Thursday's cookies

I was making a somewhat unexpected and somewhat sombre trip eastwards. This would involve seeing friends and I thought that a gift of some baking (to both the sombre and non-sombre parts) would probably be appropriate (although I was unsure about the appropriateness for the sombre part).

What I decided that I wanted to cook was something featuring peanut butter as I had a fairly good idea that this would go down with well with all my hosts. I had cooked some peanut butter cookies a while ago for Matt's workmates (they were not universally well received due the nut allergy issue), but was not entirely satisfied with them so wanted to try a different recipe. The previous batch had been tasty enough but were a bit too crispy – I wanted something a bit chewier (this is unusual because usually I like crispy things). The solution I envisaged would involve jam. I would try to recreate the classic peanut butter and jam on toast, but within a cookie. I found a recipe along these lines (it was actually for peanut butter and “jelly” cookies but I refuse to refer to jam as jelly, even within a recipe that is probably American by concept).

I started off by making the cookie dough, fairly straightforward and only requiring one bowl which was pleasing. I didn't have enough crunchy peanut butter so had to top up 40g with smooth and I didn't have any dark brown muscovado sugar. The recipe said to use a combination of this and caster sugar but I figured that if I used all soft brown sugar this would sort of make the average.

You were supposed to bake the bake all the cookies and then sandwich two together with seedless raspberry jam. This was going to require deviation. I was adamant that I wanted to include the jam in the bake. We didn't have any raspberry jam and, even if we did, seedless jam is something that seems almost morally wrong to me. After deliberation I opted for my mum's gooseberry jam:

• This is my preferred jam to go with peanut butter on toast
• I fancied its chances as the most adhesive of the jams available to me, which would be important if it was to be successfully integrated into the bake

I decided that I would sandwich the layers together pre-baking, which would hopefully facilitate successful transport. I'd used the roll into balls and squish with a fork method to form the cookies so there were convenient grooves in which the jam could be applied. I resisted the temptation to pile on loads of jam, having enough foresight to realise that it would just pour out and make a horrible sticky mess so that I wouldn't be able to get the cookies off of the baking tray.

Due to the increased mass per unit compared to the recipe (mine were of course by now double decker cookies) I increased the cooking time slightly – I wanted chewy but I didn't want raw. I took them out of the oven when they were starting to go golden. A trick I have found with baking cookies is that they harden up a bit after you've removed them from the oven, so not to worry if they seemed too soft to start with. First impressions were good but we'd have to wait until they'd cooled for a taste test – tongue burnt via hot jam is to be avoided.

I was on a roll now and thought that I would augment these slightly experimental peanut butter cookies with a batch of tried and tested chocolate melting moments – my granny's recipe. Probably my favourite of all the things she used to bake. Therefore slackery wasn't in order, just a conversion from ounces to grams (I don't get on too well with imperial) and maybe a bit more cocoa powder than is traditional. Granny would often melt some chocolate on the top of each one and finish off with a cherry, but I didn't have time for that last night. So maybe I was a bit more lazy than slack, but I did the rolling them in oats thing. I resisted the temptation to try one of these – knowing full well that this is a recipe for guaranteed deliciousness. But I did put one by for Matt.

Just before bed we shared one of the peanut butter / jam sandwich cookies. This too met my requirements for deliciousness. I just hope that my hosts like them.

Thursday's challenge

Matt, my husband, had requested no more cake until August 10th. I was a bit disappointed but was happy enough to encourage him in a mini-health kick; it would just have to be inventive salads for a few weeks. But I was thrilled when my friend Katie requested a bake to celebrate her birthday.

Katie doesn't live close to me, but a happy coincidence meant that I would have the chance to see her just a couple of days after her birthday. The challenges of this bake were:

1. Katie had requested something chocolaty (not very restrictive) 
2. I would have transport the bake on a 4 hour, 2 change train trip across south west England (more restrictive) 
3. I left myself with limited time to make the bake due to a late finish at work and lots to do the night before the aforementioned train trip (not as restrictive as it should have been).

