Sam Hooke

Meeting 9 - Culinary Crime

Proceedings began with a trip to All About Tea, whereupon we sampled the many delightful smells in search of a new flavour to consume. A packet of Lavender and Camomile Tea was purchased, the ingredients being, well, lavender and camomile. It smelt like “Grandma’s garden”, apparently. I guess that makes sense if your grandma had lavender flowers and whatnot. To replace our supply of Portsmouth Tea, which had run out, some Hampshire Tea was purchased instead to change things up a bit. Oh, and also a small packet of Lemongrass Fine Cut Tea. It smelt rather nice, you see.

First to be tried out was the Lavender and Camomile Tea. In a tea club first, we actually have photos. Truly this is a milestone to remember.

Photo of mug of Lavendar and Camomile Tea
The first ever tea club photo... and it's of tea!

It tasted quite light, and was very relaxing.

In a surprising turn of events, we next had some Wendy Tea. This has been a favourite within our group for quite some time, though we have failed to mention it much.

Photo of mug of Wendy Tea
Also tea!

Wendy Tea has a few more ingredients, though shares the same base flavour of lavender. The overall flavour is more interesting, but is also a very light and relaxing tea.

We then had some cake. The cake had been made yesterday, and the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

  • 4x Mars Bars
  • 1x 120g (or thereabouts) Galaxy Chocolate bar
  • ~300ml thick cream
  • 1 medium egg
  • ???g flour
  • ???g caster sugar
  • ???spoons of baking powder

Instructions:

  1. Take the four Mars Bars and chop them up into little pieces. Place them in a bowl. Take a mug, and fill it 1/4 with water. Place the bowl and mug in the microwave, and heat for 5 minutes.

  2. Ignore the microwave timer, and open it after about 2 minutes because something smells interesting. Note that some of the chocolate is bubbling away, while other parts appear completely unaffected. Consider stirring the chocolate about, but because of time constraints don’t bother. Close the microwave door and let it have the remaining 3 minutes.

  3. Once the full 5 minutes is up, open the microwave door. Look at the culinary crime you have regretfully hoisted up from the pits of sheol. Science has gone too far - mortal man was never meant to mess with this type of alchemy!

Photo of overflowing bowl of molten brown stuff
Not tea... not ever
  1. Leave the bowl for 3 hours.

  2. Find that the contents of the bowl have gone completely solid - as hard as rock!

  3. Place the bowl back in the microwave for 1 minute, in a vain attempt to send it back to the cursed dimension from whence it came.

  4. Pour the questionable contents of the bowl into a pot. Place it on a low heat, and gradually add the cream. Stir continually.

  5. In a separate bowl pour out ??? grams of flour. Add ??? grams of caster sugar, then ??? spoons of baking powder. (Where amounts are ???, simply judged by eyesight. What could possibly go wrong?). Also add the egg, then mix it all together until it looks like what it should look like.

  6. Add the chocolate stuff into the other stuff, and mix that rather well.

  7. In a pre-prepared cake tin of appropriate size, pour in the stuff and place in the bottom of the oven. You should have preheated the oven to about 160c. Leave to bake for 20 to 30 minutes.

  8. Pray that this abomination will somehow turn into delicious cake.

  9. Ask and you shall receive:

Photo of plain brown cake with one slice cut out
From humble beginnings arises a terribly mediocre cake

So we ate cake and drank tea.

These are archived posts from Tea & Stuff, an unofficial society of Portsmouth University which ran from November 2012 to March 2013.

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