SCIFIMADDOG NEWS- Earth and space news plus short stories written by me!: 03/01/2011

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Maltese Traditional Easter sweets 'Figolli'

Ingredients:
For pastry-
(this will make two large shapes like above or make any small shapes you want-Maltese do shapes like animals-hearts-boats-planes-see what shape cutters you find.I make dozens so you can imagine how many times I have to repeat this recipe)
450gr plain flour-sieved and add a pinch of salt.
225gr butter
225gr caster sugar
1 egg
rind of 1 lemon
4 tbs lemon juice.
Method:
Rub the butter in the flour,then add the sugar and lemon rind,mix well. Add the egg,then 1tbs of the lemon juice at a time till the dough forms a ball-you make not use all off the lemon juice.Chill the dough for at least half an hour.

Ingriedents:
For Filling:
225gr ground almond(pure or substitute-u find it ready to buy-at least here in Malta)
120gr caster sugar
120gr icing sugar-sieved
50gr chopped roasted almonds
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/4 teaspoon almond essence
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons orange flower water (you find this ready in a bottle too)

Method
Mix together in a bowl the dry ingredients-the ground almonds,the chopped almonds-sugar-icing sugar(sieved).
In another bowl mix together all the wet ingredients-egg-vanilla and almond essence-lemon juice-orange flower water.
Then mix both mixtures together until it forms into a soft dough too,chill for half an hour too.

Assembling
Roll out the pastry on a floured surface-important not too thin, about 1 cm -
then cut two of the same shape-one for the bottom and one for the top.
In between put a layer of the filling flattented to about 1 cm too.
So one pastry shape,then filling on top then the other pastry shape on top and flatten so lightly the edges taking care not to loose the shape so that they stick a little together.You can also brush the edge of the first bottom pastry with a little water.
Bake in a moderate oven until they start getting a golden colour-do not over bake as when they cool down they will harden!!
When completly cooled down,melt good cake chocolate and cover them.There is several different ways to decorate-or as I said with chocolate and then do designs with Icing,or cover them all in coloured icing and put different sprinkles on or just with melted chocolate.The Maltese tradition is that we put a small chocolate egg on top the melted choc so it sticks to it.
Please try-it seems intimidating to make,but its not and these keep so well in an airtight container for weeks..and they are so good!!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Spacecrafts Streak Over Colorado

Have you ever seen a "star" drifting slowly overhead, but not known what it was? Sometimes even pointing it out to friends or family will only lead to a shrug. What you are seeing, most likely, is a spacecraft in low Earth orbit reflecting back sunlight as it circles the Earth once every 90 minutes or so. Two of the brighter spacecraft in the present day sky are the International Space Station (ISS), and, when it is up, a NASA space shuttle. As relative orientations change, the brightness of reflections may also change, sometimes suddenly. Another source of bright drifting objects, Iridium communication satellites, may even appear to flare up to become brighter than any other sky object for a few seconds. Pictured above, two bright points of light separated by only a few degrees drifted together across the sky above Lory State Park, Colorado, USA last week, just after sunset. These lights were were the ISS and the space shuttle Discovery, which had undocked from the ISS a few hours earlier. Given a digital fusion of many separate camera exposures and a wide angle perspective, the pair appears above as steaks in front of point-like stars. Web sites now exist that can help you identify unknown "drifters" and even predict the time of the next pass of the ISS visible from your location