I decided that brownies would be the thing. The chocolate criteria would definitely be met plus they are not delicate and don't require icing so would be ok for the transport restrictions. I wasn't sure about the time thing. The brownies I usually make are gluten free, require significant separation of eggs and are not that quick. I wanted to try something different, probably with white chocolate. I felt reasonably confident that I could find something suitable. I also had it in mind that I wanted to use cranberries, in the belief that I had a pack at the back of the baking cupboard.

I found a few recipes for white chocolate brownies (I think the trendy name for these is blondies) and chose the one that looked both easiest and most adaptable for my requirements.

I made a start and swiftly realised that I had less than 50g of the 400g of white chocolate that I needed. On further inspection the main bake only required 300g; the rest was for chocolate chunks. Fortunately Matt was keen for a break from his DIY so took a walk to the local shop to get some white chocolate while I made a start on the tea.

The first phase was to melt the (300g) chocolate with 75g of butter. I was a bit worried about this because the only proper butter we had was the stuff that smelt like cheese, but I tasted a little bit that was left on the knife that I had portioned it with and it didn't taste at all cheesy. Very weird.

Once this has melted the recipe states that you should allow it to cool and then mix in the eggs (3, which was lucky as that's all we had) and sugar (90g) and vanilla. But I didn't fancy my chances of mixing in the bowl that I had melted. So instead I pre-whisked the eggs, sugar and vanilla and then whisked the butter / sugar into this. I wasn't really sure if I should have whisked or mixed with a spoon but whisking seems more efficient.

Next I added 200g plain flour. Since I already had the whisk out I thought I may as well whisk this in too. Finally it was time to add the chocolates chunks and cranberries. I decided to use plain chocolate here. And what I thought was a bag of cranberries was actually a mixed bag of raisins, sultanas and cranberries, but this wouldn't really matter. I laid off the whisk for these final additions and stirred gently instead.

The recipe said to pour the mixture into a lined baking tray. As time goes by I am becoming less and less convinced about lining baking trays so I just greased it thoroughly and hoped for the best.

A significant challenge with brownies is that you can't use the skewer test to see if they're cooked as they're supposed to be a bit gooey in the middle. The recipe said to bake for 20 minutes, but obviously every oven is different. I think mine were in for a bit longer than this, just until the top looked a little bit cracked.

It would have to wait until the morning to be chopped and removed / chiselled out of the tray, I still had my packing to do and it was only 10 minutes until bedtime.

Fortunately the copious greasing was satisfactory and the brownies packed beautifully into a tin ready for transportation (with one little bit left for Matt - his health kick isn't that extreme!). 

And they made the journey ok. It was lovely to see Katie, and I think she and her baby girl both enjoyed the brownies (although the baby did seem determined to put the whole lot on the floor). A few crumbs were dropped on the ground which were dealt with by my mother-in-law's Yorkshire Terrier - I just hope it doesn't poison him as I think that both chocolate and dried fruit are bad for dogs. I suppose if it does poison him there are worse ways to go.

Saturday's alternative cake

Not being quite sure how many people to expect to Matt, my husband's, birthday luncheon and knowing to expect two under 7 year olds I deceided to make another sponge to augment the black forest gateau. Time now pressing on I decided to go for the simplest sponge going. This is very pleasing mathematically:

For every egg you use:

• 50g of butter / butter substitute 
• 50g sugar
• 50g self raising flour

It is also very pleasing in terms of simplicity. You just put it all in a bowl together mix it up a bit with a spoon and then whisk it all together with the electric beaters (you only have to mix it up a bit with a spoon first if you don't want the ingredients to fly everywhere, you can omit that step if you don't mind a lot of splattering). I started off with 3 eggs (and 150g of everything else) but once this was whisked decided that it would insufficient for 12 fairy cakes and 1 round sponge so added another egg (and another 50g of everything else). I also added a few drops of vanilla extract (this protects against it tasting too eggy) and a splash of milk to loosen everything up.

Then I spooned it into my cases. I was particularly excited to be making fairy cakes as I'd got some rather attractive new fairy cake cases (I chose to use red stripy ones today). It cooks at 180˚C until golden brown, confirmed by skewer test. The time depends on the size of the cake so the fairy cakes took about 20 minutes and the larger sponge about 25.

