Caking Agent

Nightswimming // REM

2012-01-09T18:51:00.001Z

Happy New Year!

I started 2012 with a new job, and I'm walking every day, which is really nice. However it means I arrive at work hungry and have been purchasing crappy croissants from Sainsburys, which isn't great.

So I decided for my Spontaneous-Sunday bake I would make some kind of muffin, preferably with some kind of fruit and oats.
However being a spontaneous bake I didn't have too much to work with.

Here is how to make 12 of my Breakfast Muffins;

280g Plain Flour
1 tbsp Baking Powder
1/8 tsp Salt
1 tsp Cinnamon
115g Soft Brown Sugar
100g Sultanas
100g Chopped Apple
2 Eggs
250ml Milk
6 tbsp Sunflower Oil
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Handful of Pumpkin Seeds
Handful of Sunflower Seeds

-Preheat over to gas mark 6. Line a 12 hole muffin tray with paper cases.
-Sift flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon into a bowl. Stir in the apple and sultanas.
-Beat the eggs in a jug along with the milk, oil and vanilla extract.
-Add to dry ingredients and mix well.
-Fill the cases with the mix and sprinkle the seeds over.
-Bake for 20 minutes until well risen, golden brown and firm to the touch.
-Leave in the tin for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

Libby's notes;
-I accidentally used SR flour, instead of plain. They haven't turned into the monsters I imagined so maybe that was ok.
-I used up the last of my brown sugar sprinkling it on top of the seeds as there was too little to bother with putting back into the cupboard.
-I managed to put an eggy whisk into J's coffee. I wouldn't recommend this.

Verdict (By Jonny) - They were delicious!

Not too sweet so good for breakfast but filled with flavour the warm cinnamon and soft apple went really well with the crunch of the pumpkin seeds on top. I'm not entirely sure that they'll last until tomorrow morning.

Pump It Up // Elvis Costello

2011-10-31T21:38:00.000Z

I like Halloween. Haven't really done anything proper for a few years due to Whitbying. But this year as we were about, and due to some clever point of sale pumpkins (I'm a serious sucker for point of sale marketing) we ended up making a pumpkin pie, and buying some Montezuma's chocolate frogs.

Both tasted pretty rank, but I enjoyed the baking, and setting up these photos was great fun.

From now on I might use shitloads of candles in every photo we do.

The frogs were too dark for my sweet tooth, and were grainy. They were also battered due to poor packaging.

The pie was pretty rank, but custard with the addtion of mashed up pumpkin doesn't really sound like a partnership made in heaven.

Happy Halloween!!!!

(Jonny Helm carved the pumpkin for me.. I think he is amazing)

Some Kind of a Summer // David Cassidy

2011-06-25T16:36:00.000+01:00

I received an interesting text message from Becci, while on the way to visit her. It contained the following picture;

And I thought '....dear god'

At the time Jonny and I were en route to Becci's to enjoy a relaxed evening of socialising nothingness. Jonny suggested I review the sandwich, which contains clotted cream, strawberry jam and strawberries.
Over the course of our journey we sort of came to the conclusion that it was similar to a cream tea, but wronger. I thought I would never get the chance to review it, as it's not something I would condone by purchasing.

But when we arrived at Becci & Chay's we were confronted by the sight of the end of this sandwich - saved for us to try. Chay justifies it in the video.

I went first.

I have said before that I don't really like eating cream. Clotted cream is a rare exception to this, I will enjoy it on a scone, as long as I don't get any 'top'. But I especially don't like cream from Tesco.

Then Jonny had a go.

It was horrible. And I'm going to blame it's existance on Wimbledon Fortnight. Bastards.
First you make commuting through Wimbledon complete hell for two weeks ('Oh! Oh! The tennis! Did you see Pat Cash?! Oh what a dish. What's that? You like my Wimbledon Umbrella? Yes, yes, I bought it especially to hit commuters in the face with when we get back to the station, or just to stop them getting where they're trying to go, awfully good sport in a downpour.') then you create a fucking awful sandwich.

I Can't Live With You // Queen

2011-06-13T22:46:00.001+01:00

This song is my favourite Queen song. Its probable that I love it so much because everytime I hear it I think of being in the kitchen in Forest Hut, my favourite room in my favourite house.
I think the last time I was there was back in January, which was aaaaaages ago. Too long.It wasn't the best trip, it probably wasn't the best time to go in hindsight.

But I made a key lime pie. It's not something I'd ever done before, but wanted something easy, and when looking at the ingredients list (biscuits, butter, cream, condensed milk, limes) it just looked like it was going to be lush.

It really was. It was a bit stressful to make. I've said this before - Forest Hut is a dumping ground for things that aren't quite good enough to have in your full-time house (Mouse Trap with half the parts missing? That was one of the most dissapointing moments in my life, and I'll rant about it to anyone that will listen) so if you bake you're doing it on limited equipment.
The thing missing for this was some kind of grater/zester for the peel of the lime. Jonny worked really hard peeling and chopping about 8 limes to get the zest, and I looked at the product of about an hour of hard labour and said 'No.' Now I wasn't just being a bitch, I for once was going on my instinct that chucking in a load of pithy, lumpy zest would ruin my smooth, creamy pudding.

Jonny later concurred that I was right, and it was such an excellent pudding that it did not need the zest.

Just remembering this has made me want to make another. Here's the recipe!

I Want It All // Queen

2011-06-08T22:15:00.001+01:00

I love Nutella. Oh I love it so much. It's incredible. Nothing really compares to it. My favourite thing ever and my favourite thing to do with it is make hot chocolate. I first learnt that it's best to make Hot Chocolate with proper, real chocolate, not some powdery gumf, at William Curley, as it's much, much nicer. You don't get that horrible powdery texture. It's not watery and it's as sweet as you want it, not as sweet as the manufacturer of said gumf wanted it.
I fall back on this information in times of need - you know those times when you want to eat a kilo of chocolate but only have a few squares? Turning it into hot chocolate always made it last much longer.

I don't do this at home anymore. Instead I make Nutella hot chocolate. It's easy and delicious. Recipe follows;

Serves 1
300 ml Whole Milk
3 heaped tsp Nutella

1.Measure your milk into a sizeable jug, then pour it into a pan and put it on a medium heat.
2. Into the same jug place the Nutella.
3. When the milk boils pour it over the Nutella.
4. Whisk thoroughly to make a smooth mixture, making sure to get the Nutella from the sides of the jug combined.
5. Work up a nice froth then pour into mug.
6. Drink immediately.

When we were first in the flat I realised I would have to get used to an electric oven, and it followed that I would have to do some baking test runs.
The first test I did I was hankering after something chocolatey. I'd only brought my cupcake tins with me, not a whole cake tin so they would have to do, but I ran into the small problem of having no chocolate to use, and then I saw it!! The holy Nutella, usually reserved for hot chocolates and eating straight from the jar when Jonny isn't looking, like a beautiful beacon of chocolate hope.

I whipped up a normal batch of vanilla cupcakes sans vanilla and at the end bunged in a load of Nutella until it looked chocolatey enough. I should have measured it so I can give you precise instructions, but I was caught up with how much of a genius idea it was.
Then I made some vanilla frosting sans vanilla and did the same again. It makes quite a light brown icing, but it's yummy.

They tasted amazing, and I made three more batches in as many days. I think they've taken over Black Bottomed Cupcakes as my favourite chocolate cake, they're much easier to make.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? // Pet Shop Boys

2011-06-08T21:29:00.001+01:00

I have a new job! It's all very exciting. I've been there three weeks now, and it's exhausting but great. Much much better than my old job, which I'd grown really fed up of.
I was very sad to leave when it came to it, but I know that I'll still see the people who made it such a great place to work.

Cakes always went down a storm there, so I made some to take in for my last day. I wanted to do some cupcakes (as they're always easy), one load fruity and one load that are a bit different.

For the fruity ones I found a Hummingbird recipe for Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes. I don't know what it is about that book, I trust it too much. It was completely against my instincts to shovel a load of chopped up strawberries into a cake case, top with batter and bake. I knew they would turn to some kind of horrible mush and the cases wouldn't stand it, but for some reason I trusted the book and did it anyway. They were rank. I left them to dry out over night and took in half of them for work uniced.. I don't know if anyone thought 'bleearrrgh what on Earth is she feeding us?' as they revealed the mess of strawberries at the bottom of the cake. If I make them again I will do it as follows; Bake cupcake as usual. Hollow out some cake, fill with chopped strawberries. Ice. Much better.

For the other batch I did Hummingbird's Marshmallow Cupcakes, as pictured. My thoughts behind this were that they were the girliest cake I'd ever seen, and it seemed entirely appropriate to make a batch for 12 male engineers.

I liked these a lot, a much more logical recipe, and much much tastier.
The only thing I would change would be to make my own marshmallows and fill the cupcakes with the unset goo, rather than melting shop-bought ones.

Lost // Korn

2011-06-08T21:02:00.000+01:00

We have been listening to a lot of Radio 4. I suppose it's what comes from not having a television. I am obsessed with Book at Bedtime, though Jonny says I'm never awake for the end. I feel out of sorts if I miss one.

The other programme I rather enjoy is Woman's Hour. Recently we listened to a whole piece on Madeleines, when I realised I've never had one.

Madeleines are small, almond cakes which are baked in a special shell shaped mould. They are a French speciality, made famous by Proust.

So while touring Waitrose with Jonny during one of our weekly shops we spotted a bag of Bonne Maman Madeleines. I was allowed to buy them, Jonny was looking for an excuse to take some photos of my new tea set (more on this in a moment) and I was looking for an excuse to eat cake.

They were ok, a bit boring. We dunked them into our tea (probably not the done thing with a tea set as beautiful as this), which made them soggy. Jonny loved this. I'm not so sure. You got some extra cake at the end of your tea which isn't very nice.
I'd like to try some that aren't mass produced, and also make some of my own as I was given a beautiful mould a few years ago for a birthday, which was a lovely yet daunting gift. I guess hopefully I'll come back to this in the future.

Now for the important stuff! Look at my tea set! Look at it! See how beautiful it is. I am the luckiest girl in the world. I am the proud owner of the most beautiful tea set in the world. It's staggering how in love I can be with some plates.
Where Jonny and I have moved to has some incredible shops, one of which is an incredible vintage interiors shop (I've touched on my secret interior design passion in the past) and I can spend many hours (if allowed) browsing and touching and longing. It is called Nicholas and Steele. The first time I had a proper browse I stumbled on an amazing black tea set, and it was the first I'd laid eyes on that I actually needed. Nothing could match my desire for it.
Unfortunately it sold, but J had wandered in and left his number, and a few weeks later we got a text saying they'd sourced a better set!
This was a much more convenient time, I'd come into a little windfall that I didn't want to waste on nothing, and it allowed me to buy the set which includes 5 lots of delicate tea cups, saucers and cake plates, a milk jug and sugar bowl, and a matching cake stand.

It really is the best set I've ever seen, and I have seen an awful lot of them. It is black, and then it has bright pink big flowers on. I love it.

Seaside Rendezvous // Queen

2011-06-07T23:16:00.003+01:00

The Rainbow Connection // Kermit The Frog

2011-05-16T22:01:00.000+01:00

You know it's Jonny's birthday when a Muppet song is involved. In fact I've just put on a video of this song that he must have seen about ten times before, and he still goes a bit crazy.

I made a big cake for Jonny's birthday party/our house warming. He'd seen it online and told me he wanted me to make it for him.
It is a direct copy of Whisk Kid's Epic Rainbow Cake. Most people have seen this before, I'm sure. Hers is much better than mine. I struggled with getting a neat finish on the buttercream.

If you are going to make this cake do exactly as she says, and handily there is also a link to her demonstrating how to make it with Martha Stuart.

I was a bit stressed when it came to it. I only had one cake tin, and only a little bit of time, and many other cakes to make, as well as the house to tidy in readiness for the party.
I assembled the cake (see time lapse made by the lovely Jonny) and stuck it in the fridge, along with the left over icing so that I could finish it in the morning.

This was a mistake. The icing split overnight and was maaaaaaanky. So I sent J out for emergency eggs and made another batch. It turned out to be a bit of fate in the end as I would never have had enough left from the first batch, and that could have been a bigger disaster if I'd started.

The cake went down very well. Jonny took the remaining half to work with him on Monday and received the following comments;
"It's beautiful"
"The Chernobyl Cake"
"I've never tasted neon before"
"If this was a pair of socks I'd buy it"
"Wow lovely cake, I hate when I like it"
"I've photographed it so I can take it home and say 'look what I got at work'"
"Did you try the cake? the amazing cake"

I've been asked to do another. Note to self - get at least two more cake tins.

