Farewell to Sean Spicer and making Ensaimada

Ensaimadas rising overnight

Today we lost the one of the defining figures in the Trump administration in the US. Sean Spicer resigned as presidential spokesperson when President Trump appointed Anthony Scaramucci as the new White House communications director, a post Sean had been temporarily filling. Sean's Role is now filled by his former deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sean Spicer had the unenviable role of representing the President's view of reality, which sometimes contrasted strongly with that of the rest of the world, e.g. on the size of the crowds at the presidential inauguration. His irascible responses and occasional errors provided gripping briefings, such as his assertion that even Hitler did not use chemical weapons, temporarily forgetting the gassing in the Holocaust. Tragically, Sean's departure may also mean another redundancy, that of Melissa McCarthy's portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live.

Today, the UK Cabinet is also miraculously united and apparent accepting that there would be a transitional period with Brexit, during which trade and free movement would still continue to permit business to adapt.

Not having our Open Studio this weekend, I was able to return to networking at the A14 network and help out volunteering at the Norris Museum. The staff have now moved back into the Museum, but there are still workmen around completing the final tasks. The new display area looks great and I took a series of pictures which are embargoed till the official opening on the weekend of the 30th July.

A I write, I have two spirals of Mallorcan Ensaimada, a sweet breakfast bread, rising and fermenting overnight. Ulli had called yesterday to catch up on news and introduced me to the recipe. Ensaimada is a flaky yeast based pastry. I could not do the full 30 minutes kneading of the dough due to the mixer starting to overheat, but, after an hour's rise, I was able to split the dough and roll it out in sheets that were almost transparent. The sheets were then covered with melted butter and rolled into long tubes. These in turn were arranged in loose spirals and left to continue rising for 12 hours. Currently they look as if they might crawl out of the tray by the morning, like giant doughboy snails.