I was not about to go doing anything fancy with these cakes - I had had enough of that with the gateau and I thought I should leave them fairly simple for people with more of a delicate pallet. I cut the big round cake in half and sandwiched it together with cherry jam. This would go with the spare chocolate cake that I had sandwiched together with chocolate hazelnut spread to create the effect of one whole cake.

I intended to make butterfly cakes with the small ones, but instead of using butter icing I would use lemon curd. Unfortunately when I came to deploy the lemon curd I found that there was considerably less left than when I last opened the jar. So instead I used various preserves that I found in the fridge and made 3 of each of:

• lemon curd
• loganberry jam
• cranberry and orange jam
• gooseberry jam

(all preserves courtesy of my mum)

I constructed a cake stand (doilies and all) and we were good to go.

Jammy butterfly cake

An array of cakes

I must say that this good basic sponge was much more to my taste than the gateau - much less rich but equally (in my opinion) delicious - helped almost certainly by the vanilla extract which meant that it didn't taste eggy at all.

Saturday's gateau

After a modicum of deliberation Matt, my husband, decided that the cake that he would like to celebrate his birthday was a black forest gateau. This would mean that the cherries preserved in kirsch could finally be deployed, although candles would prove tricky.

I didn't underestimate the difficulty / time rating of this so Matt went out to do the shopping for his birthday luncheon while I stayed at home to do the baking. If this turned out to be less taxing than I suspected it could always be interspersed with gardening (hopefully), other aspects of food preparation(ok), or household chores (although not if I could avoid it).

I searched my recipe books and cuttings for suitable recipes. There were only two and one of them required me to sieve butter which seemed ridiculous so I went with the other one. I could tell that this was going to be a recipe that created extreme amounts of washing up. But still, it was a special occasion. And we do have a dishwasher.

To start with you have to melt some butter (I used butter substitute as I didn't want to risk the butter that smelt like cheese on such a critical bake) with sugar, chocolate and coffee. The recipe stated 200g of plain chocolate. I used a whole 150g bar and half a 100g bar. Yet the scales told me that this was 216g. So either the scales were wrong or the chocolate was wrong. I decided to give the chocolate the benefit of the doubt (I might revert to analogue scales once I've conducted a few experiments to see if the digital ones really are dubious) as 16g too much chocolate was likely to be less detrimental than 16g too little.

Then you have to wait until this is cool before adding the rest of the ingredients. This gave me time to do something that I don't usually bother with - sifting. Maybe I had sifting on the mind after I'd declined to sieve butter. For the first time in my life (I think) I did a recipe that used both plain and self-raising flour and it seemed to me important that they were properly mixed (along with the cocoa powder).

The chocolate mixture still didn't seem very cool to me so I had a pause in baking and potted up some tomato plants. I just love the smell of tomato plants.

Mixing the gateau

On returning to the kitchen I whisked the sifted ingredients into the (now cooled) chocolate mixture. It was a good job I had an apron on as it splashed all over the place. And then you whisk 2 eggs in - I suppose the reason you have to let the chocolate mixture cool is so that you don't scramble the eggs.

The recipe indicated that you should pour the mixture into a large tin to bake, and that you then slice it up for your layers. But I am useless at slicing (as evidenced by the frequent mess I make of slicing up bread) and decided that the safer course of action would be to bake the layers separately. I dug around in the tin cupboard and found three the same size and ladled three ladles into each. There was still some mixture left over so I got another tin out (slightly smaller) and poured that in to make a potential 4th layer.

Oven mess

One of the pitfalls of this type of runny cake mixture is that it leaks through the bottom of loose bottomed tins. So I got a bit of chocolatey mess on the worktop (not really a problem) but some also dripped onto the bottom of the oven - I am unlikely to be able to delay the cleaning of the oven for much longer.

The benefit of baking in smaller tins was that it would take less time (I am an impatient cook), the disadvantage was that I had no long how long it would take. So I had to stay close to the oven and this meant that really I had to do some household chores. After about an hour the cakes started to smell cooked and the skewer test confirmed this to be the case. I whisked up a tub of cream but was wise enough not to do any gateau assembly until it had completely cooled. In the meantime I chopped up some veggies to have raw. We needed some healthy food of some sort. 