Brandy // Red Hot Chili Peppers

2011-03-15T22:01:00.003Z

We made pancakes and I used brandy to flambee them. Enjoy.

Jonny

Colourblind // Darius

2011-03-15T11:56:00.001Z

Aahh you can't beat a bit of Darius.

These were done ages ago, marshmallows with the remaining American gummy bears. I wanted to do something with them that would show off the amazing colours.

I think I need a new sugar thermometer, as all of my recent marshmallows haven't been that good, a bit too squishy and sticky, I don't think all of these got eaten.

Sorry for the lack of posts between now and Christmas, things went a bit wonky. I have a few posts to catch up on and should be back on track for Easter.

Deeply Dippy // Right Said Fred

2010-12-10T15:42:00.001Z

I'm getting so excited about Christmas. The trees went up last weekend, so I made them some stained glass tree biscuits with the help of Jonny on Wednesday evening.

We're having a party next week, and the theme is red gingham (the only thing I'm allowed to be in control of, according to Jonny!) so I wanted these to fit, so I decided on heart shape, to only be filled with red sweeties, and to be hung with gingham ribbon.

I won't try and pretend that these are revolutionary biscuits, I think I've made them since I was very little, but they are stunning. This morning the tree was the only thing lit up in the house, and the way fairy lights glowed through the biscuit looked magical.

They are a little bit dark for my liking, I put way too much mixed spice in, so they raw dough was sort of brown rather than golden. And some of them caught in the oven, and they don't taste good, as to be expected.

But this was the first time I've managed to find a recipe where the biscuits did not spread in the oven. My top tip will be not to use any kind of baking or grease proof paper for cooking them on - the sweeties will stick.
Hoepfully they'll last a while on the tree. I've held some back in the tin just incase the giant mouse that lives there gets to any.

Earth Song // Michael Jackson

2010-12-05T12:37:00.001Z

I was asked to do another allotment cake on the back of the Transition Town Cake . It was for the charity Eco Local for a celebration they were having, and was, thankfully, much smaller.

I was very pleased with the turnout of this cake. The icing was the best I've ever done, and it seemed ashame to put on the ribbon, and then all the mini vegetables on top.

But it looked grand in the end, and apparently it went down very well at the party.

Fundamentally Loathsome // Marylin Manson

2010-12-05T12:29:00.001Z

Last weekend I had a foody trip into London, followed by a Christmas Shop-About with Jonny.

I mooched around Borough Market with some like-minded (mulled wine drinking, pie eating, foody) friends. There was a woman selling un-iced 6 inch square Christmas cakes for £47.00!! It was boozy stodge, and not very nice. Anyway, I bought pies and cheese, then we went for lunch at Black and Blue.The burger I had was lovely, but the puddings were a bit meh. I had an icecream sundae, which I suppose you couldn't really go wrong with. Apparently the chocolate brownie was too floury. But I guess that you can't judge a steak restaraunt on its puddings.
After that we hopped in a cab to Knightsbridge and snagged us a table in the Harvey Nichols Champagne bar, and drank some incredible fizz. Amazing.

Then, a little worse for wear I met Jonny and we went and did our Christmas Liberty Trip. Oxford Street and Regents Street were closed for the turning on of the lights, and there was a really nice atmosphere everywhere. Aww.

I went to try on some shoes which I had spent a week lusting over, and they were heart-breakingly narrow. So I cried and Jonny had to take drastic action to cheer me up, the action was attempting to find a tube station and rush home for Strictly.

In hunting for the tube we stumbled across Cox, Cookies and Cake. I admit, I may not have gone in with an entirely open-mind. I'd read a few scathing reviews of the 'Adult' cake shop, a joint venture between Patrick Cox and Eric Lanlard. Yes, it's in Soho. Yes, it's all black and neon. Yes, the staff wear studded leather aprons. Yes, it's crap.

I couldn't see the cookies on entry, just rows and rows of ghastly cupcakes. I asked and the man serving looked at me like I was crazy and pointed out a whole one, thin row of cookies. He said they were all different, but this was clearly a lie, as he named four types, and there were about 9 in the row.

We bought a double chocolate chip one, and ate it on the bus home. Jonny said we could buy a pack of Tesco ones for £1 and photograph those. No one would be able to tell. And the Tesco ones would be better value for money. The Cox Cookies cost £2.50 each. Crazy.

Now the cupcakes. We opted for a Hazelnut and Chocolate one (torso cake) and a Chocolate and Raspberry one (skull cake). None of the cakes were actually labelled with their flavour, which for me, sums up the fact that this shop is entirely about image.

He put them in a box and thrust them towards us.I had to ask for a bag, and they were put into a clear shopping bag. Now, you'd think that this over-publicised shop would have put some thought into the fact that customers will have to travel with their slutty cakes, and therefore would design a bag, in keeping with their theme, that would allow safe transportation of the rude confection.

Clearly not. That's what they looked like when we got home.

We shared the cakes with my family for a brunch-time snack. The hazelnut one was dry and the frosting was cream cheese which did not go. At all.
The chocolate and raspberry one was a little more moist, but that's because it had a filling of jam. I do not want a cupcake with jam in. Thank you. I can think of many ways to get raspberry into a chocolate cake without having to fill it with jam.

The toppers for the cake were inedible. The torse was made of white chocolate. It was untempered, so chewy and gritty and foul. The skull was made of dark chocolate, which though texturally ok, was very bitter, so I'm going to be mean and assume it's very cheap.

I won't be going back. It's a gimmick, and a very dissapointing gimmick. I did not feel edgy when buying sexed-up cupcakes. I just felt like I'd been conned. The cupcakes cost £4.00 each. £4.00!!!

Jonny also says that a cake shop should really consider it's clientele when choosing door size. It's outrageously skinny, we had to turn side-on to escape.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow // Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

2010-12-05T11:48:00.001Z

Back in September was my friends wedding, I've posted about practice cupcakes for them.
I spent a day solidly baking, decorating and packing up an large amount of cupcakes, just over 150 to be precise. By the end of it I could barely stand up, I was exhausted.

I also did a large chocolate cake, with a Star Wars topper, made by my fantastic brother, Ollie - Glass Candle Grenades.

The day of the actual wedding was interesting, Jonny was official photographer so I was pretty much alone. His Mum, Rosemary shipped me and the cakes about, which I am so grateful for, it would have been very hard to do it on the bus!

There was a small issue of a tablecloth, which a swift jog along the river at Kingston solved, and then I got my own little peaceful trip on one of the Turks Pier boats up to Teddington, where I was met with more cakes at the Wharf.

Then back to get ready and off to enjoy the wedding. Everything was so beautiful and perfect and I got fantastically drunk.

Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter // Iron Maiden

2010-10-21T13:24:00.001+01:00

I'm the worst daughter ever. This cake is my Dad's Christmas cake from last year. It took me a year to finish it for him. There is no excuse. I just suck.

It was kept nicely fed and apparently is still in tip top condition and is currently being consumed by him while he's on holiday in Scotland.

I did it with Jonny one evening when all I really wanted to do was sleep, hence why it is so simple, and a little bit rough around the edges. And on a plate, not a cake board.

Walla Walla // Offspring

2010-09-15T21:33:00.001+01:00

My brother - Glass Candle Grenades - has returned from his trip to America. He was full of stories and excitement and a large amount of endearing love for his new friends.

He cunningly managed to time his trip to miss my birthday, my Mum's birthday and my Dad's. Strangely enough, he returned in time for his own. He had been in touch and asked what we'd like him to bring back. Dad asked for duty-free rum and Mum wasn't sure what she wanted.

I asked for 'sweets, not chocolate.' I've tasted all the American chocolate I want to.

I got 1.3 kilos of Haribo Gold Bears.

I'm still ploughing through them, I can only eat a few at a time. The colours are incredible on them, so we had some photo fun, which was also an excuse to hunt through the family crockery.

I don't know if it's just me being a bit weird, or if I'm actually right, but I think they have a much higher gelatine content than British ones. Maybe a blind tasting is in order.

Hungry Heart // Bruce Springsteen

2010-08-04T20:00:00.005+01:00

The Dessert Bar has opened at William Curley!! Well, it opened a little while back but monetary constraints meant we were forced to wait.
Then it was my birthday and it was the only thing I could think of that I actually wanted was a trip for some pudding action.
Turns out it was a complete treat day for me - we started off at the London Transport Museum! They have busses and tube trains and so much information about the transport! Serious swoon.

Libby loved driving the bus.

We arrived at William Curley to a lovely welcome after a little trip on a routemaster! Yay!! It was busy so we went and chilled out in the pretty square over the road. Then when it was time we headed in.

So when you go for the a la carte menu you get three courses of dessert! And it all gets made by a chef right in front of you, so you can see exactly what you're getting, and the work and skill that goes into it.
The first course is pre-dessert. The first was a moelleux-au-chocolat, with chocolate sauce, kinako bean ice cream and crystalised pistachios.
The ice cream is never something I would have picked out for myself, but it was lush. I loved it. I'll definately have it next time I go. The moelleux was beautiful - warm and gooey. It definately whet my appetite.

The next pre-dessert was the Pomme Granita. It consisted of a jelly made with agar agar. The texture was completely different to a gelatine jelly. It was melt-in-the-mouth and moreish. The next layer up was creme fraiche, followed by apple spaghetti and topped with the granita part.
It was so fresh and tangy. Jonny and I loved it and I could have eaten two. Or three.

Then the main part. There is a small back story behind my choice. When I worked in the Richmond store I was confronted every day by a picture in the shop of the Mille-Feuille. It wasn't being sold while I worked there, but a tiny version was included on the petit-four. Which I loved. And it was never enough. I have been longing for a full-sized one for almost two years. When we were asked what we'd like for the main there was no hesitation. I didn't even look at the other choices.
The mille feuille consists of layers of hazelnut and chocolate sponges, chocolate mousse, and a layer of praline biscuit and it came with muscavado ice cream and orange segments and orange sauce. Jonny had a bit more of a puzzle but opted for the Foret Noire.

There are no words for how happy I was with my mille feuille. The Foret Noir had white chocolate mousse, dark chocolate mousse, sponge and a kirsch syrup. It came with griottine cherries in a sauce and crystalised pistachios. He obviously has an unmanly and weak stomach and filled up and started finding his a bit rich. Wimp. His was boozy and incredible looking. It came in a cylinder of chocolate. I can't even fathom how it's made.

Then we had the petit fours. These were adorable mini pistachio macarons sandwiched together with a very dark chocolate ganache, and another adorable mini chocolate and yuzu financier, which is my favourite William Curley cake.

All this was washed down with hot chocolate and then home-made lemonade, which was just what you needed to balance out the sweetness.

I can't wait to go back. I suggested to Jonny that we should make it a weekly habit, but he wasn't so keen. Maybe once a month would be reasonable. It costs £15.00 per person. Which also leaves me a bit lost for words as the amount you get and the quality of the experience is just incredible.

Red Velvet // OutKast

2010-06-22T18:38:00.003+01:00

I've long avoided writing this blog to avoid writing something libellous.
The main fault with libel laws is that at the end of the day the publisher is guilty until proven innocent. Or to put it another way; if i was going to call one of London's most successful bakers "morons who know nothing about cooking"
I would be forced by a court of law to prove that this was irrefutably the truth while, until I had done so, I would be expected to cough up the sum of damages to the "moronic" baker's reputation each time the words get published.

Ladies and gentlemen, In the delightful world of the Internet, every day is a new publication. As such the delightfully nick-named and over paid libel lawyers criticised weekly in Private-eye are able to open a new case and compensation claim every day. The one and great defence against the libel lawyers is the fact that you are telling the truth this makes a claim no longer libellous and simply a fact. I concede that probably a successful baking company does in fact know a bit about cooking and as establishers of a working and growing business are probably not moronic.

In conclusion, your honours, I would like to state that the humming-bird bakers are NOT morons who know nothing about cooking. In fact they are shrewd marketers who are bloody good at scamming their customers. So you get hyperbolic online reviews like these:

"incredible cup cakes Red Velvet is incredible if you fancy one BUY 2!!! Trust me on this…" said BigBruv from Cardiff

"This place never fail [sic] to deliver. It’s the best place to hang out with a mate or two on a saturday afternoon, having a slice of cake.
My favorite is the Red Velvet cake. They are delicious!"
comments beequin from London

"I have heard that the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor come to buy cake here and I wouldn't be surprised!
They sell the most amazing cakes and cupcakes. The best are the red velvet cupcakes. This also comes in a full sized cake.
It is a sponge which is red, iced with the most delicious cream cheese icing I have ever tasted."

