of shopping trolleys, and cake.

[baratron]

I discovered today that the new Sainsbury's in Kingston has the most advanced anti-trolley-theft device I've ever encountered. Rather than having a system where you put pound coins into the trolley to encourage you to return it, or a locking device which activates if you try to push it over a grid by the exit of the store, its trolleys feature no less than two magnetically-activated wheel locks - one on a front wheel and one on a back wheel. And the entire slope leading out of the store must have metal under the pavement tiles, because taking the trolley up there locks the wheels. This was very annoying, as my mother and I had gone shopping without the benefit of (a) a car, (b) a healthy adult male, (c) a stronger-than-statistically-average adult female. We only live just round the corner from the new store, but it was too far to walk carrying the shopping we had, so my mum decided we should borrow the trolley to take it home, and then return the trolley to the store along with our recycling, because the supermarket has newspaper and bottle banks. This, however, proved to be impossible.

Shopping was rather frustrating. I kept finding desserts I liked the look of and finding they were full of dairy produce. Not fair. I totally fell in love with a lemon cake I saw, but the little allergy box on the back declared that it Contained Milk, so I decided it would be a bad idea. In the end, I bought a load of ingredients and came home to bake my own cake, which wouldn't Contain Milk. Now, I didn't have a recipe for lemon cake, so I decided to make one up. I figured that all I needed to do was to use my basic banana cake recipe and add a load of lemon juice. However, one of the ingredients of the banana cake recipe is bicarbonate of soda. I mixed up most of the stuff and left it to get the flour, and turned round to find that my cake mix was fizzing! Oh dear! Citric acid + sodium bicarbonate = Mount Vesuvius in minature.

The cake wouldn't taste of lemon at all if it hadn't been filled with lemon curd, but it's nice.

Comments

Higher education

[hatter.livejournal.com]

Good to see your years studying chemisty weren't a waste. Sounds almost like the joke recipe for lemon angels.


the hatter

Re: Higher education

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Remind me how the recipe for lemon angels went - I remember the name but I think you were still living in Peckham the last time you mentioned it!

And I never pretended to be any good at chemistry :)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Sainsbury's typically assume that everyone is a motorist. They are much more keen to run petrol voucher schemes (personally, I think they ought to give me money for not turning up in a motorised box), and usually have lousy or nonexistent bicycle parking, or position it gratuitously far from the entrance

The reason I mention this is that the Coldham's Lane Sainos managed to position the bike racks outside the zone of trolley death - resulting in a slew of immobilised trolleys just by the racks.

lemon cake

[nitoda]

After picking myself up from the floor ...

Are you OK with margarine? If you need it to be totally milk-free you could use Tomor, the Jewish kosher margarine which is totally dairy free ASAIK. Basic cake recipe would be 120g marg, 120g caster sugar, 120g self-raising flour, 2 eggs, grated zest of (at least) one lemon and the juice if you can include it. Usual creaming method - and usual baking time and temp. Ask if that isn't available knowledge! {grin} If you mix the juice of a couple of lemons with a quantity of caster sugar and pour it over the top of the cake (still in the baking tin) when you take it out of the oven it becomes lemon drizzle cake ... very yummy!

Re: lemon cake

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Sainsbury's do a dairy free margarine which is suitable for vegans and tastes like butter! It's wonderful stuff! It's meant for spreading, but it's excellent for creaming together with sugar as it's so much softer than ordinary baking margarine.

I think my problem was that I only used 15ml (3 teaspoons) of lemon juice and no zest at all - I used lemon juice from a bottle rather than an actual lemon. Seeing that every time I see the instruction "put 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence in" I respond by using 3, I suppose I should have responded to "put 3 teaspoons of lemon juice in" by using 9. Ah well - I know now. It's still a good cake, just not at all lemony.