I had no intention of following the recipe for the filling / stacking, which required me use normal jarred cherries and to thicken the juice with arrowroot. Instead I planned to use a combination of the kirsch, followed by cherry jam (of which, after my first application of kirsch, I discovered we had none - fortunately Matt was still at the shops so I was able to direct him to a suitable product), followed by cream, followed by the cherries themselves. My rationale was that the kirsch would flavour the sponge, the jam would make the cream stick to the sponge and the cherries could then be nestled into the cream. 3 layers looked precarious enough so I didn't risk the 4th. Instead I would fashion this into something for the youngsters we were expecting. 

One layer

3 layers

We all had to wait a while before trying out the completed gateau. I was successful in persuading the youngsters that they wouldn't like it and they seemed to be quite happy with their chocolate hazelnut spread filled sponges. As predicted candles were off but we did all sing 'happy birthday', accompanied by the musical cake slice. Between six grown-ups we devoured half the gateau - some people with considerably larger portions than others. I had a small to moderate sized piece and was overwhelmed by it. So rich, so boozy and so delicious but I wouldn't have managed it it if hadn't have been for the nice pot of tea that we had with it. Being full of fresh cream I wasn't optimistic for the gateau's survival beyond another 24 hours at most. Fortunately our guests were only too keen to take home a party bag.

Half down, half to go

Where to start?

Thursday's birthday baking

In keeping with tradition, Matt, my husband, planned to take some high energy feed to his workmates to help celebrate his birthday. This plan mostly involved me constructing said high energy feed. Matt's requests were for paradise slice and oatcake and being the good wife that I am, after a short effort to try to persuade him that something more cakey might be nice I acquiesced and set to on these two tray bakes. 

The oatcake is a recipe of my mum's. It's not the healthy sort of oatcake on which you might apply cheese, rather it consists of equal parts of sugar / syrup, butter / butter substitute, plain flour and oats. I used 150g of each. The sugar / syrup combination I selected was 100g golden caster sugar and 50g golden syrup. It also works with any other type of sugar and any other type of syrup (e.g. black treacle or molasses if you want to add a tiny bit of nutrition) in any proportions. 

1. Melt the butter / butter substitute and the sugar / syrup together over a low heat. I did this on the hob but you can do it carefully in the microwave. The microwave is my mum's preferred option but I'm not really careful enough. 

2. Stir in the flour and the oats. At this point you can add some spice or dried fruit or anything else you fancy. I wanted to keep it fairly simple today (the paradise slice would be the thing for Matt's more gastronomically adventurous colleagues) so added just a little mixed spice (not to be confused with allspice). I would have added cinnamon but shockingly I could not locate any in the kitchen.

3. Press it into a tin. I lined it on this occasion but really, if it's a non-stick tin you probably don't need to.

4. Bake at 180˚C for about half an hour. 

 

The basic oatcake

That would usually do but since this was a celebration I decided to top it with some chocolate. 

5. Melt some chocolate (I used a 150g bar of milk chocolate) using whatever method works for you. The only method I have ever found that works for me is over a pan of boiling water. I added a little bit of butter because I've seen them do this on the television

6. Spread the melted chocolate over the oatcake.

 

Chocolate covering

And maybe I could have stopped there but this was a celebration so I decided to finish off with some sprinkles. Matt was keep to apply these and since I am generally quite clumsy with the application of decoration I let him take charge of the pot of coloured sugar strands (it was his birthday after all).

 

Adding the finishing touches

I made the paradise slice while the oatcake was baking. This was basically a reprise of what I made a few weeks ago as sustenance for a team building event. I did the old classic of not having the butter soft enough before creaming it with the sugar and duly made a terrific mess all over the work surface. But most of it stayed in the bowl.  I was a bit worried as a did this bit as it smelt of cheese (I love cheese but this was out of context). It is possible that the butter was a little past its best before but it had been unopened in our very cold fridge. So I tasted just a little bit (it tasted more of butter/sugar than cheese) and carried on.