That's right dw27 from London it is a cake that is red.

Hold on.. what do you say? a cake that is red! ... you mean... NO! you don't say? someone has put red food colouring in a cake.
HOLD THE PHONE GUYS. Call the Times and hold the front page on the Wall Street Journal and while Murdoch's on the blower we'll get this in the Australian Sun.

Someone SOMEWHERE Has had the tenacity to put food colouring into some food!

I first encountered this scam about a year ago. Libby had reason to make some cupcakes to impress and she had heard of these great "Red Velvet" cupcakes.
Everyone said they were the best, "there must be some baking trick" she said. Some kind of secret ingredient..
I countered that this was silly and in fact they can't be that good chocolate cupcakes would be nicer. "But" our lovely lib said, "but everyone on the Internet says they're the best".."they cant just be ordinary cakes"

I gave in, there must be some trick I thought. Because, sometimes reluctantly, I usually trust Libby when it comes to cake.
She scoured one recipe book then purchased a new cupcake recipe book.
It didn't have a red-velvet recipe. She then forked out a bit more for the Humming-Bird Bakery recipe book. This book told her the secret. The trick. The hidden ingredient. The baker's special flick of the wrist that makes red velvet the top cupcake of the day.
It told her to make a cake and to put in to the mix some red food colouring.

I don't know why it's so disappointing but I just feel cheated. We eventually wound up in Portabello and got a black bottomed cupcake and a red-velvet. It was so red! It was like a cupcake had been slaughtered and bled onto another cupcake then covered
with frosting. Aesthetics aside the cupcake was under filled and over topped but that's ok as the cake (once you've had a swig of whisky to help you overcome the shock of it's cakey redness) is pretty dull and wouldn't hold up to close scrutiny if presented on its own. Cupcakes dry out quickly so it was our fault for carrying the cake all the way home from Portobello before tucking in; It was dry, but there should have been some flavour.
The icing is nice but if I want a cheesecake I'll buy a cheesecake thankyouverymuch.

As you may have gathered I have a general contempt of excessive food colouring. It's not big and it's not clever. Colouring foods unnecessarily was in its last throes when Fanny Craddock dyed hard boiled eggs blue in the 70's in an attempt to reinvigorate her image. Are you surprised that it was a total flop?

If you're still taken in by the red-velvet phenomenon, come to my house and I'll cook you a purple roast chicken and I hope you choke.

Smaller and Smaller // Faith No More

2010-06-20T10:59:00.000+01:00

A little bit of news to start - Jonny has graduated! I think. I don't really know what process he has to go through to make him graduated (yay grammer) but I know that he's finished uni and his mark has been confirmed and he had his exhibition. Which was great fun, and I was very drunk.

Anyway to celebrate his Mum hosted a little do. She asked me and my Mum to do the sweets.

This was an exciting offer as I'd just bought a new book from Books for Cooks. If you are ever in the Portabello Road area I would say you should do to Books for Cooks more than you should go to the Hummingbird Bakery.

Anyway my new book is called Petit Fours and is just beautiful. I bought it for inspiration for not only food photography and styling, but interior inspiration too (that there is my guilty little indulgence that doesn't involve The Doctor).

The recipes in this book are brilliant. Definately aimed at the dinner party hosting crowd. The recipes are for bacthes of around 8-10. We made the lime meringue pies and the raspberry mousse brownies.

And I did some cute piping, which I was quite pleased with. The lime meringue pies were lovely and I plan to make lots more. The raspberry brownies were a bit trickier. As ever I couldn't tell when the brownie was done, so it was much dryer than it should have been. Mum made the mousse, and it was weird. Weird. Sort of grainy. I should read the recipe, that would probably explain why.

They all went down very well, and everyone said how nice they were. The main point of this post will be LOOK AT THE PIPING!!

Overnight Sensation // Raspberries

2010-06-14T09:46:00.000+01:00

My brother - Glass Candle Grenades - is leaving to work in America. Anyone would think he's off forever the way my Mother is acting. He's having a last supper of roast beef followed by trifle. It seems the trifle is down to me. He's only off for about four to five months, I think, to work at Camp America.

I hate trifle. Cream is never really something I can get excited about. Nor is custard. If there is pie on offer, I'd much prefer to have pie with nothing else. My Father will put cream and custard on everything, and Oliver will just take the custard. All of it. Straight out of the tub.
But for me the combination of cream and custard and jelly and sponge is just ick. No. Why do it?

So I wasn't very excited about this dessert until Jonny gave me the challenge of not using a recipe. So I have planned a raspberry and almond trifle. And because the recipe is mine: I can post it. I will also defend my use of shop bought custard as it's Oliver's absolute favourite, and any custard I make would never be good enough.
It's made up of five elements and takes two days to make so if you're about to embark on "libby's awesome raspberry and almond trifle" make sure you give yourself time to plan...

Libby's Awesome Raspberry and Almond Trifle

Genoise Sponge
115g caster sugar
4 eggs
60g plain flour
55g ground almonds
55g butter – melted and cold

Heat the oven to gas mark five and prepare an eight inch tin.
Combine sugar and eggs – put on a bain-marie until the egg mixture reaches roughly 40 degrees. Take off the bain-marie and whisk until cold and ribboning. The mix should look creamier than when you started, and should be thick enough to leave a pattern when you drizzle some back into the mix; you should be able to complete a figure of eight before it starts to sink back in. It will take about 10 minutes by hand and a little less with an electric whisk.
Fold in the flour and ground almonds and then add the melted butter.
Put in the tin and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Amaretto Syrup

50g Water
50g Sugar
25g Amaretto

Boil the sugar and water for 30 seconds. Put in a metal bowl to cool.
Allow to cool completely and then add the Amaretto.
Keep in a sealed container

Raspberry Jelly

250g Raspberry pureé (I used frozen raspberries blended with a bit of water)
250 Stock Syrup (half sugar, half water)
12.5 g gelatine
A few whole raspberries

Soak gelatine in cold water until nice and floppy. Remove from the water and set aside.Boil up the syrup, then add to raspberry pureé, then whisk in the gelatine until it is fully dissolved. Add some whole raspberries if desired.

1 tub of shop bought fresh custard
A couple of tubs of Whipping Cream
Flaked Almonds for decoration
Fresh raspberries for decoration

Assembly:

Day 1
Make Amaretto syrup. Bake genoise sponge. Remove from tin and soak with Amaretto syrup. When cool slice up and layer in the bottom of trifle bowl. You may have some left over.
Make the jelly and pour over the sponge pieces. Leave outside for a while until nearly cool, then cover and move to fridge to set overnight.

Day 2
In the morning pour the custard over the jelly – leave uncovered in fridge.
When it's time to serve, whip up the cream until just stiff and heap on top of the custard. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and fresh raspberries. Serve immediately.

Brown Eyed Girl // Van Morrison

2010-06-13T20:09:00.003+01:00

Jonny and I went to Portabello Road yesterday. I wanted a suitcase and a tea cup, Jonny wanted a flannel shirt. You tell me. Anyway. We both failed in our objectives. You'd be hard pushed to find a suitcase under two hundred pounds, and all the crockery was manky.
Jonny's ideal flannel shirt he'd already seen on a friend, so seeing as it had already been sold I think finding it for sale would be a challenge.

As soon as we got off the tube at Notting Hill Gate it was manic. Oh the crowds. And we were early! We walked from Notting Hill to Westbourne Park and it took forever. It was nicely broken up with stall browsing and a mandatory visit to the Hummingbird Bakery. They were queueing out the door when we arrived, but I was determined.

The service was remarkably brilliant, fast and polite. Though the people behind me obviously had no concept of personal space and kept crowding. Chill out people! There is enough cake for everyone! You will get your turn.

At first I ordered a slab of frosted brownie, a black bottomed cupcake and a carrot cupcake. But then a fresh tray of Red Velvet appeared so I changed my mind on the carrot. Jonny has requested to review the Red Velvet, so I'll leave that to him.

We sat outside on the curb to eat the brownie. God it was good. So close to the brownie perfection we seem to be on a never-ending mission for.
Jonny said 'The most important thing about a brownie that has been cooked wll is it makes you wonder ''has this been cooked?' '' which I suppose sums up his tastes. For me it's winning for it's use of whole hazelnuts and crisp top and gooey middle.

I'd bought a black bottomed cupcake to see what cake/cheesecake ratio it had, as I'm never sure if I've put too much or too little on when I bake them. I don't know if it was just this individual cupcake, but it was greatly lacking in cheesecake. The cream cheese frosting made up for it a little, but the cake was dry. And when I bake them I don't frost them, so this seemed really over-sweet.

I think I am arrogant enough to say that I much prefer the ones I make to the one I bought. Wow. I bake a Hummingbird cupcake better than they can.

All in all I feel like it was a little bit of a wasted trip. I had a great time mooching with Jonny. It was perfect in that respect. But I do wish we'd headed to Pimlico to try out the newly opened dessert bar at William Curley.
Soon though. Soon.

China in Your Hand // T'Pau

2010-06-02T13:40:00.000+01:00

I can't remember if I said before, but I've been asked to do some cakes for a friends wedding. Jonny has been asked to do the photography too. I always said that I wanted to steer well clear of weddings and angry brides. But this is entirely different. I can't imagine them stressing out too much about their wedding.

At some point in last week we took six flavours of cakes for them to taste. They said that they looked how they imagine they should, and the sprinkles went down well. Much to my happiness. Jonny had earlier disagreed on the sprinkle front.

We gave them 6 flavours. Chocolate, lemon, vanilla, sea salt caramel, carrot and orange and coffee. The flavours they chose (and probably the ones I would too) were chocolate and lemon, and another to be confirmed, which will either be carrot or vanilla. They're having a meal with 3 courses (including dessert) so the cakes can't be too sickly or heavy.

It was really nerve-wracking putting my cakes up for judgement like that, but they were very polite, and I think that if they hated them they wouldn't want them at the wedding and they'd tell me. I hope. They''ve asked for 150 anyway, so I best get planning.

I have a couple of obsessions, the first being obviously sugar and everything to do with it. The second is stationary. I can spend hours in paperchase touching notebooks and paper. I'm a bit weird. But these two obsession happily collided when Paperchase introduced a whole cakey range!! I bought as much as I could, including a completely useless minature tea set. And then I had to buy a new cake tin from lakeland so I could bake mini things to go on it. The results follow.

Brighton Rock // Queen

2010-05-30T11:04:00.000+01:00

I have quite a lot to catch up on! Expect a few blogs over the next few days..

On Sunday we headed down to Brighton to celebrate Mister Chay's birthday. We picnicked on the beach.. well as we'd already been away mine and Jonny's picnic consisted of burgers and chips from Grubbs. I highly reccomend it if you're in need of a filth fix. It's a must-do for any trip to Brighton.

The other must-do for any beach trip is ice creams! Suprisingly, it was only me and Becci that fancied one. You know the kind I'm talking about. Not real ice cream. That miscellaneous stuff that unfurls out of a machine.

I had two flakes. I realise now this is quite greedy. Becci wanted butterscotch sauce but the man had only strawberry or chocolate. She was very dissapointed, and while she struggled on with eating the sauceless ice cream you could see how distressed she was.

After mooching and doing poi and going in the freezing-icicles-of-death sea we all packed up and headed for the pier. We went on the little rollercoaster.

And then we went on the Waltzer. I love a good waltzer. Especially after beer and ice cream.

Then to the pub for some horrendously bad food and service (I was behaved and didn't complain or moan, as Jonny pinched me). I was by now tired. The plan was to head on to a club event reggae thing. Which isn't my cup of tea, but I fully intended to go in order to not look like a grumpy mare that won't do anything that involves something she doesn't like.. but we were tired so four of us headed for the train.

We picked up crepes on the way. While they were impressively cooked and looked really really nice, the batter was odd tasting and chewy. All the nice stuff dripped to the bottom of the cone that they'd been plonked in. That was dissapointing. I think next time I'll just get a second icecream.

Wow. Reading that you wouldn't think that I had a massively awesome day. It was so much fun. Especially the rollercoasters.

Letter From America // The Proclaimers

2010-05-28T12:49:00.006+01:00

Libby made a carrot cake for her work. It had cream cheese icing which is delicious but once the icing was on we decided it needed something else to make it look more exciting. We didn't have any sugar paste icing to make an orange carrot so I made a stencil and we sieved cinnamon through it to make it quite plainly a carrot cake.

I was quite chuffed with my stenciling.

There's been a very detailed carrot cake in the past and this was made using the same recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book.

Jello Biafra // Wesley Willis

2010-05-25T10:40:00.004+01:00

I hate that word - Jello. It makes me all cringey.

