Saturday, February 27, 2010

Poisoned but fairly

Probably the time to abandon a recipe is when you discover the main ingredient is toxic.

But you know me: never one to give up.

We have a Tea Dance at Linden this evening. It's part of Fairtrade Fortnight, the focus of which is on tea this year. We have a couple of accomplished dancers in the church so they agreed to lead a teaching session. Sadly I fear my enthusiasm for sexy, up close dancing isn't shared by most of the church so I am expecting a very small turn-out - but I intend to enjoy myself whatever.

But as I'm organising it I decided to make, as refreshments, some of the amaretti biscuits from the recipe given in the Fairtrade Foundation leaflet. And it was while searching in the shops for the required apricot kernels that I found out that they are potentially toxic. The recommendation on the packet - and in the leaflet that Julian Graves kindly supplied - is not to eat more than 2 kernels in any 24 hours. (And they definitely should not be eaten by pregnant women.)

Now I worked out that each biscuit would have at least 10-15 kernels in it meaning I could potentially have poisoned a small section of the church.

I decided to swap the apricot kernels for roasted hazelnuts. They had to be ground up anyway so I couldn't imagine it could make much difference. Whether it was that or just a crummy recipe but the 'malleable paste' I was supposed to end up with was more of a sticky goo.

So I'm not making those again. Even though they taste okayish.


2 comments:

CherryPie said...

Apple pips aren't good for you either.

Anonymous said...

I think its probably and exaggeration on the apricot kernels thingey but why would anyone want to eat them anyway...