. This led to some discussion with our friends about the difference between cupcakes and muffins. Apart from the fact that muffins can be savoury and are never iced (or frosted), what is the essential difference between, say, a chocolate cupcake and a chocolate muffin?  The fact that muffins are usually bigger isn't an essential difference, since one can buy 'mini muffins', and there's no reason why one shouldn't make large cupcakes. 

I knew that muffins tended to be denser, but it's been a long time since I actually made any. So today, as our friends were coming for the every-other-Sunday games afternoon and shared  evening meal, I decided to try out my new muffin pans. I checked various books and found a couple of recipes that sounded rather good, and for which I had the ingredients; one with oats and cranberries, the other a triple chocolate muffin recipe. 

I made the cranberry one first. The recipe involved putting the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl (flour with quite a lot of baking powder, oats and brown sugar, then mixing in the cranberries), then lightly beating eggs, oil and quite a bit of milk together, and pouring them in. The instructions said to stir with a metal spoon until just mixed, not beating or over-mixing. So I did that, and divided the mixture between the twelve muffin pan holes, and put them in the oven at 200 degrees. 

As I wanted to cook the chocolate ones fairly soon afterwards, I had to take them out of the pans while they were still warm, which wasn't a great idea; I knew they were meant to be left in silicon pans until cold,  A few of them did break slightly, but seven of them came out perfectly, which is good as there were seven of us eating together in the evening:

The recipe was quite different from a basic cake recipe - flour was the main constituent, and the only fat was 6 tablespoons of oil. The sugar content was fairly low too. Mixing the wet ingredients into the dry ones is typical of cakes such as gingerbread, but mixing only until JUST combined is unlike any cake I've made - and I've baked a lot of different recipes over the years. 

The chocolate muffin recipe started with melting 175g dark chocolate with some butter (I used dairy-free spread, of course), and again the amount of butter/spread was very small, only 50g, whereas there was 275g flour plus 50g cocoa in the dry ingredients. And, again, egg and milk were added (dairy-free milk for us as we don't use cow's milk).  And chocolate chips. 

Here they are, out of the oven:

And here are the seven I put out for the end of our evening meal:

They were good, I thought, quite dense and a little chewy; not as sweet as cupcakes, and more filling, though that might just be because of the size. A basic cupcake would have equal weights of butter/spread, sugar (usually white sugar), flour (usually white flour) and egg,  with no extra fluid, whereas these muffins had more flour than anything else, mostly wholemeal, and a significant amount of milk. 

The addition of cranberries or chocolate chips could work in cupcakes, of course, as could using wholemeal flour, and brown sugar, and there are many varieties of cake, some of which don't use any kind of butter or spread.  But I think I now have a better idea of the difference - and on Googling to see if there's anything official, I found this interesting discussion.  Many of the points made are similar to the conclusions I had come to, and one of the experts states that muffins are technically a form of 'quick bread'. 

I have made muffins in the past, using cupcake-size pans, with cupcake cases (since I only had metal pans) and recalled that the muffins tended to get stuck to the cake cases far more than little cakes do. So using these silicon pans is a great improvement as they mostly came out very cleanly, and of course there were no paper cases to dispose of. 

Twelve cakes ... and a Happy New Year!

Back in the middle of October, just before Richard celebrated his 60th birthday, I made a rather rash comment. I had baked an early birthday cake when we had a meal with some friends, the weekend before the actual birthday. One of the friends asked how many birthday cakes he was going to have altogether.

'Sixty, I should think,' I said, without really thinking it through. I thought they might laugh and then I'd say, 'Well, maybe three...'.  I had already baked his 'official' cake, a Christmas style 'celebration' cake to be eaten when we had his birthday barbecue, and I was planning to make one for the actual birthday. 

Instead, everyone seemed to think it was an excellent idea. I said, quickly, that it would be sixty cakes over the course of the next year, not just in October. And then, when I told one of my sons about it, he said that of course they should be sixty different cakes. Even more of a challenge. There are about ten or so different cakes that I make fairly regularly, and I knew I had recipes for many more... and, if I run out of cakes from recipe books, the Internet is an excellent source too.

So, for the record, here is a collage of the twelve cakes made so far, in eleven weeks:

The first was a basic chocolate fudge cake, with raspberry jam filling (I am being specific here; as I near the end of the sixty, I may resort to a chocolate fudge cake with apricot jam filling and claim that as different).  Second, for the actual birthday, was a no-bake chocolate biscuit cake.  Richard was given a book of mug cake recipes for his birthday, and people had started commenting on the calorific nature of my project, so on the Sunday after his birthday I made us a chocolate-chip-banana mug cake which rose very well, and prompted us to buy a new, large mug for future mug cakes.

The fourth cake was the official rich fruit cake, which Richard ate (with help from a few friends) over the next few weeks. I made a Christmas cake too, which isn't yet finished, but since that was the same recipe, and was for Christmas, I haven't included that in the list. 

Next was another mug cake - a coconut one with chocolate topping - and then I baked a victoria sandwich (albeit in the food processor) with apricot jam filling.  I then tried yet another mug cake recipe, one using a few frozen berries; it didn't grow much, so looked very small in the mug; but was delicious. 

The next few cakes were made for the pre-Christmas and Christmas season, but I counted them in my list.  First a chocolate chip applesauce cake, which was a bit undercooked for some reason, but all the better for having a sauce part at the bottom.  Gingerbread is something I always make at this time of year; we still have a lot of that left, some of it in the freezer.  For a slightly healthier option I made a chocolate chip cookie cake with chickpeas rather than flour, and the end of that was enjoyed by someone who can't take gluten.

For Christmas Day, as an alternative to mince pies and Christmas pudding, I made a lemon drizzle cake, which was much appreciated.  And the twelfth cake, made yesterday, was a chocolate banana cake to take to a New Year's Eve meal with our friends. The recipe recommended a rich icing with 175g chocolate and 150g icing sugar (among other things) but I decided to take it un-iced, and it was still very good.

(I have included links to relevant pages on my recipes blog for four of the above cakes. The rich fruit cake is Delia's 'celebration' cake with home-made marzipan and royal icing rather than nuts on top. If anyone happens to read this and would like recipes for any of the other cakes, let me know in the comments and I will write them up - with my own instructions and comments, of course - on the recipe blog).