Jonny and I hosted a barbecue at the weekend to make the most of the weather, and to cheer me up a bit. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, so we went all out and spent loads of money.

We had a fair few people over and cooked the usual burgers and sausages and Jonny did this amazing marinade for the lamb we bought. It was incredible.

I hit the pimms at about 1pm. I was rather merry by the end of the evening. We put the usual fruit in pimms (the only acceptable use of fruit really) plus blueberries. Jonny liked them as the skin meant they didn't soak up all the booze. I think this makes him weird and for every blueberry I had I gave myself the task of skewering it so that it ended up with some flavour. Weird things, blueberries. They aren't nice, yet it's quite possible to eat a whole punnet. I like them in cake. That's it.

Anyway, Jonny wanted jelly for pudding. Jelly is another thing I don't really get. I'll eat jelly cubes, but once you've watered them down they just taste like cold, set water. We had three flavours - blackcurrent, raspberry and orange. Jonny wanted them layered up prettily. Which meant it took the whole morning, for what was not much of an effect in the end. By the time you water them down they all look the same sort of washed out pink colour.

Jonny liked it. Our lovely friend Hayley had also brought a chocolate torte, thankfully as after all the meat I was really in the mood for a pudding that wasn't jelly. The torte was lovely, not too rich. Someone.. I have a suspicion that it was Jonny put a piece of torte on top of his bowl of jelly.

This is disgusting and wrong.

The weather seems to have gone away again now, and it looks like it's taken my need for sugar. I'll try a milkshake at lunchtime to try and fix this.

It's Not Easy Being Green // Kermit the Frog

2010-05-10T11:55:00.001+01:00

''Blaaarghh'' is the only word for me today. I've been feverish and poorly. I think people are suspicious it's a hangover after Jonny's birthday, but I am certain it's not. I have a horrendously sore throat and am all weak and pathetic.

Jonny's birthday picnic was a success. Isn't everything I have a hand in planning? We had to hold it indoors due to crummy weather, but other than that it was a really lovely day. And it was themeless. Which left me at a bit of a loss as to what cake to make. He'd muttered something about chocolate, but other than that I had no clue.

On Wednesday, his actual birthday, I went hunting for a picture to post on his facebook and had googled 'Kermit Birthday' and I stumbled across daveandraina's Flickr and instantly knew I had to make Kermit the Frog cupcakes. They fit in every way, firstly Jonny is a complete Muppets freak and secondly I was short on time.

I used, again, Hummingbird's vanilla cupcake recipe, and vanilla frosting recipe both with healthy dollops of green colouring gel. I seem to know this recipe very well by now and ended up making the cakes in very little time, which meant I could watch Ashes to Ashes while making the mento-eyes.

Some of the cakes were a little low in the case, which meant I ended up using quite a lot of frosting on some, and hardly any on the other. I need to work on this. I also wasn't very happy with the eyes. I had to use blue food colouring to draw them, and let's face it, I've never been one for any kind of artwork.

But they looked like Kermit, and I think most people liked them, and the actual cake being green was a nice surprise. And Jonny got to do his Kermit impression, which is always a crowd pleaser.

Sugar Sugar // The Archies

2010-05-03T22:11:00.001+01:00

I've had a very lazy bank holiday weekend. Though I did cook for 8 people at my house in an impromptu dinner party. I made a risotto! It was the first one I'd ever made. I think it was ok, it all got polished off. So did the black bottomed cupcakes I'd made for pudding.
They were exactly the same as last time, but without the raspberry cream. I had to keep it simple you see. I had a lot to make. I had also dragged out my bread maker and whipped up a loaf to serve warm. I think people prefered that to the risotto!

On Saturday I'd read the lovely Penny's blog, Penelope's Pantry. She'd been making cinnamon rolls out of her leaven starter. And since then I'd been craving something cinnamonny. Which is crazy and wrong, as I am one of the rare people that can't stand cinnamon, ever since going to a party when I was younger and getting rather trollied on home-made cinnamon wine.

So today I decided I needed to make something, and it needed to contain cinnamon. I turned to the Hummingbird Bakery Book again. I don't know why. It's strange for me to use a book so much that isn't Mary Berry. Especially when I've had to edit quite a few of the recipes during use.
I picked the banana and cinnamon muffins. And I doubled the mix so that I could eat some and still take enough to work tomorrow.

I ended up with tonnes of mix. I made 24 muffins and one massive muffin cake after panicking and just shoving it in the first oven proof thing to hand.

They are a bit dense and chewy and the paper cases don't peel satisfyingly off. The cake is a bit flat as the tin I picked out was huge. But they have fulfilled my cinnamon needs. Hopefully for a while.

In other news, I am going on a proper diet. I feel like if I write it here then I will have to do it.

Pour Some Sugar On Me // Def Leppard

2010-04-27T21:47:00.002+01:00

I've just come home from Whitby Gothic Weekend! It was fantastic. More like a week than a weekend. I drank every night and some of the highlights include zombies, head-banging, mussels, lots of steps, a bout of indigestion, a riding crop, playing with some balls and many silly hats.

I think Jonny has some deeply unflattering pictures of me devouring an oyster by the whale bones. I'll vet them and possibly add them. Not an oyster oyster, but an ice cream oyster.
Neither of us could put a definate finger on what the chewy bit in the oyster was. Is it coconut flavoured? Or does it taste like coconut because of the coconut on the outside? Still. It's ice-cream so you can never complain too much.

We also had some of Justin's fudge. I had a tiny bit during the Real Gothic / Whitby Gazette football match (Goths won! On Penalties!) and then gave the rest to Jonny at half time. I didn't see it after that so I can only assume that it was taken into the changing rooms and distributed. Or Jonny ate it ALL and won't tell me because he scolds me when I do something like that.

I'd love to report on my afternoon tea at Bothams, but it didn't happen due to financial restraints. I lived for five days off of peas and alcohol. That would explain the indigestion.

I'm quite sad to be back at home and facing going to work tomorrow.

Chocolate Pope // Electric Six

2010-04-23T02:03:00.004+01:00

I went to Longparish in Hampshire as part of an extended photography project. It’s a lovely place. A string of houses set along a very long road. Beyond the houses there are fields. Beyond the fields there are woods. It is in fact a beautiful place. The town follows the wiered and forded way of the river Test that splits hither and thither, flows along the sides of roads and under countless bridges and when you look closely trout keep pace with the water, facing upstream.

Just the place if you work in draw-bridge sales.

It’s an affluent area, the place to live if you can afford a car luxurious enough to take you comfortably and daily into and out of one of the nearby cities or even all the way into London. The two inns, the Cricketers and the Plough, are the only two down the long Longparish road and they compete for the pockets of the local residents who don’t want to cook of an evening at home and both insist proudly “weekend booking is essential”. They are sublime examples of the Gastro-Pub.

As my extended project is self funded I travel on rather a strict budget and on night one, had a strict supper of Pot-noodle, cup-a-soup, tea and digestive biscuits. Mmmmm.
Chicken and mushroom pot noodle was all that the little local Londis had. There was more selection in the cup-a-soups however they’ve recently rebranded themselves as “some annoying yet familiar and common, stressful -but not too stressful- event – a – soup” I eyed up tasty options but their slogans were just too annoying in the end I settled for “I Accidentally Taped Over The Wedding Video – a – soup” which is cup-a-soup for chicken and mushroom. When I had breakfast I could still taste the mushroominess of dinner the night before.

On night two, knowing that I had another pot noodle and more moron-a-soup sachets waiting next to the kettle in my B&B I went into the Cricketers Inn. I had had a good day and I had a sunburnt nose. The sun had shone bright on the trouted tributaries of the Test and in the cool of the evening, roe deer stepped out of the woodland to fill their bellies on the spring grass growing by the stubbly fields of wheat, barley and corn.

The Cricketers was busy and I had not reserved a table. There was high chatter and the bar was propped by the well fed and the well watered. It seemed no-one in Longparish wanted to cook on that Saturday. The food was expensive, the cheapest, a pub favourite, was cod and chips so I had that. With a pint. Came to £15 or thereabouts. That’s much more expensive than my local and very good fish and chip shop fish or my local bar’s beer. The fillet had bones in, the peas were tough and I had to ask for tartar sauce. I thought I would remedy this initial bad impression with an attempt at their homemade deserts menu.

I had the chocolate and amaretto pot topped with toasted flaked almonds. The top was covered with almonds at least two flakes thick and I resisted the temptation to stir them in and treat the whole thing like a crunch corner. The chocolate was smooth and sweet but had a Cadbury like ordinariness about it, there was a hint of amaretto masked by the whack of crunchy almonds on top. Why add amaretto? It makes the whole thing sound swankier. A trick also used in the considerably higher quality William Curley, ooh you say, sponge soaked in Kirsch, how swanky! It’s an unnecessary addition.

You could eat and eat and eat a thousand portions of the chocolate pot, but only because it lacked any real richness or sumptuousness. No exciting tang of raspberry hidden underneath, no strong sweet coffee to compliment the almond and chocolate, it was in fact little more than a crunch corner.

I had no chance to try The Plough Inn although I did have one sandwich there for lunch. It had the similar unsatisfactory ratio of cost to quality. They had napkins rolled and decoratively peaked in the wine glasses on one laid table. I expect it’s much the same.

Township Rebellion // Rage Against the Machine

2010-04-20T08:47:00.000+01:00

I wasn't very inspired for the title of this one. The MP3 wotsit chose for me.

A while ago I posted that my lovely friend had asked for a bit of assistance with a very large cake she'd been asked to make for Transition Town Kingston's Big Launch Party.

We had a little planning meeting (chips in the pub) and came up with a lot of ideas, the best being an allotment themed cake. It fits with the ethos you see. I can't quite remember what size we considered, but after reporting back we discovered that it was to be much, much bigger. To feed 200-250 people.

So we re-planned.

We ended up making 3 big sheets of cake, just a bit bigger than an A4 piece of paper. Which was less than requested, but any bigger would have been a lot harder and a lot messier.

We made one chocolate, one vanilla and one lemon. We started after work on Friday and ended up in bed at three o'clock. But in that time we did the three cakes and most of the modelling of sheds and vegetables and tripods for the decorating, and I had covered one cake in sugarpaste.

So after oversleeping a little we got back to it at around twelve. Covering the cakes in sugar paste was hard as they were so huge. So they all got a bit of patching in the end.
Putting the bits on was fun, there was debate about whether the chickens were to scale.. I said no, but I was wrong, they looked great in the end.

Then the nervous car journey and unloading. Then the praise and admiration. I hate that bit. I would have quite happily run away, but did the brave thing and got myself a tad drunk over the course of the evening.

They struggled to get rid of it all, one was donated to an allotment AGM, another to Kingston Horticultural Society and I took half of the rest for the lads at work - I think they'll eat anything put in front of them so they shouldn't mind that it was three days old.

I am glad that it's over, it was such a huge project and I enjoyed it a lot, but I struggled a bit with not having the original vision in my head to work to so was a little behind with helping and at points wasn't as helpful as I could have been.

The Rabbit Hole // In This Moment

2010-04-05T14:41:00.001+01:00

I'm laid up in bed being ill and pathetic. Which is fine, as it is a bank holiday and I had no plans. I forced myself to get up to find some food and the Doctor Who easter egg my brother and niece gave me looked massively inviting. Especially as it came with marshmallows. So it is now sat next to me in the form of hot chocolate waiting to be drunk.
I hope Jonny won't mind as we were meant to share this egg, but I'll give him some of another one to make up for it.

Yesterday we had a big family lunch, and for pudding I did the unthinkable and baked a cheesecake. I wouldn't have done this if I'd chosen the pudding, but I rather stupidly said to Mum 'find something I haven't done before and buy the stuff and I'll do it.'

I am in general very anti baked cheesecake as I've never had a good one. They get a skin on when you bake them, and I just think it would be so much nicer if left to chill.
My one was tasty, but I couldn't eat the edge as it did get a skin on it. Also because by the time I got to that bit I was stuffed and overdone. I'd served up Libby sized portions and really the only one who could finish them easily was my big brother, who is in training for the marathon.

After lunch we had the egg hunt where Mum and Dad hide eggs around the back of our house (I'd love to be able to say garden one day) and we all manage to find enough childish excitement to go and find them.

On the egg front I got more than I ever would have done when I was a child. It was one big egg and the hunt back then. This year I got the one from brother, a percy pig one from my parents, a small lindt bunny from my parents, a cow from Jonny and the other lindt bunny from Jonny's mum.
It is not a good thing.

