Best recipe instruction ever…

This is a quick, promissory post, because I have been out basically all weekend with singing and visiting people, except for last night, when I was at home and might theoretically have been productive if I hadn’t had a very needy velcro cat attached to me at all times telling me that the house was on fire (she doesn’t like the pyrolytic oven cleaning cycle) and then wailing that her daddy had abandoned her (he had gone out for the evening and did, in fact, come back, just like he always does when he goes out, but Mystery still feels that operatic arias are called for in these circumstances).

So yeah, no blogging, and not much cooking either.

But I *did* accidentally discover recipe apps on my iPhone, and more specifically, Nigella Lawson’s cookbook app, which fills me with delight.  And sugar.  And she has this one, utterly beautiful, recipe, which I simply had to make this afternoon, in between two lots of choir and visiting a friend and trying to get dinner underway so that we would eat before midnight.  It’s a recipe for macaroons, and it starts with the usual sort of instructions for mixing up sugar, almond meal, eggwhites and, in this case, cardamom, into a thick paste.  And then comes the beautiful part.

You wash your hands in rosewater, and use your damp, rose-scented hands to shape the macaroons into balls.

How gorgeous is that?  Not only do you imbue your biscuits with a gentle waft of roses, but your hands are perfumed with rose (and cardamom) for the rest of the afternoon.  Yes, even after washing them.  Though not after chopping garlic with them, alas.

I truly believe that all baking recipes should have a step like that in them.  It  embodies all the sensual beauty of cooking.  And for me, it chimes with the way baking is somehow cleansing and relaxing and calming, grounding and peaceful and energising.

Of course you should wash your hands with rosewater in such a ritual.  It’s a perfect instruction – it fits perfectly.  I can’t believe I’ve never done it before…

(the macaroons were pretty good, too)

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This time last year…