Intermission

This week has been a poor week for blogging.

1. My mother-in-law has been visiting so I do not want to be antisocial and sit blogging all night and ignoring her (its fine when its just hubster and I.  Usually we happily ignore one another on our respective laptops - him breaking down film or planning football (American not UK) plays (the word "spread" has 2 very different meanings in our house) or that week's practice; me prattling away on the blog or baking).
2. Work has been super busy, so I've been particularly distracted and mega-S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D.
3. I was ever-so-slightly suffering on Saturday from a boozy late night with my neighbour (all for a good cause mind!  She offered (read *bribed*) me with wine to help make posters for the local school fete).
4. Because of #1 I was determined to demonstrate my baking skills...
• I went to make Pizza again on Saturday night and despite it being a breeze the last time, it was a complete disaster this time.  First batch (yes, that's first) I got all the ingredients out, followed the recipe and then couldn't understand why the dough wasn't coming together.  I then looked at the bag of flour.  It was rice flour.  I was trying to make Pizza dough with rice flour.  What was more stupid is that when I had been doing the yeast part of the recipe (at the VERY BEGINNING) I had been reading the back of the bag and finding it bizarre that the "bread" flour had recipes using rice flour.  Why I hadn't looked then when it was blindingly obvious....I don't know.  
• The second batch the yeast wouldn't activate so the dough wouldn't rise.  On the plus side I said I wanted thin crust and I certainly got that.  We cooked both up and they tasted ok, just ok though, and certainly nowhere near as good as last time.
• I then went to make a cake for US Mothers Day.  It was all going very well until I put the cakes in the oven.  When the timer buzzed I went to take the cakes out and I clearly have a problem with my oven.  The top of each was half dark half still raw.  Grrrrreat!!  So I had to put them back in and each cake cracked (and when we cut into them it was clear they could have both gone a bit longer).
• When I went to make the icing that all ballsed up too (it looked all curdled because it had lemon juice in and wouldn't thicken).  At that point I considered my baking confidence well and truly knocked.

Heard this before? Pride? Falls?  Its total foobah.   Basically nothing went right and so here I am ranting about it.

Oh, and I've eaten my bodyweight in unhealthy food so I'm now squeezing myself into my clothes.  Joy.

Think happy thoughts...think happy thoughts....think happy thoughts.....think....