 

The paradise mix

We resisted the temptation to test the creations last night and sliced them up for transportation to Matt's work this morning. We saved the slightly dud bits for ourselves (the bit of the oatcake where the greaseproof paper didn't come off properly and the disintegrated bit of the paradise slice).

Ready for feeding

The bits that I might get to eat

The feedback from the engineering gannets (as Matt refers to his workmates on occasions such as this) was good. Apparently the lack of cinnamon wasn't noticed in the oatcake. And apparently the other was "truly a slice of paradise" (someone genuinely said this!).

So all that remains now is to make the birthday cake proper. 

Tuesday's muffins

Having thus far failed in my social obligation to provide sweet treats to my colleagues following my return from holiday over a week ago I had vowed to make amends for this yesterday. Normally people bring back something from wherever they’ve been but despite visiting quite a few places I didn’t see anything inspiring in terms of locally produced goodies (or at least not that I would be able to get back to the UK without being devoured first) so decided to make muffins.

I popped into my favoured local supermarket on the way home from work to get eggs as I’d used a whole box in the weekend’s lemon meringue pie. Seeing that that was all I went in for I did rather well and also got:

• a loaf of sliced bread – cue toasted sandwiches in the new sandwich toaster which I’d got at a bargain price at my favourite continental style discount supermarket last week 
• 4 tins of strawberries in syrup
• 2 snack packs of premium raisins – ideal as emergency rations in my car

All for under £5, which was good as that was all I had in my purse. I have never bought tins of strawberries before but at 25p each they seemed too bargainous to leave behind. I thought that I would probably be able to adapt a recipe to turn some of them into muffins.

Muffin making would have the bonus effect of keeping me out from under the feet of Matt, my husband, whilst he continued with his DIY project.

I found a recipe for summer fruit muffins. This called for fresh or frozen summer berries but surely the tinned strawberries could be put to good use here. So where the recipe stated 240ml milk I used 240ml of the syrup from the tin. Then I added the fruit that I had chopped up using my favourite method of scissors inserted into the tin. There was a little bit of syrup and a little bit of fruit left over and rather than have these go to waste I mixed them in too. My main concerns were over-sweetness and over-wetness, but I thought that this was a risk worth taking.

I baked them for a little longer than the recipe suggested, hoping to mitigate the risk of over-wetness. They came out of the oven and appeared to be muffin formed rather than one soggy mess. My muffin recipe book is one of the most reliable that I have but since this was an improvised creation the strawberry muffin would need testing. Fortunately Matt was only too happy to help. The feedback was not overwhelming. Adequate but not overwhelming, so these muffins would have to be improved with icing.

In the meantime I moved onto the next batch of muffins: carrot at the special request of my colleague Jan. This is a tried and tested recipe, enhanced by the addition of lots of cinnamon and raisins.

And then the next batch: lemon. Also tried and tested and one of my personal favourites. I find the given recipe not to be lemony enough so I added so lemon juice to the mixture as well as the zest. It suggests that you use lemon essence but since you have to denigrate a lemon to get the zest and then use some of the juice for icing it seemed only logical to use the rest of the juice in the muffins. These have to be iced as soon as they are out of the oven. It’s a simple lemon glacé icing, but I frequently mess it up. This is because when I start to mix it looks like there’s too much icing sugar, so I add more lemon juice, and then it gets too liquid and I lose patience and I just end up pouring this runny lemony syrup all over the muffins. But yesterday I showed an uncommon level of patience and/ or skill and they were rather successfully iced. The only slight problem was that there wasn’t quite enough icing so there were 2 un-iced ones. I didn’t see this as too much of a problem as there are always some people who don’t like icing.

And then the next batch. I went for the relatively safe option of chocolate (for any fussier eaters) but jazzed them up a bit by adding some experimental orange.  Since I’d not done this combination before I used just the zest but I was informed after some more testing (again, Matt didn’t need any encouragement) that they could be more orangey so will add some juice next time. Or maybe make an orangey icing.

At this point I should have got on with making some dinner (well, toasting some sandwiches) but was in the baking frame of mind and wanted to do more icing. I decided that the best thing for the strawberry muffins would be some vanilla icing so had a bit of a trawl on the interweb and found one that looked likely. Determined not to mess this up (icing is not a strong skill) I applied some of the things that I have learnt from previous efforts (this could almost be a CPD entry). The recipe told me to whisk the stuff together. Rather than make a cloud of icing sugar all over the kitchen I mostly blended with a spoon and gave it a quick whisk by hand at the end – I got a nice smooth icing. The recipe told me to use 2 tablespoons of milk. Not wanting to end up with a runny vanilla mess I used only 1 tablespoon – I got a suitably stiff icing. In fact it was of such a consistency that I even ventured to use my icing set. This was only the second time ever that I had used this. On the first occasion it was an absolute disaster so I was a bit nervous but kind of excited at the same time. I chose my nozzle from the selection of 8, loaded the icing bag and then went for it. Even if I say so myself, it was much more successful than the first occasion and I feel rather try rather encouraged to practise a bit more. Maybe I might even use some food colouring. I enhanced the decoration further on a few of the muffins by adding some freeze-dried strawberries.

 

But the icing bag was an absolute mess and I was not in the mood for cleaning it last night so the icing for the carrot cake muffins would have to be spooned on. This was a classic carrot cake icing with cream cheese and is really yummy. I should have made it even better by putting a bit of orange zest into it. But it was still really yummy – I know this because I personally cleaned out the bowl.

That should have been it for the evening. The sandwich toaster had still not been deployed. But Matt emerged from his DIY and suggested that I could make a batch of muffins with some chocolate caramel sweets. We have quite a few packets of these as Matt’s grandad gives them to him when he cuts his toe-nails. So I chopped up the chocolate caramel sweets (easier said than done even with a really sharp knife), added these to a mixture of “basic” muffin, reheated the oven and located another packet of muffin cases. It was pretty obvious that these would taste okay but by the time they were cooked I was hungry (sandwiches still untoasted) and tired so thought it perfectly acceptable to test one myself. It was good.

I was too tired though to risk any more icing. So I sort of cleaned up. Matt made the toasted sandwiches – they were delicious. Much more delicious than if I had made them because he was very generous with the cheese.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the whole exercise was packing all the muffins into boxes for transfer to mine and Matt’s places of work. This required extraction and redeployment of the camping box (the big plastic box with miniature supplies of tea, coffee, sugar, salt, ketchup etc. from hotels, motorway services etc.).

We divvied up the muffins between us and took them off to work this morning. And the results of this multi-centre, non-placebo controlled, non-blinded muffin trial?:

• our colleagues like muffins
• one participant described the strawberry muffin as “a mouthful of loveliness”
• the chocolate caramel sweet muffins could have done with more chocolate caramel sweets
• the carrot cake muffins were the most popular in all locations. Matt informed me that they had been met with “great acclaim”

Saturday's cake marathon

After a late arrival at my mum and dad’s, a later pizza (my dad is now legendary for these) and an even later night I was not likely to be getting up early to complete this morning’s culinary tasks.

My athletic friend Alex had organised a bake sale to raise money for Farm Africa who she is running the London Marathon for next month. I had possibly been overambitious in my promised offerings: ginger muffins, lemon muffins, marmalade cake and chocolate brownies. Plus a quiz. And some reconstructed “vintage” cake stands.

Knowing that there would be a lot of cake to come this afternoon I skipped breakfast, topped up with caffeine and set to work on the cakes. Today’s bakes were to be tried and tested recipes, not wanting to be too adventurous in someone else’s kitchen. The limited time available, using my mum’s kitchen and her inevitable “help” would be challenge enough. (In fairness my mum’s seemingly continuous washing up was immensely helpful.)

The marmalade cake had to be done early as it needed to cool before icing. I first made this a few weeks ago in response to my glut of marmalade and it was certified a success by my friends Sarah and Andrew, and particularly by their 22 month old son. All went according to plan until it came to line the tin (recipes always say to do this first but I find it boring so don’t bother until just before cooking) and discovered that mum didn’t have the right size cake tin. This is a woman who has two, not insubstantial, cupboards dedicated to bakeware and an extensive baking history. It was not unreasonable for me to assume that she would have a 20cm round tin. We engaged my in some rudimentary mathematics and I was persuaded that I could bake the same volume of cake in two loaf tins.

Two cakes for the price of one into the oven.

While they were cooking I set to work on the lemon muffins. At which point I discovered I didn’t have the ideal ingredients. The basic was possible but I like to add poppy seeds for texture and lemon extract for turbo lemon flavour. So I despatched my husband, Matt, off to the shops.

And meanwhile I put the finishing touches to my cryptic bakes picture quiz. First devised on Thursday evening it needed modifying (apparently some clues were much too hard), adding too (you can never have too many cryptic bake quiz clues), and the answers putting into a visually agreeable format (the cryptic bake quiz makes a very pleasing PowerPoint® presentation). It was just like an assignment where you think that you’ve finished and nearly submit it when you realise that all your references are in a right mess.

Cakes out. Muffins in (but only just with poppy seeds as someone in the shop overheard Matt on the phone telling me that he couldn’t find any and kindly placed some in his basket). Quiz work on-going.

The excellent chocolate brownie recipe was given to me by a friend who doesn’t eat wheat and uses ground almonds rather than flour. It requires four separated eggs. I do not class egg separation as one of my skills. My success rate is usually about 50%. I often enlist Matt to do it for me but he was busy with glue and crockery so I went for it myself. And had 100% success.

Muffins out, brownies in. Quiz work on-going.

I had made two cake stands at home with top of the range super glue but had brought the rest to finish here. Unfortunately I forgot to bring the top of the range super glue. Cue crockery and glue fiasco. Suffice to say only the original two cake stands went to the bake sale.

I delegated Matt the task of icing, which as you know is not something that I relish. He completed this with aplomb whilst I did the next batch of muffins. Mum had baked some gingerbread and I thought that to avoid repetition I ought to go for a different flavour. In a moment of inspiration I decided on white chocolate and cranberry, never tried these before but the muffin recipe is very versatile and it’s usually a good flavour combination. Fortuitously both were available in mum’s randomly stocked kitchen.

Brownies out (smelling divine). Muffins in. Quiz work on-going.

Somehow it was now lunchtime. Still in anticipation of an afternoon of cakey goodness I just had a small mug of soup (I didn’t even have any cheese which is always such a treat at mum and dad’s as there is such a vast selection available). 

Muffins out. Quiz work complete with a little help from dad with the printing. Mad rush to get to the bake sale on.

It was great. Loads of people turned up and I was able to catch up with quite a few friends. And as planned eat lots of cake. I had some almond slice, chocolate biscuit cake, chocolate brownie and I’m sure something else but it slips my mind just now. All delicious. We won an embarrassing number of raffle prizes (but there were loads of prizes). The quiz seemed to be enjoyed and two small boys (who had been keenly selling raffle tickets) certainly enjoyed pressing the buttons for the PowerPoint® presentation. And I got a new spider plant. We used to have a fantastic one with lots of baby spider plants but it died some time ago so hopefully this one will fill that void in my life.

Apparently the event raised nearly £500 – fantastic and really helps Alex on the way to her fundraising target. So inspiring I think I might just plan a bake sale of my own.

Here's the link if you'd like to contribute to Alex's fundraising:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserPage.action?userUrl=AlexGrounds&faId=281414&isTeam=false

Sunday's unintentional sauce

It being Mothering Sunday we had invited my mother-in-law, Barbara, around for tea; my own mum apparently spending most of the day travelling across South East England on various forms of public transport.

Visitors are always an excuse for something yummy. Matt, my husband, had declared (after a week of attempting to fix skirting board in our front room) that this occasion would require him to spend most of the day in the kitchen. I did not argue. I think the alternative would have been another trip to the DIY store to acquire another tool. Probably a noisy tool. Matt’s special is pizza and he wanted to do some sort choclately thing for afterwards.

I chose to lurk around in my pyjamas. I made considerable progress in knitting three French hens, as well as some superglue and second hand crockery based craft.

After lunch (yesterday’s stuffed cabbage leftovers), and with this evening’s potentially extravagant tea in mind I decided that I really ought to get dressed and get myself to the pool. Thus far Matt had looked through some recipes but not made any decision on what he would like to bake for his mum. And as I was about to leave he put on his best “pretty angel face” and asked if I would mind making the cake. Which of course I wouldn’t as I love baking!

I narrowed down my options to a choclately ginger thing or a chocolately berry thing. The chocolate was in aid of Mothering Sunday, otherwise the cake would have featured marmalade since I have more than 3kg taking up valuable space in our store cupboard. I pondered over the choice whilst swimming (another good session but the superglue didn’t come off my hand despite an hour of chlorine treatment) but the decision was made for me as there were no appropriate berries available. So ginger it would be.

The recipe I chose was a rich chocolate and ginger beer cake. This was high risk from the start because it featured icing. I am not good at icing so tend to opt for cakes with interesting things in them rather than on them. But I am never going to get better at icing if I always avoid it. And Barbara likes it so it seemed like the right thing to do.

After deciding what type of ginger beer to use (there were at least 5 different varieties in the drinks cupboard), the cake mix itself was fairly straightforward, using one more bowl than I would prefer as I had to melt the chocolate into the ginger beer before adding to the flour, sugar, eggs and butter (although I did substitute with some branded buttery spread).

I have recently discovered the significant advantages of lining cake tins. I am yet to figure out if there is a right side and wrong side of the baking paper. So today I conducted a simple experiment and put it one way round in the first cake tin and the other way round in the second. I can share with you my conclusion that for the baking of chocolate ginger beer cake it makes no difference what way round you put the baking paper. It is not yet clear whether this conclusion can be extrapolated to other types of cake but I am looking forward to finding out.

And while the cake was in the oven I set to on the icing. The recipe required mascarpone and since Matt had to pop up to the shop to get mozzarella for the pizza I asked him to pick some up. He came back without mascarpone (not stocked) but they did have a good offer on loo roll. So I was going to have to improvise. So into my bowl went a tub of low fat soft cheese and some icing sugar. And then I heard “ooh, that was nice that ginger beer”: Matt had just enjoyed the 30ml or so that I had reserved for the icing. I was not keen on opening another bottle just for this so instead added a glug of the syrup from the preserved ginger in the fridge and whisked the whole lot up. And it was very runny. This is one of the problems that I frequently encounter with icing.

Unsure of the appropriate remedial action (it tasted quite nice so even if I had had some more icing sugar (which I didn’t) I wouldn’t have really wanted to add any more for fear of making it too sweet) I phoned my mum who is an essential source of cookery salvage tips. I first discovered this when I was at university and making an apple cake. I was sufficiently knowledgeable to realise that something wasn’t quite right before I put the mixture in the oven but insufficiently experienced to have any clue what had gone wrong. Mum managed to deduce that I had failed to use any eggs, which I duly mixed in and cake disaster was averted. Today she warned me off adding double cream (I thought it might whisk it up a bit more) but suggested I try adding in a bit of “marg” or blitz up some caster sugar in the food processor to turn it into something resembling icing sugar if I did want to go down that route. Not wanting to make any more washing up I opted for the “marg” option and added a lump of branded buttery before giving it all another whisk up. This actually did thicken it up a bit and it still tasted quite nice. I decided for good measure to add some glace ginger and then left it in the naïve hope that it would set a bit more before the time came to ice the cake (which by now had been removed from the oven and smelt amazing).

We all tucked into Matt’s delicious pizza and then I ventured back to the kitchen to assemble the cake. The icing was still way too runny but I could just about use it to sandwich the two layers together and cover the top and sides. The sides of the cake that is, as well as the sides of the kitchen. I had vastly overestimated the amount of icing that would be required but Barbara very generously suggested that it could be used as a sauce.

This was an occasion for the musical cake slice. To which Matt improvised some Mothering Sunday themed lyrics to the tune of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.

As they say proof of the pudding is in the eating. And the eating proved to be very good. Very sweet and rich but washed down perfectly with a cup of tea. There are some lucky people out there who are going to get to sample it tomorrow.