Toffees

  • November 21, 2020

A couple of weeks ago I remembered a home-made lolly from my youth called ‘toffees’. I recalled buying them at church and school fetes, but hadn’t had one for decades.

A quick google search later and KLS had found a recipe. It was time to try and recreate this sweet from my youth!

The ingredients are simple: sugar, water, vinegar and cream of tartar. The process of cooking isn’t too difficult either: just mix it together and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes:

The above shows our first attempt. When it’s ready we poured it into cupcake cups:

And after adding a few sprinkles we were done:

Not bad for our first attempt are they? They tasted great but there was a problem: they were incredibly sticky! As in you could barely open your mouth when you bit one. To be honest, they were scary to eat!

A second issue was that they were impossible to get out of the cupcake cups, and eating one included a good mouthful of paper as well. 🙂

Kristin knew the cream of tartar was the culprit and less would result in a harder toffee. It was time for round two! This time she let the mix boil slightly longer until it turned golden, and then when we poured it we used silicon cups as well:

These were much more successful! Not as sticky with a better taste. The one in the top left was sublime since KLS topped it with salt! As a bonus they came out of the silicon mold perfectly:

Alas there was still one issue: they were too big! This made them difficult to eat since they were too hard to bite through and a bit too large in the mouth. It was time for further refinement…

A week later we had secured more sugar and a new set of smaller molds, and we tried again. Golden brown boil, smaller silicon molds, salt on top:

Finally, we had crafter perfection! These are astonishingly good and 100% the taste of my youth.

A great success! Even though they’re basically just sugar, they taste like salted caramels. Next time you visit, we’ll make you some 🙂

Selling Cards Again

  • November 14, 2020

Sort of a sequel post this time. After making unexpected money selling the Pokémon cards a few weeks ago, I decided to do the same with some of my Magic The Gathering cards. Specifically I thought it was time to sell any doubles I never used, as well as anything that had ‘value’ since all they were doing was sitting in a box.

If I could get a few hundred out of selling some extra magic cards, why not do it?

So I spent several hours sorting through my collection and extracting the cards that I doubted I would ever play. The vast majority of there had never seen play, so parting with them was easy. (I did a pass of the few decks I don’t intend ever breaking down first, to make sure the above weren’t useful in the decks.)

I priced the cards on the website I was selling as I went along, and didn’t bother selling anything that I would get less than $0.50 for. As I continued I became astonished by how much I could sell certain cards for, like the land in the above picture which I’ve owned for over a decade and never once put in a deck.

I ended up packing up about 140 cards and sending them off to one of the internets foremost MTG sites to sell them. The exact amount I would be paid would depend on card condition, but 99% of the cards were unplayed so I wasn’t worried about them ripping me off.

This cheque arrived yesterday:

An average payment of over $7 per card! Not bad for items that were literally in a box unused, especially when I was initially optimistic about getting about $250! This represents many years of my average magic spending, so given I still have the bulk of my cards (admittedly not valuable ones) you can almost say the collection has paid for itself 🙂

  • Posted in Collecting
  • Robert

Postcard Contest: The Results!

  • November 11, 2020

The postcard contest is over! All cards have been mail, received and judged. It’s time for the final score.

To revise, at halftime the score was even-stevens, and the contest had been a nail-biter with close calls from the inscrutable judges.

I had mentioned at that point the existence of a mysterious fourth rule which hadn’t come into play and now it’s time to reveal what that was:

4) Each competitor has 2 points in total they can wager on cards. If they win that card, the points are added to their total score.

As of halftime neither of us had wagered any of our points which is why I didn’t mention it. But the points entered the contest in the last four cards: read on to see what effect they had!

Category 5: Horror

I chose this category, and when it came time to select an imagine regretted it since it proved to be a difficult one. I actually ended up making two cards and chose mine – on the left – at the last moment.

I chose well it seems, since the judges awarded me the win 3-2. The choice seemed difficult since some found the skeleton child unpleasant… but wasn’t that the point?

You’ll also note that here Bernard plays for the judges with his card by putting himself in the photo! As if the judges would fall for such an obvious gimmick…

Category 6: Lizard

This category was Bernard’s choice, possibly because he had his picture (the top one) in mind. I was so confident of my lovely chameleon I wagered one of my points on it.

Bernard won 3-2! My point was lost like tears in rain, and once again the overall score was tied! The judges that selected a Bernard’s card gave no comments on their choice, so I don’t know why his was chosen.

At this point KLS made an observation: Did the judges understand they were voting for postcards and not just photos? It was immaterial since judges decision was final, but I made that (slightly) clearer to them in the final two categories.

Category 7: Rain

This was Lakshmi’s category! Bernard’s card used a photo he took himself from inside a train in New Zealand, and mine was one of several I printed showing the Tokyo neon jungle on a rainy night.

Bernard won 5-0!!! This was the only blowout in the contest, and since not one judge gave any real comment I can’t say for sure why his was chosen unanimously.

I’ll attribute it to none of them having visited Tokyo on a rainy night 🙂

So the overall contest score is 4-3 Bernard’s way with one card left. If you’re keeping track you’ll know I have one point left to wager, and he has two. If I win the last category I’ll be the overall winner with 5-4; if he wins it it’ll be his rout at 7-3. It all came down to the very last card…

Category 8: Sculpture

The final category was chosen by Kristin, and it was a good one. Bernard’s card was the top (showing civic fountain in Newcastle) and mine the bottom showing a (real) photo of a moai against the stars.

Had I been a judge I would have said this was the most difficult pair to judge since they’re both good, and based on the comments this was indeed the case since a few judges took longest on this final card.

And in the end… my card won 3-2. As one judge said: Gotta be the moai.

So with my final point wagered the overall contest score was 5-4 with me as the winner. I’ll accept this triumphant victory with the humility I am known for!

Thanks to the judges. Thanks to Bernard for strong competition and thanks to Lakshmi and Kristin for the guest categories. This was a lot of fun to do and I already have some ideas for the next time we do it (such as have each judge pick a category) which I’m certain will happen before too long 🙂