And Doctor Who is back on TV! I was nervous but enjoyed it a lot, I think I'll get used to Matt Smith as the Doctor, but still managed to count all the things he said that Ten also said and cried a little bit when they showed all the past Doctors.

It has been a good Easter.

Dude (Looks Like a Lady) // Aerosmith

2010-04-03T17:11:00.001+01:00

Happy Easter everyone! I'm having a relaxed weekend while Jonny is off seeing family. We met up with friends yesterday for a day in the pub, we got quite settled in and played cards and backgammon and Jonny arranged an egg hunt! It was really good fun, despite being pushed in the back in competition for an egg.

Jonny took some lovely pictures for me yesterday of the egg hunt eggs and the lindt bunnies his lovely Mum gave to us, one of which is sat next to me half eaten.

I must be the luckiest blogger ever, having a professional photographer at my command. I think he's amazing.

Oliver's Army // Elvis Costello

2010-03-31T14:35:00.001+01:00

I was taken for a fantastic supper last night by one of my beautiful friends. We went to Jamie's Italian in Kingston, which I've been to once before. I think when I went with Jonny fund guilt kicked in and we didn't have pudding. But last night I was practically forced into it. You can't get a better friend than one that'll make you eat pudding.
We shared a tuscan chocolate and hazelnut cake which came with poached fruits, and 3 scoops of icecream with a double helping of crushed cinder toffee on top. We had prune and armagnac, vanilla and third I can not remember - that could have had something to do with the wine.
The prune ice cream was lovely, and the honeycomb topping was perfect.
The tuscan chocolate and hazelnut cake was to die for, soft and warm and nutty, with a dark chocolate sauce.

I left feeling completely content and very full. I feel like I have a duty to go back and try the bakewell tart and the tiramisu.

Judy and the Dream of Horses // Belle and Sebastian

2010-03-30T15:39:00.004+01:00

Jonny and I have returned from a lovely weekend in Sussex with friends. The weather wasn't amazing, but we managed to get to Brighton for an afternoon, go for a long walk on Sunday, and Jonny and I went horse riding for a little bit on Monday. That was an interesting experience. Jonny got lumped with a bit of a rubbishly stubborn horse, but it was nice to go out onto the forest.
It's our 4th anniversary today. Gosh. It sort of makes my head hurt thinking about it, mostly because I feel old. But can't moan too much, as I got given the best present ever - a hot water bottle with Moomin on!! It's completely gorgeous and made me cry a little bit.
Jonny got the horse ride (maybe not the best present ever), a mushy CD and as requested, a massive carrot cake.

I used (again) the Hummingbird Bakery book. As we were going away with Becci I replaced the walnuts with tea-soaked sultanas, which I thought was a fantastic move. It ended up with juicy little explosions, though I'm not sure that the tea taste lasted enough.
The recipe required 300 grams of grated carrot. 'Pah, thats not much,' thought I, with no idea really how much it would be, 'I can do that by hand.'
I ended up covering the kitchen and myself in carrot. Next time I will get that super whizzy attachment for the blender out for that bit.

I was also wise enough to know that while the recipe said the mix should be baked in 3 parts that I could bake it in one. And not line the tin properly.
I really don't know what was going on in my brain on Friday.
So once I'd made it all and put it in my unlined tin, I realised that it was a humungous cake and would probably take a couple of hours to cook. So I lined the outside of the tin like you would for fruit cake and tied it with parcel string.

It was big.

The string must have caught fire at some point early on as I checked the cake and it all looked a bit black on one edge. Anyway, it cooked in about 2 hours as predicted and the top got sliced off and sampled and then I had it on my lap for the journey to Sussex. Nice and warm.
I iced it that evening with cream cheese frosting, and tiny sugar paste bunnies and petals. There was also a big bunny eating blossom on top in homage to the blossom eating bunny Jonny and I once saw on a walk together. That bit wasn't so great though, as I can't draw, and my brother drew me a rabbit on wheels and my mum drew me a bit of a dodgy but satisfactory bunny, that didn't quite work in sillhouette.

But it was very tasty, and the four of us managed to demolish it in not very long. Sometimes we even had it for breakfast; a good reason to get out of bed early while on holiday.

Printer Jam // Mistabishi

2010-03-22T14:30:00.001Z

I'm going to make a massive thing of this - I managed to go to Richmond without going into William Curley! I wanted to, but I resisted by running late for the show we were going to, and by the time that was done it was closed. It's a good thing because I am out of money and would have had to shamefully beg someone to buy me chocolate.

Anyway, I was in Richmond to see the lovely Becci's dance show. She'd entered a choreography competition, and her entry was incredible. She quite rightly won. As we were all quite hungry the four of us headed to Pizzeria Rustica for a carb fix. J left after a glass of wine leaving 3 of us to our pizza and pasta. None of us could have complained about this bit. It was lovely, I will reccomend it.

We decided pudding was necessary and ordered Banoffee Pie and Baileys and Coffee Cheesecake.
What a dissapointment. We were dished up fundamentally the same thing. A biscuit base topped with cream.

On mine, the cream had been flavoured with coffee and had some inedible coffee beans plonked on top and then drowned in straight Baileys. Cheesecake isn't ever just cream is it? Please let me know if I'm wrong.. but still, it was unsweetened and bitter and way too boozy. I would have prefered the Baileys to be actually in the cream.
I didn't finish it. I think that says it all, I can't remember the last time I didn't finish something.

On Becci's the cream was sort of bananary with a layer of toffee between the cream and the biscuit. This gave it a bit of sweetness and was a bit tastier, but still it wasn't mind blowing.

Definately go for the pizza though.

In other news I am cracking down on my diet in an attempt to make clothes fit for Whitby Goth Weekend at the end of April, but I did have a Feast today. I can't get enough of those at the moment.

Mother // John Lennon

2010-03-15T17:50:00.001Z

I just had a very busy weekend. I am quite knackered. And I ache all over. That would be down to over doing it at Ballroom I suppose. And then going to the gym yesterday.

You see, the problem with this love of all things sweet is that I'm getting fat. I didn't really notice as at work I tend to go for comfy skirts that sit on my waist and give the illusion of having no hips. Friday evening ended in a massive panic when nothing would fit. Not even the dress that I bought when I was the fattest I'd ever been.
That means I'm now fatter than I have ever been. Gosh. If it is of interest in the end I had to make the dress into a skirt and wear a top.
Anyway in conclusion this all means that I am going to the gym, and anytime now my cravings for sweet things should be replaced by cravings for peas. This could be damaging to the blog for a short while.

The other part of my busy weekend was Mothers Day. It started with an almighty strop because the card I had made was shit, and I couldn't be arsed with getting up stupidly early (9.30 am) to go to Church.
It seems to be tradition now that I don't bother with gifts and just attempt to do all the cooking. I made a chilli and a pudding that Mum had eyed up from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.
It was a chocolate brownie base, with cheesecake and then a raspberry cream on top.
I think the jist of it was that you bake the brownie, then stick cheesecake on top, then bake it again and then stick the cream on. I don't trust myself or my oven and decided that I really didn't fancy baking brownie twice.

So I made black bottomed cupcakes, which is pretty much the same thing. Chocolate sponge with a dollop of vanilla cheesecake all baked at once. Then to make it more puddingy I made the raspberry cream to blob on.

Issues; I didn't read the recipe and got massively confused when after adding all the wet ingredients the mix was still dry. I'd missed the bit about 125ml of water. Mum had to read it to me. Blame the hangover please.
After adding the water the mix turned into a dough. I'm sure I'd measured it correctly.
Anyway, this is where I went wrong. I sploshed in a load of milk until it was a trustworthy consistency. This isn't helpful for anyone else looking to make these. But you know.. It was a large splosh.

Then the cheesecakey bit.. I whizzed it all up like it said and it was very very runny. So I ended up putting the same amount of cream cheese in again. This meant that I over-mixed it and in the oven it split.

But anyway they were very tasty and I've eaten 3. No more treats for me for a while.

Sweets For My Sweet // The Searchers

2010-03-11T13:47:00.002Z

I'm eating a Creme Egg, which handily reminded me I have a blog! Oops.
And then I thought I should probably blog about more than a creme egg, so I got a packet of chocolate buttons too.

News update from my sugary world;

A lovely friend has asked me to do a cake with her for an event, and we had a very excited planning meeting. We've now been told that they're expecting two hundred people!! So that's all very exciting and nerve wracking. It's just under a month away so expect more on that...

Some other lovely friends thought of me (me!!) for their wedding cake, and they are thinking about having cupcakes. I'm relieved that they want cupcakes. It will ease me in to the world of weddings I think.
They also asked Jonny to do the photography! We're like some kind of wedding enterprise.
Please enter possible business names in the form of puns in the comments.

And I have been geeking out and reading as much as I possibly can on Doctor Who forums, and it looks like Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor will have a sweet tooth!
This makes it just a little bit easier for me to move on from Ten. Though why couldn't he have had the sweet tooth?
You can never go wrong with David Tennant eating...

Bed of Roses // Mindless Self Indulgence

2010-03-04T10:09:00.001Z

On Saturday I dragged my friends out of bed at a stupid time in the morning and threw my parents out of the house.
I was quite worried that I wouldn't get the cakes done in time for them to be picked up, but it turns out Matt and Will are pros at icing cupcakes.

It all went quite well. Becci and Chay joined us to do some extreme sprinkling and all the cakes turned out very nicely.

I wasn't the only one making cakes for this church thing, but I'm pretty arrogant and am happy to say that mine were the best.
Well.. they must've been. No children were let near them during the making..
Apart from these two..

The actual church service was to celebrate Thinking Day during the centenary of Guiding, and it was lovely. Really nice. Though I don't like churches.

I'm afraid that in my desperation to get me and my friends out of the house when my parents returned meant I got no pictures of the finished product, but they were beautiful. Trust me.

The Shoop Shoop Song // Cher

2010-02-25T12:39:00.000Z

I'm in the middle of doing my first batch for the big seven five.
I doubled the amount of the recipe. The mix looked a lot thicker and my genius stroke of putting it in a jug to pour into cases failed massively when it was too thick to pour and just blobbed everywhere and made a mess.
Anyway. They look like they're rising so I can't complain.
I'm all weighed out for the next batch, and I'm massively content. But that could be down more to Cher than baking.

23 down, 52 to go.

Comfort Eagle // Cake

2010-02-22T20:47:00.000Z

A second lot of cupcake practice for the big batch. It's this weekend! Eep! I'm starting to think I must be mental for agreeing to make 75 cupcakes.

This practice went well. I didn't overfill the cases and they rose beautifully. This time we were organised enough to remember to put vanilla in the frosting.
Jonny doesn't really get my frosting style. But I don't like to put loads on and I don't like it to look like we've slathered it on with a hot knife. Even though we have.
I can't explain why. I just prefer them to look a little rustic.

Enjoy the following cupcake porn!

Out of the Frying Pan (And into the Fire) // Meat Loaf

2010-02-19T23:00:00.002Z

It's be quite an amazing, important week for me.

Firstly, it's pancake season. I think that there should be a law passed that means everyone must have at least one pancake on shrove tuesday.
I am very passionate about pancakes. My Mum's are the best. I am passionate about what a pancake should be. Thin. Batter made with egg. None of this vegan malarky.
I've got into quite a few debates about pancakes, and always run out of arguments, I guess it's just my snobbishness in the end.
Jonny decided to put my passion to the test and cooked me 4 pancakes for a blind tasting.
They were to be one animal-product-tastic-homemade batter;

one vegan homemade batter (soya milk and flour AKA wallpaper paste), one made from Shake-to-Make Betty Crocker pancake mix and a mystery one...
I tested each one with lemon and sugar. I thought it would be easy to work out which was which.
I was massively wrong. I guessed the mystery one, it was foul. Disgusting. Bleeurghh. This was a week ago and it still makes me feel a bit ill to think of it.
It was a ready made pancake from tesco. Need I say more.
My favourite turned out to be the Betty Crocker, which is massively shameful, but I will say that hours of product development went into making sure that mixture turns out the perfect pancake everytime.

I also thought the vegan one was the non-vegan. I'm humiliated. But heh now I know that I will eat either.

Betty Crocker:

Delia:

Tesco:

Vegan:

On the actual day I had lunch at Jonny's which involved my first savoury pancake - bacon and maple syrup. Wow. I'll have that again. And then for pudding we had nutella filled ones.
Then I went home to my Mum and she cooked me 4 - all of which were lemon and sugar.
This took my pancake total up to 11.
Then on Wedenesday we invited a load of friends over for a pancake evening

I couldn't even begin to guess how many pancakes were cooked. We made the batter using 10 eggs and got through a block of butter frying them. We'd asked people to bring toppings. Lots of fresh fruit, lemon, nuttella and maple syrup. Plus some dodgy icecream sauces courtesy of Will.

