Cherry and Kiwifruit Savarin

Having successfully removed the last traces of plaster dust from my house, I set to the other day to turn the place into something resembling the interior of Australia. Anyone who has visited the country across the ditch from New Zealand will know that outside the main cities there are vast tracts of outback land covered in red dust.

We have a staircase that is situated in a conservatory-like area. The stringers and banister are made of jarrah, a beautiful rich red wood. However, 12 years of sun beating in had bleached the polyurethane finish to something more resembling beech. There was nothing for it but to get down and dirty and scrape off the layers until the red timber re-emerged.

The builder and I scraped and sanded up a storm until every horizontal surface in the area was covered in red dust. Even the vertical surfaces held their share. The Spouse whiled away a couple of pleasant hours at the weekend cleaning up the new paintwork.

Unfortunately I had to head out of town for a funeral last week, and left the builder to repaint the wood. The smell of it was enough for me. He later confessed that by the time he'd got round to doing the fourth coat, sun beating in on his head, the fumes had made him pretty high.

It is good to be able to entertain friends again and brush up the formal cooking skills. I must have been out of practice because halfway through making a dessert for our most recent guests, I completely forgot the task at hand.

The Spouse called and suggested we go down to his lawn bowls club for a meal on Friday night. I leapt at the chance of eating someone else's cooking. Unfortunately there was no welcoming aroma of cooking food as we entered the clubhouse. Seems the cooks were away for a couple of weeks and this was one of them. We consoled ourselves with a packet of potato crisps and a drink before heading home to put a frozen curry in the microwave.

That was when I opened the cupboard where the underbench water heater resides and was greeted by the awesome sight of a yeast dough that had well and truly undergone its second rising. The water cylinder, the "warm place" I use for proving dough, was liberally draped in the stuff. Well, at least I knew the yeast hadn't passed its "use by" date.

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