Recipe #1 – Snoopy Sno-Cones

Ingredients:
Snoopy Sno-Cone flavoured syrup
Ice

You’ll need a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine for this recipe. Dig out your old SSCM from storage or, if you led an impoverished childhood or live in some backwoods place like Europe, buy one off eBay.

Make sure you clean all the parts with warm, soapy water, because whether or not you have a second hand SSCM, you don’t want manky old 1980s dust in your sno-cone, now do you? No you do not. I’ll see you back here in a few.

Instructions:

Remove the rooftop (aka Snoopy) from the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. Why is Snoopy wearing a red hat that looks vaguely like the product? I don’t know. What does a Charles Schultz character have to do with an ice treat anyway? We could stand around debating the philosophical nature of capitalism and the exploitation of childhood nostalgia all day long, but the point is, your ice is melting, so try and keep up.

Put your ice cubes down the chimney (I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry – he never sleeps there) and drive that Snoopy roof home. This is what you’ll use to keep the ice in place while you hold the dog house with your feet in order to get a purchase on that flimsy plastic crank. Now get cranking! Do you remember that part in Edward Scissorhands where he is making an ice sculpture on the lawn of Winona Ryder’s parents’ house for their Christmas party and his scissor hands are flying around the block of ice at such a rate that the ice chips are spinning off it in big clouds like snow and Winona is dancing around in the blizzard of ice chips in slow motion like a ballerina princess? Yeah – SO RETARDED. Am I right?


Anyway, where were we. Oh yes – cranking the ice. So keep cranking out that ice until Snoopy’s butt hits the roof of his house and the crank turns effortlessly in your hand. If you’re lucky enough to have managed not to lose the plastic shovel, try your best to scoop that shit out into a cup, otherwise just use a spoon. It’s less authentic but we’re not five anymore (oh, unless you are five, in which case: hey little guy! Does your mummy know you’re online? Well you’d better ask her to help you ‘cause I sure as shit can’t afford the legal fees if you go grinding your knuckles off or choke on an ice cube or something) and, anyway, the end result is the same.

So now that you’ve got your tiny, hard won cup of ice chips, it’s time to squeeze out the syrup from your snowman, who obviously buys his hats from the same crap store as Snoopy – maybe they were two for a dollar. Oh hey look, it’s Woodstock! Painted on like some cheap afterthought! Just for a change, hey Woody? Well, it was always about the dog, so don’t look too surprised. At least they painted you twice, though I see by your exclusive lack of sno-cone that you still haven’t managed to assert yourself. This is why you’ll never amount to anything more than a sidekick, even if you went on American Cartoon Character Idol and met Ryan Seacrest in person. Your journey ends here my yellow-feathered friend, so why don’t you just dry your tears and sing us out, yeah?

You know that shovel doubles as a spoon, don’t you? Oh man, what a saddo you were. Well, enjoy. Don’t eat the yellow sno.

(Makes: 1 big sno-cone or 5 Woodstock-sized cones)

Another bun in the oven

Last week Erqsome posted a recipe for cinnamon rolls, and though I often drool over her various homely successes (be they of the baking, cooking or knitting variety), this is the one and only time I felt I could not pass up the opportunity to try one out for myself. It was either that or beg her to Fed Ex me a batch, which seemed a bit drastic.

Not nearly as drastic was the impetus to spend almost £80 on baking tools and ingredients heretofore unfamiliar with our kitchen, but I reasoned that if they turned out, I could be persuaded to make stuff from scratch more often.

By late Sunday evening, I was in a bind. I did not feel like embarking on a solo baking adventure that (as Bruce predicted earlier) would likely end in tears – bitter tears of disappointment at having allowed myself to think for one solitary moment that I wouldn’t cock it up.

Because following a recipe from beginning to end, from mixing bowl to oven – especially one that involves kneading and proofing – goes against my very nature. It’s why the bakery section in grocery stores was invented: to save people like myself from feeling like failures every time we fancy a bit of lard and allspice.

But actually, once I got the scary bit over and done with (i.e. the dough), the rest was relatively simple. And by 23.00 hrs, I opened my oven and was greeted by the luscious, heady smell of cinnamon rolls:







Elegant they are not, but tasty? Oh yes.

I won’t tell you how I blundered my way through the recipe, as Erqsome has written some perfectly good directives. But I do encourage anyone who is a bit oven-shy to try and make something they’ve never made before, as I’m convinced I haven’t been this proud of myself since I graduated university six years ago.

And Bruce is officially too full up to eat his words.