Today the millionth day of lockdown, was a day from hell.

Technically it was our Tamil New year which meant take it easy day. My phone was ringing off the hook with random people asking me random nonsense…don’t you just hate those calls. Those calls tended to also take place when my phone and I were in completely different rooms and our JR has learnt that whenever my phone rings its time for me to leave.

So every time he sleeps and the phone rings, it makes him hypo and it takes forever to get him to calm down. Not sure how many times today I had to tell him in Tamil to calm down. Our priest would have been proud.

Then when everyone had finished eating and we were all getting ready to lay in front of the TV, my parents hinted at what was on the tea time menu.

Seriously… there is no rest for the wicked… I really should stop saying that, the more I say it, the more it happens.

I decided I would try and make the dry vermicelli like they do in temple. I was down to my last 200g grams so I researched the living day lights out of this recipe to make sure it was perfect and then when it was near the end, the last of the water had to cook off and it would be ready for serving. My phone rang and I was busy doing work things in the room for about 10 minutes and I remember telling my mother specifically to keep an eye on the stove I had something on.

When I was finished with the call, I saw her in the room making new year resolutions and the stove was left unattended to, apparently she never heard me and what may you ask came of the vermicelli, it became charred, I didn’t even bother to check if I could salvage it, the smell alone told me to save myself the trouble and just slide it right into the bin.

Seeing as I still had the bread machine out from making koeksisters the other day, I thought why not give the new jam buns recipe I came across a try???

Nothing like throwing everything into the bread machine, pressing a few buttons and leaving it alone for 90 minutes and then coming back to perfectly risen dough, and all it needs after that is shaping and deep frying.

My parents could not wait, there were sitting at the table watching as I was rolling the buns into sugar and they were eating them one after the other, without letting me fill them with jam. Apparently they preferred it this way. My dad said jam would make it too sweet and my mother said the jam would make it all soggy… taking their opinions into consideration and also because they wasn’t a lot left over to fill anyway, I left the jam out.

The original recipe for this contained eggs, but I substituted it with my homemade vegan eggs and it still came out perfect, light and soft and fluffy and not oily at all.

My dad did ask in passing what happened to the vermicelli he saw me crushing and my answer was simple ask mum.

Ingredients:

• 1 x packet instant yeast.
• 1 x tsp + ¼ x cup castor sugar.
• 1 x cup warmed milk.
• 4 x cups cake flour, sifted.
• ¼ x tsp salt.
• 1 x tbsp. vanilla essence.
• 4 x tbsp. butter, room temperature.
• 2 x eggs.
• Oil for deep frying.
• Extra castor sugar for dusting.

Method:

• Place everything in the bread machine.
• Press the dough option.
• Turn out the dough ontop a floured surface and roll out carefully.
• Cut out rounds and deep fry in hot oil, till puffed up and golden brown on both sides.
• Remove from the oil and drain on kitchen towel before rolling in castor sugar.