Making my Millions

With no Great British Bake Off to enthral this week, I was able to focus a bit more on Strictly Come Dancing which I love so much! I’ve never been into X-Factor but for some reason, I have watched every season of Strictly except one (when Jill Halfpenny won – and I can’t for the life of me work out why I missed it?) Any rate – gives me another obsession and I do get very into it. I watch It Takes Two every night although it’s tough with a stroppy young girl at the moment. My favourite pro of all time was Matthew Cutler and I would love to dance the Argentine Tango with him - oh bliss! I do rather like Pasha and have proper stalker tendencies affection for Kimberley so want them to do well. I won’t bore you with too much info as I know it’s not everyone’s cuppa and this is a baking blog after all!

Soooo – the baking! I’m not sure if it was a success or not really.. The rhubarb and ginger upside down cake was perfectly edible and was cooked correctly and everyone liked it but it didn’t wow me!

As you can see from the picture, it was never an overly inspiring looking cake but it did mirror the one in the book – except mine wasn’t as red but then my rhubarb wasn’t as fresh (ok, I admit it – I used frozen!). Considering the ingredients – I had to use preserved stem ginger from southern China, well it didn’t have to be from China but the only jar in the biggest Asda in the country was from there – I expected big things. I didn’t sieve my flour though which is a rookie mistake as it adds air to make the cake fluffier – I always thought it was just an extra step you could just skip but apparently, it can make quite a difference!

So – this weekend I am going to go for Millionaire’s shortbread! I was going for just some plain chocolate chip cookies and then on the same page was a marbled version of these gorgeous treats. I did get a slight Great British Bake Off fix watching the contestants from last years’ talk about their experience. The winner (I think) said  you should always go one step further than you’re comfortable with your baking and you end up surprising yourself. So no bog standard cookies for this household – I will probably regret it when my condensed milk solidifies into a big gooey mess but I am a daughter down this weekend, so will hopefully be able to look after it all!?

So I thought I’d look into how easy it is to become a millionaire – there’s a few pages on wiki-how which basically put it down to good management, sensible thinking and occasional calculated risks. Seeing as there are only 441,000 millionaires currently residing in the UK, I feel now is my time.  It’s interesting actually because whilst it goes into a lot of detail as to how you can do it, it’s the details about the kind of mind-set you need to make the money which was most fascinating. It falls into four categories; believe in the goal of becoming a millionaire is top of the heap - You must believe that you both deserve to be and will become a millionaire! Pick a motivation behind your desire to be a millionaire and stick with it – you need a passion or you won’t keep at it. You must get rid of the phrase ‘if only’ fromn your vocabulary (as I guess this will detract from the all important mission of making money!) and finally, and perhaps most importantly, don't confuse the financial freedom of being a millionaire with being a glamor-driven spendaholic – see now where’s the fun in that.. I know you need to be frugal and reinvest but surely the point to having money is to spend it? Ah well, I will continue to rely on our lottery syndicate – it may not be high odds but at least I won’t feel guilty about spunking it up the wall!

On that note, I leave you with the words of one, infamous, food-loving Italian millionaire:

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”

Luciano Pavarotti