Oh and I know that marmite filled pancakes were consumed.
I ate 9 more that night. So I have had 20 pancakes in a week. I'm proud. Nothing will stop me being proud. Oh bugger my ipod has picked this fantastic moment to play fat bottomed girls.

Secondly it's been an important week for me as my lovely boss left and I've stepped into her shoes and taken on the role of officey manager sort of thing. Which is very exciting. To be honest it doesn't change my job that much, but I am allowed to hit people if they don't recycle properly.

Thirdly (last one, promise) it's been an important week as I came off my medication this week. On Tuesday infact. I was only ill for 6 months and it sometimes seems like a very long time with the changes I went through with my career and then sometimes it seems like a massively short time. I was very ill when I was at my lowest, and now I'm back on form and properly happy. When it started it felt like it would be a lot longer.
So a gushing thank you to all my amazing friends and my brothers who kept me going, especially Becci who I'm sure would have done anything I asked during that time.
And mostly to Jonny who got the worst of it but was there for me every single time I needed him. I don't think I will ever be able to do anything for him on that scale.

Civilised // Pitchshifter

2010-02-07T18:45:00.002Z

Will decided that it was time for my long-awaited Yumchaa reveiw, and we went for lunch yesterday.

We headed to the new Camden shop which is completely unnoticable unless you know where you're going.
We had a look at the range of teas and tried to order. There was only one woman serving. It was lunch-time. In Camden. It took a while, to say the least. None of the food was labelled, so she had to run off what the sandwiches were, despite there not being much choice. I don't want to dwell on the sandwiches, as thats not really my interest, but they were toasted beyond belief. And took forever. Mine went in first and came out last. I had to swap with Jonny as my teeth wouldn't have coped.
Anyway, we eventually got our tea in nice white pots with accompanying strainers and we found a seat.

The actual shop is beautiful. It's all mismatched furniture and rustic looking cottagey kitchen tables, paisley wallpaper, brick walls and a beautiful light feature with hundreds of different lamps. There are lots of tables but still plenty of space to move around.
It aims for cosy, welcoming tea shop. It fails. It's got no actual atmosphere. It's too quiet. The cakes are displayed on a counter top in cheap baking trays.
It attracts trendy businessy type people, it's more laptop friendly than come and slump for half an hour and enjoy tea. It's more come and look like you care about tea while doing work.
I know that Yumchaa have quite a large student customer base. Well, I assume this as they have deals aimed at getting students in to work, which is very nice.. but.. it makes it feel more like Starbucks.
It's trendy. Aimed at yummy mummies and art students and metrosexual business men.
Which is fine. I have no problem with any of those stereotypes. I lie, clearly.
But anyway, it's just not for me. My ideal tea shop is sofas and books and friendly relaxed service.

Let's move on to the important part of a tea shop, the tea!
The whole business is based on bastardised tea. They have good policies, loose leaf, tea pot, fair trade, good quality, but then they take this fantastic tea and add stuff. Dried fruit, flowers, spices, caramel, nuts and chocolate.
And it's not even stuff that compliments or enhances the natural flavour of the tea. It drowns it out. I think it destroys it.
If you want to drink something that tastes like dried flowers then just take some dried flowers and add boiling water. Please? Don't bring good tea into it.

They do sell the lovely tea unbastardised, I will add. And I will happily drink this. They have the tea leaves in little cups for smelling when you order so you can make an informed decision on what tea to have.
If you're lucky they will make it clear that you don't have to have fruity flowery spicy nutty chocolatey tea, but this varies from shop to shop in my experience.

And now for the cakes. There were about seven varieties to choose from. I picked a brownie (always a good indicator), a slab or rich looking chocolate cake, and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.

The brownie was good, a lovely texture, a bit too nutty, but nowhere near chocolatey enough. Still the best of the three.
The chocolate cake was dry, only saved by the icing. Still, ok I guess. It was edible.
The lemon drizzle cake was stale. Old, dry and (I thought it was) flavourless. Like they'd forgotten to drizzle it and then left it out on the side for four days.

Oh and when I ordered the cakes I was handed them on a tray. I requested forks and was pointed to the table of what I assumed was take-away cutlery. How wrong I was. We had to use wooden forks. Apparently this is sustainable.
But it's not. Metal cutlery is reusable... fair enough wooden for takeaway. Metal for eat in please! I used my teaspoon in protest.
There was also a lack of sugarpots, I had to use a little plastic sachet which automatically ruined the illusion of class and atmosphere of the entire shop by leaving torn up bits of paper left on the table.

My friends think I am overly fussy for not loving yumchaa. And I know that it is mostly my snobbishness that prevents me from liking it. But I can't help that! I have standards and I will not be tricked into believing that I am consuming tea in the epitome of civilisation.
There are better places to go. Sorry.

I only feel the need to apologise for not liking it as a lot of my friends enjoy this place, and I am massively outnumbered. But meh. It's the truth.

Pictures to follow, J is away on business.

Billy Brown // Mika

2010-02-07T09:53:00.000Z

Yesterday was the birthday party of one of our best friends, Will.
We managed to keep it a complete surprise from him, and I think it was a total success in the end, well he seemed happy enough.

When I make cakes for people I like to put some thought into them, make them a bit more personal. I had two ideas for Will.. wine and guitars.
We decided against making a replica of his beloved bass, as it's beautiful and a cake would just be a charicature of it, and its imperfections would have probably annoyed him.
The other idea, wine, needed practice and I ran out of time and didn't fancy taking the risk of errecting a cake held up with wine bottles without knowing if it would work or not.
So I had to re-think. Will is one of my only friends who has an interest in proper chocolate, he thinks the darker better.
So I gave myself the challenge of making the chocolatiest cake in the world.

I made the actual cake on Thursday evening, using James Martin's cola cake recipe, the only chocolate cake recipe I trust to work now.
I planned to fill it with a dark ganache and top it with Helm Magical Icing and then put as many chocolates as possible on top, all bought from William Curley.

I'd asked my dad to buy some 70% chocolate for the ganache, as Will would approve but it wouldn't be so dark everyone else would hate it.
So I happily made the ganache but when I tried it.. bleurgh.. it was bitter and unpalatable. We checked the packet and it had been 85% chocolate. It could not have gone in the middle of the cake, and I had to get back to the office.
It was decided we'd take the risk of adding sweetened cream cheese, in an attempt to keep the perfect consistency but make it a bit more edible.
It worked, sort of. It solidified in the cake, so wasn't the gooey filling it should have been, but it was still tasty.

Helm Magical Icing is a mixture of butter, cocoa powder, icing sugar and evaporated milk. It makes a silky smooth covering that you can just pour over the cake, and it gives it a lovely shiny coating.

Then the fun bit of covering the cake in chocolates, cinder toffee and nuts. We were quite pleased with how it looked in the end, and I think everyone at the party liked it, even if they didn't manage to finish the Libby-sized portions I dished out.

Hippy Hippy Shake // The Swinging Blue Jeans

2010-02-04T13:00:00.001Z

Today was the day for my Friday-Lunch-Time-Treat.
And due to the weather, it needed to be exceptionally filthy and disgusting.

So I went to Shakeaway.
Partly because it's the closest dirty treat to my work, and partly because I love it.
And honestly, honestly I meant to order a regular, but the word 'LAAARGE' just popped out my mouth and I couldn't really change my mind after that.
I was going to try and justify it on here, but a milky way milkshake is dispicable. How on earth can I harp on about Amedei, and then the next day confess to a love of mars chocolate blended with ice cream. I think I'm a hypocrite.

In fact, I know I'm a hypocrite, as I will happily shout at anyone who likes juice with bits in, or will mix something back together that has separated (wrong, wrong, wrong.. just throw it away and never buy it again), but the chewy lumps of nougat are fantastic.

But I'm happy. And while I know I will have a sugar rush and have to eat more once I have the inevitable dip, it's worth it.

Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S I Love You) // Chef

2010-02-03T19:43:00.004Z

I've just been for a brief trip (again) to William Curley, and I was stupid enough to go without having a firm plan of what I wanted.
This meant I ended up having a hot chocolate, a bakewell tart and a milk chocolate rocher. Only so I could have time to ponder what I actually needed, of course.

Anyway, the one thing I can never resist, and christ knows how anyone else manages to resist it, is the sea salted caramel.
I can reel off a list of sea salty products;
A couture chocolate
Sea Salt Caramel Bar
Sea Salt Caramel Tart
Sea Salt Caramel Spread
Sea Salt Caramel Mou (coated in a thick, dark chocolate)
Sea Salt Caramel Mou (Just in a wrapper, so indulgently sticky and fun)
I even got to try a sea salt caramel eclair while working there... divine.

I heard that people put the spread on toast, in cakes, on brioche, in porridge, while I shamefully enjoy sneaky spoonfuls from the jar.

While it originally sounds like an odd and wrong thing, salt in something sweet, it's not. It's a match made in heaven. I have no idea whoever thought of it, but they are a genius. The salt brings out the flavour of the caramel, and cuts through the sweetness of the sugar.
And it's addictive. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Pictured is the sea salt caramel bar, an easy grab and go fix, for when picking out individual chocolates sometimes brings on feelings of guilt about how much money you could be spending, this bar gives you the option of not thinking.
A thick layer of beautifully dark Amedei chocolate to crunch through, and then you're at the liquid centre.

Go on, it's really not something to be missed.

Cups and Cakes // Spinal Tap part two

2010-02-02T17:25:00.005Z

Libb is napping on the sofa, she just told me to stop distracting her from the nap. I blame her day of sugar and cake for this afternoon nap. Up to now she has eaten:

Weetos
Hazelnut Hot Chocolate
Blueberry Muffin (skinny)
Carrot Cake
Cheese and Pickle sandwiches
Cupcake trimmings
Frosting
Carrot Cake
Marmite Rice Cake
Coffee Cake
Cupcake (with frosting)

She also had two apples which apparently makes it all ok. Thats just under 50% of all things eaten today containing the word "cake". I'm surprised she's not eaten any cups if I'm honest.

Anyhow this extensive cake eating is half due to lots of birthdays at work and also training for her 75-cup cakeathon thats coming up at the end of Feb. She brought round 6 of the trial cupcakes at lunch and we set to work making the frosting; butter, loads of icing sugar and a spot of milk, unfortunately libb had got "goseberry" food colouring but thought that gooseberries were yellow not green so we ended up with a pastel green icing instead of the pale yellow she'd planned for.

The frosting was lovely, firm but still mouldable for easy decorating. We were working against the clock as Lib only has a 45 minute lunch-break, and quickly discovered that you need a big bowl to make this icing as most of the sugar ended up on the floor when first combining it with the butter.

We popped the icing on top of the cakes and shaped it with a hot knife but I found it very tricky to get a rustic heap of icing, Lib says I smooth it all too much, anyway this was just a trial run right?

Anyway with the base of yellow (oops I mean green) frosting on we added the finishing decoration. Blue, pink and white sugar balls where accompanied by sugar dolphins, Hearts and stars respectively so we ended up with two blue, two pink and two yellow (the stars were white & yellow). It was immediately apparent that the green didn't really go. A pale cream/yellow base would have allowed the decoration colours to stand out much more clearly but at least this time there's a next time and I think there's some powder yellow in Libbs' cake toolbox so I'll remind her of that when I bring her a wake up cup of tea.

Cups and Cakes // Spinal Tap

2010-02-01T20:52:00.004Z

Part One.

I have begun the grand cupcake rehearsal. I'm full of fear and excitement as I've put myself up to make 75 cupcakes for a big district guiding event at the end of February.
Which is probably crackers, as I've never attempted a cupcake in my life, and have always been a bit anti-cupcake, more of a fairy cake girl, and then I was a bit snobbish for this trend which is seemingly tailored for yummy mummies.

Anyway, the challenge was too tempting. So.

Practice run one;
Vanilla Cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Book.

I used to enjoy a wander along Portabello Road to the Hummingbird Bakery. Made a hard day at work and long journey almost worth it. And they are one of the most highly regarded cupcake bakers in London.
So I put myself in their hands and currently have some buns in the oven.

I only got 7 cakes, not the 12 I should have. I assume this is because they realise most people would pop to the supermarket for bun cases, which is standard size, whereas I've used larger ones.
The mix was like pancake batter. It seems to be mostly milk. I have no faith in the professionals and I doubt that they will rise.

Watch this space...

One Hour later...
I think I must have over-filled the cases, but they taste gorgeous! I'll have another go soon and put less mix in. Tomorrow I'll have a bash at carving these ones down and icing them..

