PLF

Practising icing with a cast plaster 'sponge' and lashings of margarine.

Absolutely livid. Apart from the fact I'm nearly 23, I had yet another major disaster with my pâte levée feuiletée today.

The regular reader of the blog will know that every time so far we have made croissants, something has gone wrong: there wasn't enough time in the proving chamber, not enough time in the oven, over-bodied détrempe &c.

Today was our first assault on the pain au chocolat and I was dead keen to get it spot on. I'm bored of cock-ups.

And things were looking pretty rosy: the pastry rolled out well, they rose beautifully in the proving chamber without leaking a drop of butter, they took well to the final glaze and I was in good time. I popped them into the oven at 180 and retreated to ice some mini-religieuses.

Well, I went to check on how they were developing 15mins later, knowing that they had quite a bit longer to cook, only to find them completely burnt and the oven at 215. And no one was taking responsibility (a wise idea, given my rage).

The person who had popped her bits in next to mine claimed not to have done it (after all, she was cooking pains au choc, too) which leaves me with a slight suspicion there might have been sabotage at play.

Anglo-French Tensions have been running a spot high since the rugby, but taking it out on a croissant is just not cricket.