E-number Sunday

So what do you do as nearly-9-year-old in Gorinchem on a bitterly cold, boring Sunday? If your parents had a well-filled wallet and were that way inclined, you could go to a museum, an amusement park or the cinema; if any of your friends were available, you could arrange a play-date (using your mother's i-Phone); you could - as a last resort - spend all day glued to the TV or umbilically connected to the internet.

Given to me (the mother) on my 7th birthday

Or you could do some baking, perhaps inspired by your mother's old cookbook "Look! I Can Cook!", published in 1972. There are recipes from all around the world, so exciting.

Has a real Italian ever made spaghetti with meatballs?

Or, you could make these: Cake Pops, purchased at the Lidl in a choice of two flavours. Mum chose orange. Mum really had no idea what she was letting herself in for. Mum had forgotten her reading glasses when she went shopping and there was no way in hell she could read the fine print on the package. As it turned out, these are chocolate-coated cake lollipops which are also rolled in sugar sprinkles. 

Mum was rather surprised when she found her glasses and read the instructions: firstly one has to bake a cake, which is then reduced to crumbs, mixed to a thick paste with melted butter and rolled into balls, thus (see left). After cooling, the packages of white and regular chocolate have to be melted and decanted into separate bowls. One then takes one of the provided lolly sticks, spears a cake ball, coats it in chocolate, rolls it in sprinkles and then.... "stick the lolly stick in an upturned empty egg carton so that it can dry", suggests the tiny print on the package. This DOES NOT WORK. The lollies are top-heavy. The only thing that does work is holding the lolly until it is dry, by which time the chocolate for the next one (you can make 16) has solidified.


But here are the results: a solid 10+ on the yumminess scale from the head chef. Her only issue was that there were only enough sprinkles for half the lollies, so we had to resort to our own Dutch breakfast sprinkles. Mum and Dad promised to taste them later on in the evening, they looked so scrumptious, but they really couldn't manage to eat anything just now ("another tapenade on toast, darling?", "Hmmm, top up the wine").

So there you have it: one happy, if slightly hyperactive nearly-9-year-old and two plates full of E-numbers.