Cherry, Cherry // Neil Diamond

2010-01-31T21:21:00.006Z

Today was a trip to Kooks in Richmond for some necessary cupcake supplies. I have a large batch to make for the end of February, and as I have never made cupcakes before some practice runs would be wise.

Any trip to Richmond isn't complete without a trip to William Curley (I take no responsibility in the case of you looking at the online Boutique and spending a lot of money).
This shop is my heaven. I think that while I worked there I sampled everything that they made, and loved everything.
When I left I knew that I'd make an honest attempt at being their best customer. I've let myself down a little, as I have reverted back to my old ways of eating cheap chocolate, but if I had the money I'd know that William Curley chocolate would be all I ate.

I was pleased to see the one of the lovely chefs I had the pleasure of working with, and perhaps a little bit more pleased to see a new item of patisserie in the cabinet.
I was told that it was a cherry and praline entremet, and had been designed especially for an upcoming competition. Handily there were five, and we were en route to a lunch where there would be five of us.
So I excitedly snapped them up, along with a sea salted caramel bar and a white chocolate and raspberry bar, my Mum's favourite.

The entremets were dark chocolate mousse, cherry compote with a feuillatine and praline biscuit and a chocolate sponge, all finished with a perfect dark chocolate glaze,dark chocolate discs and a boozy griottine cherry, with a flake of real gold, just to remind you how decadent what you're about to eat is.

The balance of mousse and compote was perfect, though I wouldn't expect anything less really.. the praline biscuit was a perfect crisp contrast to the soft mousse and ugh it was just heaven.
Everyone agreed, and there were squabbles as we tried to steal each others.
OK, I admit that it was only me trying to steal Jonny's.

My only complaint about these divine desserts is that they were too small. They are slightly smaller than the normal portion size, but the price reflects that.
All the entremets are fantastically good value for money in fact, the amount of layers that each one has, and the time put into them to make them just right, the quality of the ingredients used.. you see I'm swooning just thinking about them.

I think these cherry ones are a guaranteed competition winner, and I hope that they make regular appearances in the patisserie cabinet. Though even if you can't get your hands on one of these all of the others are equally as delicious.

I think there are going to be a lot more posts on the shop that houses Britain's best chocolates...

Hollaback Girl // Gwen Stefani

2010-01-16T15:56:00.009Z

A long week was rounded up by a delve round the bakeware section of TK-Maxx, with the lovely Becci.
We found a lot of great stuff, including a black le creuset tea pot! £10! It's beautiful and Becci snapped it up so I'll be round to hers for tea soon. I saw a lot of stuff that I would like, but resisted everything apart from four mini loaf tins.
Cakes are good, but tiny cakes are excellent. I don't know why.

And when you have new loaf tins, there is only one thing you should christen them with.

Banana Bread!

We used How to be a Domestic Goddess, by Nigella Lawson, for the recipe.
We didn't change anything, other than soaking the finished loaves in a bit of rum and glazing them. Oh and I put a split in the cake half way through cooking, which is an old William Curley habit. Jonny thinks it was unnecessary. I don't.

The bananas were not ripe as the recipe states, as it was a spontaneous decision to make it today and we had none in stock. I just made sure that they had a proper good mash before going in.

The cakes have turned out beautifully. Moist and moreish. I'm not allowed to eat anymore though until I've had some lunch.

The only problem I had was that we cooked 1 recipes worth, but took quite a lot out of the large cake in order to make the small ones. This means that the big cake is wide and a bit flat, even though it has risen and definately did not sink when cooling.

Break Stuff // Limp Bizkit

2010-01-15T13:19:00.002Z

Warning: This post contains irrational biscuit anger.

I had a scummy, lazy lunch of crisps and coca cola. I knew this would not sustain me through my boring afternoon, so purchased a packet of fruit shortcake biscuits.

Now. I intended to leave them in my bag until I needed them, but knowing they were there was too much and I opened them after being back at work for about ten minutes.

Oh God I'm going to sound like my Dad, but the sodding packet seal thing. Marrrgh.
They may as well put it half way down the pack.
It is in fact seven biscuits down.

This means that I might now have to eat eight biscuits in order to be able to shut the packet.
I may not want to eat eight biscuits! Think of the people who can't eat eight biscuits!
And then think of the people like me, who possess no will power, and will have to eat not just the necessary eight biscuits, but the whole pack.
Now. If I put this into a formal letter to McVities, will they send me many free packs of fruit shortcake? I have taken a picture as proof, and I am considering weighing myself before and after eating the biscuits and documenting this as further evidence.

All in all, this has given me an excuse to rant, hence blog title of my current favourite angry song,conveniently biscuit related.

So come and get it.

Spit It Out // Slipknot

2010-01-11T16:00:00.003Z

I take back anything good I may have said about Candy Cakes, and remove any chances I might have given them.
I had a moment of weakness when all I needed was cakey stodge. A nice muffin, a nice blueberry cheesecake muffin.
They didn't have one, but the man serving, still a bit bumbling and rubbish, pointed me in the direction of a raspberry and apple one.
They didn't have much variety, so I plumped for that one.

I can see now why I was pointed towards that one, it obviously needed selling, though why anyone would let produce like that be sold lord only knows.
It was heavy and solid and had none of the soft crumb that the blueberry cheesecake did. It was completely off and flavourless.
I suppose it would have been hard to tell, due to the obscene amount of icing on top, which had leached through to the top of the muffin, making it the best bit as it was slightly moist and edible, but I dread to think how long the cake had sat in that shop, and how many others were in a similar state.

They did have more stock, but that seemed to have replaced the variety of muffins, and it included macarons. Ugh. I can't even be bothered to write about the vanilla one I bought. They weren't interesting and they weren't amazing.

Hopefully the residents of Kingston will learn how lazy this shop is, and it will fail in a small amount of time. However the general appeal of brightly coloured humungous cakes might be too much for some people to resist.

Ice Ice Baby // Vanilla Ice

2010-01-09T19:11:00.006Z

Hope everyone is enjoying the cold snap we're having.

I'm feeling cold and slow but generally content. I went clubbing last night and it was brilliant. Lots of lovely people and good music. I failed in my objective to not drink. The medication I'm on forbids alcohol, but after some experiments I know that I can drink a little, be fine whilst merry and then put up with a massive hangover the next day.

Which is what I'm doing now.

I met with J and he popped to the shop to buy sausages and I popped to Paul to buy macarons. I'm quite obsessed by them, having been introduced to them by the lovely chefs at William Curley. I plan to get my hands on some of their macarons as soon as I can. Until then, I'm forced to go to Paul when I need my fix.
I usually get the vanilla, as find the praline ones a bit boring, and it's too cold for chocolate as the ganache goes unpleasantly hard.

I love the almond biscuit, and I am always envious of the perfect shell and feet, and the gooey middle that merges delightfully with the vanilla buttercream.
They're a simple pleasure, and while eating I try to forget the fact that they are made in a large factory and shipped out.. there is nothing on the website that refers to how and where the food is made, which seems to be a common factor with these chains.
It does get to me that the staff are dressed like chefs, I don't think it is necessary, and it also tricks people into believing the quality of the food is higher than it actually is.

The presentation annoys me too. Some of the cakes they put out to sell are sub-standard and look messy.
For now it is a necessary evil, I'm just waiting for someone to open a patisserie, or even a macaron shop next door to my work. There are shops for sale and I can guarantee good business.

If you're interested in furthering your own love of macarons, I highly recommend the blog Mactweets, it's complete macaron porn. It explains macaron terms like feet and shell and is packed with fantastic ideas and gorgeous photos.

Turning Japanese // The Vapors

2010-01-04T09:13:00.006Z

My cake playlist seems to be getting less and less about cake and more about tenuous links.

Anyway, apologies for being away so long, was concentrating on enjoying christmas and new year. All very successful and lovely in the end.

Yesterday was a much deserved trip for afternoon tea with two girlfriends.
We were heading to Yumchaa, but they had closed early, so my thoughts on them will wait for another time.
We dithered and decided to walk until we saw somewhere (harder than you may think in Soho).
And there it was, like a big, blue, cakey beacon.

Yauatcha.

I've been wanting to go for a while, having heard of it whilst cheffing, but never had a chance. I think the girls saw this and we ventured in to have a look.

We asked to see a tea menu, sort of thinking that this might involve everything they offer, as they are a tea room as well as a dim sum restaurant.
We got to look at a tea list, and were told the desert menu was verbal, and roughly seven-ish pounds a portion.

We were shown to our seats, low affairs at smart minimalist tables. We were then each given a wine list. I know that the lady who seated us wasn't waiting on us, but some communication on their part wouldn't have gone amiss, as it led to bit of an awkward explanation of what we wanted.
The verbal menu of pattisserie was slightly fustrating, as there were about eight items, that we needed listing several times in order to choose.
Eventually we got there, and managed to order.

I believe that I have the best friends in the whole world. They know that when it comes to pudding I'm not really capable of sharing, but am happy to try others. It seems we're all quite suited to each other, I'll detail what we ordered;

Me: Pear and Almond Tart // Assam Tea First Flush
M : Chocolate and Passionfruit Cake // Jasmine Green Tea
B : Lemon Cheesecake // Four Seasons Blue Oolong Tea

B was the only one brave enough to pick a random (but reasonably priced!) tea to try. I was a wimp and stuck to what I knew I would like.
After ordering, M said she'd probably prefer the tart, and I agreed that I'd probably prefer the chocolate passionfruit cake...

So the tea came, in beautiful pots and the waitresses served a cup at the table.

Our cakes came soon after, beautifully presented. I seem to be failing as a food photographer, nerves got the better of me and the pictures I took were a bit crap.
Once food was suitably documented, we began the tasting and swapping.

The pear and almond tart came with chocolate icecream, and was very nice, if a little boring. M liked this the best so had that.

The lemon cheesecake came with watermelon sorbet, and a cool vanilla mousse with brandy snaps. Again, I found this a bit boring, but it suited B perfectly.

The passionfruit and chocolate cake came with wasabi icecream, and it was completely amazing. It was a layer of chocolate sponge, then a passionfruit jelly topped with milk chocolate mousse and a scattering of hazelnuts. This was destined for me.

All of the deserts were lovely, but I was hoping for a little more Japanese inspiration. And looking at their website I realised that if we'd been seated upstairs we would have been able to see the pastry chefs at work. But I suppose that I wouldn't have been much company.

The price reflected the fact that it's a michelin starred restaurant, though at around £13 a head it seemed very reasonable. The tea was on average £4, but the pots were enormous.

We'd all like to go back I think, we were watching people eat dim sum, and it looked incredible, but that may be beyond all of our means for a while, and I know I'd rather spend my money on cake.

Trees // Pulp

2009-12-16T11:38:00.012Z

Libby left me with the worst of the cake trio to sample at my leisure yesterday afternoon. If you hadn't guessed already I got the one with green on top:

The cake is made of: Factory consistency, boring cupcake sponge; pink butter style icing, white chocolate chips, Green confectionary chrismas tree (1cm in thickness). This would be a fairly bog standard novelty cake, seasonal to boot, unortunately it has one serious downfall, one component is amiss, you guessed it, it's the green bit.

I hesitate to call it marshmallow but that's how the tree would be advertised if you brought it on its own. There's a sliding scale for the quality of marshmallowy confection and it's a steep one:

The cream of the crop: Homemade Marshmallow. James Martin said of this delicious stuff that you'll never go back to normal marshmallows again, he's almost right.
Packet marshmallows: the ones in supermarkets that are advertised as being "seductively soft" however they are primarily toasted around bonfires, or have their chewy monotonousness smothered by a dubious chocolate fountain, all seduction lost.
Flumps: machine uniform, 13 year old sugar rush fodder. Still palateable comfort food, often found at the seaside in cones bigger than most stomachs, good thing they compact.
Sugar coated Jelly Pop's: Do not compact, these were certainly popular last year filling many supermarket xmas shelves but I've not seen so many this year, possibly because after eating three you realise they're disgusting. Their texture is first grainy because of the sugar coating (coarse granulated sugar) which swiftly dissolves and you discover that the jelly pop is not a smooth jelly but slightly textured, almost mealy, it takes more than a glass of water before your mouth feels clean again. Then there's the taste, sweet of course but mainly: rank. They taste like nothing natural and you know you should be able to place the flavour, they're trying for flavour, unfortunately the thick coloring carries more aroma, like a cheap plastic panhandle that got too hot. If you eat too many you may get the sensation that there are chemical sores on your tongue.

