Necessity is the mother of invention

When I took the plunge and bought a second fridge last year, I was absolutely convinced it would put an end to my storage capacity problems. Between accommodating the ordinary needs of household consumption (albeit a rather greedy household), and those of gearing up for a weekend such as this, fridge space is always at a premium. Fast forward one year later, and I find myself dreaming of a third fridge, seeing as the existing two are now bursting at the seams. But that will remain a fantasy until the day we find ourselves in a larger home. W has wryly observed that every storage solution which crosses my path - be it a new fridge, one more bookcase, an extra tableware cabinet, or yet another shoe rack - has an interesting habit of turning into part of the storage capacity problem itself. Extra storage realty triggers my, erm, acquisition disorder, which in turn ensures I somehow manage to outgrow whatever additional purported solution, thus necessitating yet more storage realty.

But I ramble. My working solution to the fridge space issue is to "process" leftovers as soon as possible when they appear. Calling it processing leftovers makes it all sound far more of a bore than it actually is, because many of my favourite things, quite frankly, were born out of the needs to not toss out perfectly good food and to clear fridge space.

It is not a weekend such as this per se which produces prodigious leftovers, seeing as all the math has been done and I am able to prepare accordingly. It is the testing and re-testing of recipes - which takes place way in advance of any such weekend - that results in leftovers of sizeable volume. Take for instance this lime and lemon curd. Whilst testing recipes, I had originally intended to use it strictly for filling lemon cupcakes. I had a fair bit leftover from preparing a batch without having scaled down the quantities to what was modestly required for filling a dozen or so cupcakes...A whole Kilner jar-full, to be exact. In other words, far more than what could be consumed on morning toast for two before most of it goes to waste.

Fortunately, I also had quite a few spare coconut cake layers and a large tupperware's worth of coconut buttercream lying around (again, leftovers from recipe testing). And so came along the happy accident; I have to confess that this citrus curd-sandwiched variation on the tall coconut layer cake theme is hands-down my favourite one, as the tartness of the filling cuts through the richness of the cake and buttercream.

And because I didn't want to generate yet more leftovers from decorative flourishes whilst processing leftovers, I deliberately kept the finishing fairly spare, although I do feel that sheer simplicity is part of the beauty of a homespun layer cake.

PS: Speaking of citrus curd, Cupcake Workshop Level 2 is back! There will be 6 sessions of this hands-on workshop, held on 8 August 2008 (Friday), 9 August 2008 (Saturday), 10 August 2008 (Sunday), and 22 August 2008 (Friday), 23 August 2008 (Saturday), 24 August 2008 (Sunday) at Shermay's Cooking School. The August schedule has all the details; for inquiries, please call +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg