Unitaskers - Accept No Substitutes

Yes, it looks like it has been buried in the dark corner of an Ohio warehouse for forty years.

A photo posted by Ian Pointer (@carsondial) on

But, come on, you can’t argue with the results. And they do get better as the days go on!

Stroopwafels!

A photo posted by Ian Pointer (@carsondial) on

As you can imagine from the photo, they were pretty amazing. I got the recipe from Sprinklebakes, and used a butter / golden syrup / vanilla / yet more sugar mixture for the filling. Beware: looking at 250g of melted butter may induce diabetes. Or at least shame. Try to put those feelings past you and you’ll be rewarded with stroopwafel goodness. And a sugar coma. But it’s a small price to pay.

Since coming back to Durham, I’ve been taking advantage of finally being able to stock up my fridge for the first time since October. This naturally led to cooking all the things, including the aforementioned stroopwafels, a full roast dinner (complete with goose fat potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, and sous-vide beef, just to be completely crazy), apple crumble, pistachio butter, gianduja, and microwave cakes, a white chocolate namelaka…and brown butter ice-cream. Oh, and wontons with spicy chili oil. And a jalfrezi curry with the beef leftovers.

My concern is that I might have burnt myself out.

(only kidding; the Wonder Grinder is a revelation for nut butters - in less than 30 minutes, I had a pistachio butter smoother than anything the Vitamix could ever give me1)

Also, due to a last-minute cancellation, I had my first Escape Room experience this weekend! We escaped the 90s. I complained about the dates for the Spice Girls concert being all wrong and discovered that directional locks are A Thing. There may be more Escape Room antics in the future; apparently there’s one in Columbia too…

Now, though, the long Christmas break is over. I’ve been very lucky that I managed to wrangle a UK-style holiday over the past two weeks, but tomorrow, the year starts anew. Who knows where it’ll take me?2


  1. I am sorry, Vitamix. In this one instance, you failed me. [return]
  2. All accounts indicate Tennessee, but that’s as much as I know at the moment. [return]