This tree sweet was somewhere between 3. and 4. unfortunately for Candy Cakes the difference between the two is enormous. That is that Flumps are still paletable whereas the Jelly pops were a Christmas '08 phenomenon, they seemed like a good idea at the time, like investment banking, only this year everyone wants investment back!

I felt ill at the first nibble, soldiering on I finished the whole thing. I felt nauseous. It was so green, it tasted of green, it had the squashiness of mallow and the mealiness of a jelly pop. It had the same coarse sugar coating and was simply revolting. The sugar icing baubles were reminicient of gristle.

Unfortunately the problem goes deeper than this piece of evil confection, the cake structure shows the business model of this product, as Lib mentioned below there is no investment into the quality of the muffins and cakes. They are are not lovingly hand-crafted parcels of deliciousness, they're cheap, on trend, rubbish. The cake was acceptably moist but boring, the pink butter icing and so-so-so awful white choc was flavorless, the flavor of the disgusting one cm thick green thing had leeched into the pink icing which made it also revolting.

An otherwise boring cake has been made nauseating by this mistake of sugar and science. The second main function of food is to taste good, CandyCakes have skipped this stage and made cakes that LOOK good only. This sets a precident that I'm sure most of the other cakes live up to, made on the cheap to turn a profit. Unfortunately even the most fashionable cake eater couldnt stop themselves from turning green after eating this, but not as green as the tree, leave that shade to the scientists.

Killing in the Name // Rage Against The Machine

2009-12-15T13:07:00.008Z

Jonny told me yesterday that a new cupcake shop had opened in kingston. We've had a spat of openings over the past few months, but none very interesting. I'm interested to see how this new one does, as it's in a crap spot. The cafe that was there before did terribly.

I wandered down in my lunchbreak today, and was dissapointed to find that it's not anything new - but a chain. I'd been to the one in Kingly Court about a year ago.

Candy Cakes

So the new one in Kingston looks like everything a trendy cake shop should. All blues and pinks, cute little pouffes to perch on next to colourful little tables.
I went in.. and Killing in the Name was playing on the radio.
This made me laugh quite a bit, and I got odd looks from the staff at the counter.
I know that they just had a radio station on, and Rage was playing because of the Christmas number one chart battle.
Now, I'm all for some RATM, but in a cake shop? Maybe it's just a personal thing but I'd want the music to be as cute as the cakes.
The staff seemed a bit clueless, but I think the shop has only been open a few days, so for now we'll let that go.
I got three cakes, in the name of research. Unfortunately they could only tell me what one of them was.

I was dissapointed that they only wrapped them individually in plastic, not in a box like all the ones they had on display.

J and I split a blueberry cheesecake muffin, which had a lovely softness to it, and was crammed with blueberrys. There was a large splodge of sweet cream cheese in the middle. The only let down was the pink water icing. I know that muffins are never going to look that interesting unless you stick a whole sheet of shocking colour over the top, but the sweetness that it brought was just wrong. It just tasted like sugar. Jonny disagreed and said it doesn't really effect the overall taste.

After only half, I felt a bit sick. I had just had a big lunch though.
I can't really moan about the costs, these 3 came to £8.70, though looking at the receipt the pricing seems to be a bit random and we can't work out what cost what.
I'd hope that it's a reasonable cost, I can't seem to find any information about where or how they're made, and what with.
I've got the chocolatey looking nougat one in my bag for later and left the pink cupcake with a nasty looking Christmas tree on top for Jonny. If there are any further revelations we'll report back, but I doubt Candy Cakes will be replacing my usual lunch-time treats of macarons or percy pigs.

Sugar Daddy // Tom Jones

2009-12-13T01:24:00.008Z

Christmas Cake # 3, 4, 5 and 6

A marathon day of cake decoration. I managed to convince Jonny that he really wanted to stay and help.
A good day overall, though a brief nap was needed. I don't want to go into too much detail, as 12 christmas cakes is bound to become boring very soon.

3 - A bit too pink!

4 - All white - Couldn't outline the leaves as planned but I think it went down well.

5 - Becci's cake - snowscape. Nut free!

6 - Corporate order.. my work asked me to do a cake for our best customer. The problem came when the template Jonny had made was two inches too big. This was my fault. I got the cake size wrong. The design is our business logo, with a festive twist. I was willing to leave it as just the logo, but Jonny and my Uncle, and my Mother in fact, said it needed something more.

Swinging on a Star // Big Dee Erwin

2009-12-11T22:40:00.005Z

Christmas cake #2

I was left in the house alone to decorate the second cake, which is my present to my Uncle, who is staying for the night.
Having the house to myself allowed me a bit of time to rock out, then get down to the cake dec. I was very relaxed about this one... and it went very well! The marzipanning and sugar pasting were the best I've ever done.
I was quite shocked by this and remained completely uninspired for the detail until J arrived.
And look at what we made!!!

I'm so immensely chuffed. It was so satisfying, removing layers of icing, filling in, removing, filling in. I imagine I'll repeat this design for one or two of the other cakes I have to do, the only change I'd make would be to put less colouring in so the blue is more icy.

Sugar Coated Iceberg // Lightning Seeds

2009-12-09T19:36:00.009Z

Christmas Cake #1

I am half way through icing my first christmas cake - number one of twelve.

Started by levelling the top off - which I am always too generous with. This means that I end up with space at the bottom of the cake which will need generous stuffing with marzipan to level it up. I guess this is a good thing for those who love marzipan.
I got in from work and the decision to start icing tonight was spontaneous, which is leading to problem after problem. Firstly I don't have any apricot jam, only some kind of conserve - which I know is the same, and I'm being fussy.. but I like to have a cheap apricot jam so that there aren't any fruity lumps under my icing.

The fact that I had very little marzipan left meant I couldn't put the base on quite as well as I hoped. I can handle this, along as it is a comparitively smooth layer for the sugar paste, I don't really care what it looks like.

The final problem so far is that as my kitchen is stupidly small, I have all my cake dec equipment in tool boxes in my bedroom. This means that my room is getting messier and messier as I rush in and out.
I think I'm getting stressed out by nothing.

The next few stages should be a doddle as this cake is a gift, it doesn't need to be fancy, and they like a bit of ribbon bunged on. I'm a firm believer that ribbon shouldn't go on a cake unless it's completely ballsed up. So this gives me some space to go wrong...

...which I did. I was sort of gun-ho and just went for it and slopped my beautifully rolled sugar paste on to the wrong bit of cake, panicked and ripped it. In the end the patch up wasn't so obvious, but it got a bit jammy.
I had great fun using my new icing gun - a bit of a risky gadget. I'm using it to make ribbons for the bottom of the cakes, as I've decided royal icing and piping is too much of a faff. It works very nicely, but it's quite hard work on the arms, and I need to work out a way to block up the holes so I only get one ribbon.....

Finished with a simple glittery star and some silver and black ribbon - not much effort at all. Which is just what I needed to get me back into the swing of cake decorating.

Strange Fruit // Billie Holiday (Abel Meeropol)

2009-12-04T12:49:00.008Z

I went sloe picking with my mum in October. It’s a regular annual outing as the best sloes to be found are near where my grandmother and uncle live so there’s always somewhere to escape to after traipsing along hedgerows through a persistent drizzle.

The usual foraging etiquette of don’t take to much etc. didn’t used to apply with sloes. Usually there’s a lot of fruit but this year we had a shock. The wild and ragged footpath that follows the river along the floodplain at the bottom of the hills had been “rejuvenated” and a lot of the hedgerows had been hacked back beyond all recognition.

We walked for half an hour down the almost sterile grass path, now ten people wide. We got told off for not being on the footpath as we veered off to look at bushes growing along fences not officially en route. We found approximately five sloes in half an hour.

The aim of our sloe adventure was to eventually make the most delicious winter warmer of a drink; sloe gin. It is a blood red tincture that is the answer to a summer of drinking elderflower cordial; it’s sweet and has a flavour of summer fruits, a rich, dark, black-forest sweetness.

Sloes grow as the bitter fruit of the blackthorn or snag, a traditional hedgerow plant that flowers in spring and fruits in late summer and ripen through to the first frost when they’re at their least bitter. Their “least” bitter is still pretty astringent and that’s why they’re not a very commercially available fruit.

Eventually further down the path we found more sloes on branches that had escaped the pruning by being very high up. As the drizzle set in I climbed fences to reach the top fruits, filled my coat pockets and jumped down. We scrambled under barbed wire to get to the other side of the hedges. Eventually we found a tree stood out on it’s own in a cattle field, covered in the dusty blue fruit. We took all we needed and left, sure that further down there were more leftover. Passers by told us that we needed to go to another spot for the best crops but this was our patch for years and it did us proud.

The first time I made sloe gin I was about 12 and on a walking holiday somewhere near Leeds with my mum and her cousin, an accomplished rambler. We filled a 500ml water bottle with sloes on one walk and when home we followed the following imprecise recipe:

500ml bottle full of sloes;
1L gin;
1KG bag of sugar
an extra 500ml bottle.

Method:

Empty sloes into collinder and give them a quick rinse then Dry lightly.
Prick the sloes all over and fill each bottle with an inch or two of sloes.
Using the funnel add sugar and shake so that the sugar runs into all the gaps between the sloes
Add more sloes, followed by more sugar until the sloes have been equally split between both water bottles and are surrounded by sugar. Each bottle should be approximately half full of the sloes and sugar.
Top up the bottles with gin and screw the lid on tight.
Over the following months turn the bottle upside down regularly to let the sloes swirl about and the sugar dissolve in the gin, it should mature from pink to a deep red.
Open at Christmas or after 3 months and enjoy.

You can strain out the sloes and decant it into a nicer bottle but there’s no harm in having a couple of sloes drop into your glass. It can be drunk neat or with lemonade, both are delicious. More precise recipes and fantastic advice about when to harvest the fruit are available from the cottage smallholder. We tried to do the freezer test but forgot to label the bottles, so we’ll save that for next year.

Christmas Cake Photo post

2009-11-24T14:40:00.005Z

Right-O here's Libbs' Christmas cakes in 5 and 8 inch tins? They are still 3 times wrapped in brown paper.

In taking these pictures I have discovered two new things. Firstly I can't add pictures into Libbs' posts so I'll have to coordinate better with her in the future. Secondly about the old saying "a bad workman always blames his tools", this is half right but I can't really blame my camera for the boring lighting on these cakes, it's my fault for not bringing my lights or even just a flashgun. It's more fair to say "a bad workman never brings the right tools for the job" but that doesn't trip off the tongue quite so well.

Anyhow I'll make good on the pictures of the cakes once they're iced and looking even more delicious.

I Can't Smile Without You // Barry Manilow

2009-11-21T18:14:00.009Z

That song, is the only song on my cake playlist that does not directly reference any kind of food. It is the only song on my cake playlist that does sum up my relationship with food, especially sweet food.

I have started blogging as I have been told by a few people that I must 'keep my hand in' when it comes to food. I trained for a year with a team of the best pastry chefs in the country, with dreams of starting an amazing career working in the best kitchens in Britain.
This came to a difficult halt a few months ago when I developed a spot of the blues, and went a bit dippy. It took a lot of thought, but in the end it was clear that I had to stop working in the kitchen as I couldn't handle the stress and working very long days wasn't giving me the time to get better.

So I am now on the road to recovery, and have quite a bit of spare time. My current therapy is making eleven christmas cakes over the next few days. Once these are complete I can get down to the details - planning how I will decorate each one. I'm trying not to let myself get too excited about this bit yet, as they need all the time they can get to mature and be fed. But the planning will start soon.

The christmas cake adventure started a week ago, with the realisation that I had no vessel large enough to soak three and a half kilos of fruit. A panic stricken flurry around the house finally came up trumps and I filled up one of those 'really useful boxes'. This turned out to be a fantastic idea as you can clip the lid on and shake it up, and it's kept some of the fruit, that I haven't gotten round to using just yet, fresh and boozy.

The first batch I did - a 10, 8, 6 and 5 inch round - turned out to be way too big and had to be split into more mixing bowls than I was happy with.
I was up until 3 in the morning waiting for that lot to cook.

I suppose this is where I should post a recipe but I find that, of all recipes, the ones for Christmas Cake are the ones where people say: 'I use my great great great grandmothers recipe which has been exclusively used in our family for one hundred and two years.'
This is where I have a shameful admission - the recipe I use has not been lovingly passed down through generations, but is from a very useful website, which gives the amounts, cooking times and final weights for every tin size imaginable.
This is incredibly useful when you're making eleven cakes, and some people want enough for an army, and others want enough for two.
It makes a beautifully rich cake which I have never receieved any complaints about.

Imaginative Icing Site

Under Christmas ideas is an extensive range of evrything you could need for your festivities, as well as the amazing recipe.