NOTES ON MY RECIPES WITH SOME TIPS AND TRICKS
BUTTER SOFTENING
In an ideal world, you think about baking the cake the day before you bake the cake, in order to get the butter out of the fridge early enough so it softens. I rarely do this and need to soften butter quickly. I have two methods:
Microwave: Dice your butter and put it on a dinner plate. Put the plate in the microwave and on the lowest setting you have (mine is 90 watts) microwave for 20 seconds. Repeat the 20 seconds until the butter is soft. You need to do this manually and keep an on it, you do not want the butter to melt.
No microwave: Dice your butter and put it on a dinner plate. Find a saucepan that will cover the plate with no gaps. Heat some water in the sauce pan, empty it, and put the warm pan it over the butter and leave for a couple of mins. Check for softness. Repeat as necessary.
MEASUREMENTS
I remember being really impressed with a French friend who made pancakes by eye, "au flair" as she said. I usually need to remind myself of the measurements for pancakes, but generally, as an experienced cook, I don't always worry about exact measurements: I cook using knobs and slugs, dashes and splashes. A knob of butter for me might be anywhere between 20g and 50g. However, you cannot dish up recipes with that level of inaccuracy so I test them and measure it all out. If you are an experienced cook and trust your knobs, follow your intuition. (My average knob works out to be around 30g).
TESTING
I have a tester: my husband, Tom. Tom, whilst not an experienced cook can make some dishes amazingly well: lasagne, chilli, moussaka, a roast chicken dinner, usually followed by a cracking crumble. Annoyingly for him, I only allow moussaka when aubergines are in season, but boy it is worth the wait. He is someone who needs to follow instructions, and needs them to make sense and not be vague; he is a good tester. He won't test everything however, and I have devised a labelling system to indicate the levels of TT (Tom Testing)
TBT - Tested by Tom
PTBT - Partially tested by Tom. I will clarify which elements have been TBT and which I have done. (Eg: Nettle risotto: there would be no way I could get him to process nettles, so I did that, but he tested the risotto, as he'd never made a risotto before).
TCBA - Tom Can't Be Arsed - there will be some things, usually fiddly, and he won't do it.
TDFT - Too Difficult for Tom.
WHITE WINE IN RECIPES
I don't always have an open bottle of white wine available for when a recipe calls for a glass, a splash or 50ml, but I do always have a bottle of white vermouth (eg: Noilly Prat) for cocktails, mainly Negronis. I use that as a substitute if I don't have white wine to hand. I do freeze odds and sods of left over white wine however, and that's a handy way of having a small amount to hand for cooking.