Mrs. Delicious

Another Sad Day, For Two Reasons

I told you La Rosita was closing.

And the sadness continues, with my failure of a treacle pudding and custard. Betsy attempted it, using the Tea and Sympathy recipe, a couple of days ago with decidedly mixed results. The cake was too sweet and the custard never thickened, she said. Plus the custard was strangely grainy. I tried the exact same recipe last night and came to the very same sad conclusion. Tea and Sympathy seems to play pretty fast and loose with their recipes, and quite possibly wants to keep you, the home cook, from being able to duplicate the deliciousness they serve in the restaurant. I understand that treacle itself is slightly-caramelized sugar and therefore sweet, but then why do they tell you to add another CUP of sugar to the cake itself? And when I looked at the custard recipe, I thought I would just put it back on the stove after whisking in the yolks, and simmer it until it thickened, like when I make ice cream custard base. It never ever reached the point that my ice cream custard reaches -- almost a boilover but not quite. And then, it was all gritty with egg even after I ran it through a strainer, with no thickness at all -- condensed milk would have been thicker. AND it has none of the lushness that the custard at the restaurant has. Feh. So now I have this giant cake with two sticks of butter and four eggs in it that is too sweet to eat, and basically some sticky sweet milk with four wasted, curdled, strained-out yolks to pour on top of it.

Here is the whole cake (in Bundt form!):


Nasty custard that I couldn't even strain all the egg out of:


Mmmm, oozy treacle:


Cut piece of treacle pudding, with curious cat in background coming to see what's up:



In the cookbook, evidently, the Tea and Sympathy ladies mention that you can just as easily use Bird's Brand Instant Custard Mix. Pauline is going to bring some over from London next week -- perhaps that is the beef-suet-enriched stuff that feels like an angel's slipper on the tongue? Will experiment and let you know.

Also, a third thing to be sad about. The beautiful gorgeous warehouse in Greenpoint right behind Siobhan and Jeff's apartment burned to the ground today over 6 hours. Evidently one could see the smoke in Bridgeport.


Photo by Carlybusta on Flickr.

All in all, I am ready to go back to bed and start over tomorrow.

posted by Mrs. Delicious @ 6:37 PM