Muscovado sugar

I have multiple sugars in my cupboard. Demerara. Soft brown sugar. Castor sugar. Splenda diabetic sugar replacement (yuk). Granulated sugar, icing sugar, soft dark sugar, and the Gladiator of all sugars, muscovado. Light and dark, large packs of each. Muscovado packs a mean punch. I use it to make chocolate puddings, or it makes a fabulous crust on, well, pretty much anything - I have tried it round the outside of bread dough, I have coated stewed fruit in it, I used it to inject some personality into a generic chocolate mousse (no. It didn't work one bit. But it was fun trying). Today I used it to make a chocolate and banana loaf. The addition of muscovado has turned the sweetness into something treacly and wicked, and by wicked I do not mean calories. It is a Two-Fingers-Up-At-You sugar, and after my encounter at my local gym, this was the baking attitude I was after. I am a regular gym goer, even a bit obsessive - I go five times a week, of which I will swim once, take a boxing class once, do an abs class once, do an hour of cardio...you see what I mean. When it comes to gyms, I have been going for so long and so often, there isn't much equipment I haven't given a try. TRX. WTF? I know, but they work your glutes like no bosu ball ever will. Any idea what I'm talking about? No? Join a gym and you'll find out. It is a whole new world, and frankly, even the most inviting suburban affairs can be horribly intimidating. What is an overweight, blobby person meant to make of kettlebells, powerplates or electronic skipping ropes? But gym jargon is not the most intimidating factor. It's the people. There is this slightly inevitable culture in gyms, that you only go if you already look fabulous. This makes no logical sense of course but since when were gyms about logic?  I am in training at the moment for a charity run, something I need to take care over with my permanently damaged knee and newly mobile rebuilt foot, but I regard these as challenges to manage rather than obstacles to live with, something which elicits a weary sigh from my orthopaedic surgeon whenever I see him. But I am not stupid, and I don't run, I just jog, and I phase it, and today I decide to mix it up with an abs class that I spot is just about to start when I pitch up, fresh from a 15 minute stop/starter round the park. I walk in, join the group, and get going. It's a fast class, run by an unfeasibly young looking guy whose abs appear to be made of steel. Mine are too, it's just that they are protected by several layers of squishy cotton wool. My stamina at this class is good, I just sure as hell don't look the part. This becomes painfully obvious when the instructor asks us to pair off for the last set. There are 13 of us so we look at each other slightly warily. Immediately I clock that I appear to be the only woman there with a behind you can see, or indeed, boobs that move when I do. And everyone else there clocks it at the same time. The women on my left and right abruptly turn to their neighbour, and lo, Miss Fatty is left to do her set with the instructor. I get an excellent 1 to 1 set at which I work hard so it's a win win. But it makes me angry. It shouldn't, but find me someone who has been through the hell of teenage PE rejection, whose humiliating memories are not stirred up by this story. It doesn't make me want to tear up my membership or write angry letters to anyone. I am not rude to the women next to me who have chosen a stick insect clone to be their workout partner. I am just depressed that years later, the same snap judgements are alive and well at the one place where you should be able to build your confidence, not run a risk of having it flattened. I jog back home after the class, making a mental note to bring my Friends With Boobs to the next abs class I go to. And when I get home and I'm showered and ready to bake, well, you can see why I reached for the muscovado. Other people write complaint letters. I channel it into a damn fine banana bread.

Fondants and trauma

Sorry for the recent silence. I've been busy, but that isn't really why I haven't been blogging. The main reason is because a dear friend of mine has been diagnosed with not one but two horrific illnesses, both degenerative and both terminal. Honeslty, I thought that after watching my sister's body being invaded by a relentless cancer, and experiencing the desperate impotence of watching her fade away before my eyes, powerless to do anything to stop it despite my many hours, long into the night, spent feverishly looking up medical trials and alternative remedies, I didn't think I could be shocked by serious physical illness again. I didn't think I could even experience the trauma again, that we all go through when someone we care about is diagnosed. I thought I was numb to it. Turns out, surprise surprise, I'm not. And not in that maudlin, memory-reviving way, though goodness knows there is quite a bit of that in my everyday life. It is only very recently, well into the second year since I lost my sister, that I began to understand properly, that I wasn't going to get past the grief and the loss, that instead I was going to need to reconcile myself to it as a burden I would carry with me for the rest of my life. I would in time learn to find a place for it. I would go through beautiful periods of memory, I would collect pictures of my past that would remind me of my sister, I would revive these with others in my family. But the grief wasn't ever going to go away. It was a part of me. That is a tough realisation. But that is not what sparked the introspection brought on by my friend's terrible challenges. Even with my altered perspective, turns out my main emotional responses haven't been affected, and I was shocked by my friend's diagnosis - shocked, concerned, upset, and deeply committed to working out sensible ways to be helpful. If there is one positive thing I did learn from my sister's illness, it was that really - that there are ways to be helpful that will actually add value, even in the grimmest of times in someone's life, and there are attempts at help that can be, well, unhelpful at best, or at worst pretty insensitive. So I ponder and decide that since there is nothing I can do about my friend's condition, I will help by reminding her of friendship, and offering her a place to come where she can talk about other things than what is happening to her body. I dug up my garden and built an entirely new one shortly after I lost my sister, and it has become a beautiful place of refuge. I invited my friend to come and sit in it, and she accepted with alacrity, even gratefully. I wandered into the kitchen and had a think about how baking could be a  part of this refuge. I needed to make something very special, and comforting at the same time. I've been watching the Masterchef semis with some envy as contestant after contestant has turned out the perfect fondant. I have never made one before. Didn't rate my baking skills highly enough. But this felt like an occasion worth pushing the boat out for. So. I pulled out the ingredients and proceeded with a familiar sense of release that I always get when I pick up a spatula and a mixing bowl, to prepare the ingredients for a chocolate peanut butter fondant. Tricky this. The consistency of the filling has to be just right if is going to be gooey, and the timing of the bake has to be spot on if the outside is to be a bit crusty but not too much, and the inside is to retain its softness. And, I almost, not quite but nearly, pull it off. These fondants look beautiful. They glisten darkly with chocolate. I cut down the middle of one, and, well, it's not gooey. Nope. I haven't delivered. But it's nearly there. The middle, the peanut butter bit, salty and caramelly, is very, very soft, while it's shell is a degree less so. I serve up creme fraiche and vanilla ice cream as options on the side, and bring one out to her. She bites into it, sat on my bench, staring at pink and purple and blue of my lush garden. She smiles. This is amazing, she says. I smile back. And thank the stars, not for the first time, for my baking passion. It beats a box of chocolates or a bag of grapes any day.