Squander Two

There's an estate agent round my way by the name of Peter Rogers. He puts signs up outside people's houses which say

Peter Rogers
Estate Agents

This pleases me.

Voters of Derby, take note. This is what your elected representative thinks of your rights:

Of course, the police can get a court order but what a waste of public money in order to do that.

Yes, Tory MP Heather Wheeler thinks that for the police to obey the law — specifically, law designed to protect us from tyranny — is a waste of public money. If she's consistent in her principles (assuming she has any), then she must think the same about having to get a warrant to search your house. That, or she actually has no idea what she's talking about and is disastrously unqualified for her job. Tough call.

As I may have mentioned before, the problem with the Tories is that they're authoritarian bastards.

The headline:

Ex-Irish PM Bertie Ahern to stand down at next election

Yes, the BBC appear to be suggesting that Bertie Ahern is still Prime Minister and used to be Irish.

It seems only fair, since Daisy's birth was quite excitingly blogged live from here, that her new sister get a mention.

Poppy Antonia Kynaston Reeves was born on the 25th of November. She is very well, thank you, and looks exactly like Daisy, which is no bad thing. She is also a right wee besom. Already.

Long-time readers of this blog may remember from four years back that Vic suffered major health complications exacerbated by a certain amount of NHS awfulness after Daisy's birth, and might even by interested to know that all is well on that front this time around. We can wholeheartedly recommend the treatment you get in an NHS hospital shortly after you've made an official complaint against them. Works wonders.

I'm knackered.

Insert useless apology about not blogging for ages here.

OK. Anyway.

First, Dettol. Their Surface Cleanser is being advertised on heavy rotation at the moment, and, apparently, it "kills 99.9% of bacteria, including the flu virus." It's reassuring to see that a company that specialises in disinfectant products is unaware that 100% of bacteria wouldn't include the flu virus, in much the same way that 100% of pigeons doesn't include the Bengal tiger. The correct voiceover should be "Kills 99.9% of bacteria, not including the flu virus, obviously."

And so on to Bailey's. I love Bailey's. It is a quite wonderful drink. But my God, this advert is stupid. These people are having a party and their fridge breaks down or they're too thick to figure out how to use it or something, so they have no ice. So they go outside and break off icicles and use the icicles in their drinks. OK, nice image, very good. But then there's the voiceover: "The time we made our own ice." Well, no. This is in fact the exact opposite of what you've done here. When the fridge works, that's you making your own ice, using the fridge. Unless you've been spending days carefully turning the central heating on and off to jiggle the temperature of your house's roof above and below and above and below freezing in order to get the snow on the roof to repeatedly melt and refreeze at the optimum rate for icicle-creation, no, this is not the time you made your own ice. This ice you're using wasn't made by anyone; it just happened. The correct voiceover would be "The time we didn't make our own ice."

Glad I got that off my chest.

So I was watching an episode of Castle and it starts with a PG-rated yet highly vigorous sex scene, and it's one of those scenes in which they convey the rumbunctious nature of sex via the medium of breakages, so cups are getting kicked off bedside tables and everything's rattling, etcetera etcetera, and right at the end, climactically, a great thump on the floor causes a couple of pictures to fall off the wall and I immediately, unhesitatingly, think "Well, what bloody idiot put them up? Shoddy job."

And it strikes me that this is how you know for sure middle-age is nearly here.

I did say I'd keep tinkering, and I have. Here is the new improved bread-machine brioche recipe. I'm very pleased with myself: this stuff is really good.

1 large egg or 2 medium eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
cold milk
1/4 tsp salt
30g diced cold butter
15g brown sugar
35g-40g castor sugar
80g strong white bread flour, sieved
180g plain flour, sieved
for 1 large egg, use 2 3/4 tsp fast-acting yeast
for 2 medium eggs, use 1 tbsp fast-acting yeast

Beat the egg, add the vanilla, then add cold milk to bring the total amount of wet ingredients up to 150ml.

My experiments have shown huge (bad) differences with softened butter, and so I recommend not softening it, but dice it quite small.

I'm using setting 1 on a Morphy Richards machine, which is the setting for a basic small white loaf. To help you tally that with your machine, that is:
Slow knead: 6min
Fast knead: 27min
Rise: 23min
Shape: 20sec
Rise: 64min
Bake: 45min

I'm getting fat here.

Fans of brand names and the theory of nominative determinism will be amused to hear that Reckitt are taking over Durex.

Anyone who's ever tried looking up bread-machine recipes ont' Web knows that there are thousands of them out there. Except not, for some reason, for brioche. I've done plenty of searching and found only three or four, and, quite frankly, have found none of them to be up to much. So I've been experimenting for the last few days and have wasted quite literally a tenner's worth of ingredients to bring you this, a brioche recipe for bread machines that is not too bad at all. I certainly intend to eat vast amounts of it.

1 large egg
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
cold milk
1/2 tsp salt
30g diced cold butter
15g brown sugar
35g castor sugar
40g strong white bread flour, sieved
210g plain flour, sieved
2 1/4 tsp fast-acting yeast

Beat the egg, add the vanilla, then add cold milk to bring the total amount of wet ingredients up to 150ml.

My experiments have shown huge (bad) differences with softened butter, and so I recommend not softening it, but dice it quite small.

The amount of flour may be slightly out. Keep an eye on it during the kneading and add an extra sprinkling if you think it's necessary. The consistency of the dough should be pretty soft and a bit sticky and should start out rather wet but should still eventually coalesce into one neat ball.

I'm using setting 1 on a Morphy Richards machine, which is the setting for a basic small white loaf. To help you tally that with your machine, that is:
Slow knead: 6min
Fast knead: 27min
Rise: 23min
Shape: 20sec
Rise: 64min
Bake: 45min

The crust is, I think, not quite right, but the overall results are perfectly good enough for dipping into hot chocolate.

I'm going to go on tweaking this and will provide updates if I manage to make any more improvements. Do feel free to email me with any cunning suggestions you may have.

Enjoy.


Update:

I have improved on this now. Here's the better version.