A Big Fat Chocolate Celebration Cake - Eid Mubarak!

One of my colleagues at work observed Ramadan last month, which is no mean feat given how greedy and opulent our company is when it comes to lunchtimes. Our office is based in the heart of Mayfair in London, so you can imagine the meals that get come into our kitchen daily - everything from Oysters to Sushi, Burgers to Chinese. Decadence, gluttony and not a packed lunch in sight.

I knew for somebody fasting that this would be a tough environment to be in, not to mention fasting during the hottest summer that we've had in London for 6 years. So, at the start of Ramadan, I asked my colleague what I could make him to help celebrate when Eid came around - this could be anything that he wanted - and his response was: Chocolate, Chocolate and more Chocolate! I like to keep my promises, so I set about making the most chocolatey cake that I could find, this Chocolate Fudge Cake by Nigella Lawson.

As my Mum always says, 'It's the thought that counts' and the cake decoration is a good example of this! I admit that it does leave a little to be desired, but I was going for 'Festive' in a hurry and I think the overall sentiment was achieved - I personally love my crazy cake!

New Year, New Cake!

Brazil & Banana Bread - Bake a cake on a cosy day inside...

Hello to all of my lovely blogging friends and Happy New Year - if it's not already too late to say that! The fresh start has given me a new vigour for getting my blog back up and running again after a little sabbatical - I have of course been baking in the last few months but the general busyness of life and Christmas has prevented me from actually writing about anything!

It's a cold and chilly day here in London, we've been waiting for the 'Beast from the East' to hit us all week long and finally it arrived today – yay! Alas, very rarely do we actually get a snow day in the capital so I of course spent the day in the office whilst everyone else in the UK was making snow dogs and putting their pictures of hot chocolate onto Facebook.

I found the recipe for ‘Brazil & Banana Bread’ in my monthly magazine subscription to Good Food Magazine, which I am fantastic at reading cover to cover, but terrible at actually getting around to making any of the recipes featured. I always seem to be making banana cake, purely for the fact that we always seem to have an abundance of left over bananas - despite being covered in them myself, I can’t bear eating a banana when they get all freckly and start turning brown, so if they don’t end up in a cake then they invariably end up in the bin. I absolutely love coconut together with banana so it didn't take much convincing to give this recipe a try. 

Snow was predicted for last weekend, and when it didn't actually put in an appearance I decided to cheer myself up and kid myself that it was actually an extension of the Christmas holidays; I put my reindeer slippers back on, turned on the TV to watch Babe (The Sheep Pig) and dusted my mixer off to do some baking. 

This cake was absolutely de-lish, probably one of the nicest variations of a banana bread that I’ve made – a squidgy, moist cake with a buttery and crunchy, crumble style topping. I added a handful of chocolate chips into my cake and whilst it didn’t spoil it, it didn’t need it either as it was plenty sweet enough already – I would definitely leave it out in future. I also made the mistake of adding ‘Angel Flake’ coconut rather than desiccated coconut – Angel Flake Coconut is from the US I think and is a lot sweeter and more moist than what we have on offer here in the UK. Because of this my cake took longer to cook and I think I should have probably left it in the oven a little longer as it was just a teeny bit too squidgy…but it was still a lovely bake to eat with a big cup of tea on a cold Saturday afternoon, like tomorrow will undoubtedly be! X

Ingredients: 

100ml Sunflower oil
140g Caster sugar
140g Plain Flour
140g Brazil nuts
50g Desiccated coconut
1 tbsp Butter
2 Large very ripe bananas - black skins are ideal
1 Large egg
5 tbsp Milk
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Cinnamon

Method:

- Heat oven to 180c/160c fan/Gas Mark 4.

- Grease a 900g loaf tin, then line the base and ends with a long strip of baking parchment.

- Stir together 2 tbsp each of the sugar, flour, nuts and coconut. Add the butter and rub together to sticky crumbs and put to one side.

- Mash the bananas well and then stir in the sunflower oil, egg and milk. In a separate large bowl, mix half of the remaining sugar, and the remaining flour, nuts and coconut, and then add the baking powder and cinnamon.

- Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks, add the final bit of sugar and whisk again until stiff and shiny. Add the banana mixture into the dry ingredients and then gently fold in the egg white mixture.

- Gently scrape the mix into the tin and scatter the crumble  over the top. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out completely clean (not with some squidge like I did). If the cake starts to go too brown, cover with foil. Leave to cool completely in the tin before serving.

Rule #1 Of Blogging – Don’t Eat The Cake Before Photographing It!

Curly Whirly Chocolate Cake – Konditor and Cook

A long long time ago whilst I was studying at university I used to work for a chi-chi-ra-ra coffee shop in south London, called Blue Mountain Café. It was a lovely, rustic, cool looking place that by day was a haven for yummy mummies with hydraulic buggies, arty freelancers and c-list celebs from The Bill and Corrie. Whilst the food there was completely fine (lots of posh fry-ups) what they were best known for was being a coffee and cake meet up spot. Blue Mountain didn’t make their own cakes however; a few were bought from local bakers, with the majority being supplied by a fantastic bakery based in central London called ‘Konditor and Cook’  (http://www.konditorandcook.com/).

In all honestly it is of no coincidence that during this time, I was probably at my most ‘curvaceous’, the perks of working in a café serving delicious cakes you might say. I ate a lot of K&C cakes and you can trust me when I tell you that I know how most of their cakes should look and taste! Even after leaving Blue Mountain I bought many cakes from them for special occasions as they taste fantastic (soo many to try) and look amazing with lovely writing, decoration, glitter – whatever you want on your cake they can do, and at pretty short notice too.

With this in mind I was recently asked to make a birthday cake for a friend – it didn't have to be anything overtly decorated or flashy, just a delicious cake that we could put some candles in and use to sing happy birthday to the birthday boy. Immediately I thought of the easy option of buying a lovely ready-made cake as I still get nervous when making cakes for others, I’m definitely still in the stage where everything is a bit trial and error. I’m working towards ‘my little black dress’ of cakes, the ones that you can go to time and time again knowing they will always work but I haven’t had as much practice with larger celebration cakes and I was anxious to make something edible and presentable.

I remembered how pretty the cakes at Konditor and Cook are and so did a Google search to see if I could perhaps use an image of one of their birthday cakes as inspiration for this bake. Luckily for me I came up with so much more – an actual recipe for their famous chocolate ‘Curly Whirly’ cake with cream cheese and vanilla bean icing, which is perfect for a birthday - flashy enough for a party yet easy enough to whip up in a few hours. The risk that you always take with new recipes is that you have no idea if they’ll work, I find that this is especially the case with internet recipes. However, I had high hopes for this recipe as a) I knew only too well how it should taste and b) the recipe was posted in a blog for The Guardian by the owner of Konditor and Cook, so I crossed my fingers and went for it!

The recipe was perfect and tastes exactly the same as the product that you can buy in their stores, the only problem that I had was this: I made the cake in a hurry, it was presented to the birthday boy and was whisked off by an all too efficient waiter who chopped the cake into a million pieces before I could take a single picture. Major cake blogging fail! So you’ll just have to trust me on how pretty it really was, I *promise* the recipe works and that it didn't resemble a pancake.

Rather than repost the entire recipe I’ll let you check it out for yourselves here, with pictures of how the cake should look: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/nov/26/features11.g21

Here are my top tips:

• The cake is a dense, fudgy and rich chocolate cake, it isn’t light and fluffy like a sponge. It will be a bit squidgy and moist.

• Do use 17 cm sandwich tins, I know that this is a bit smaller than normal but the cakes don’t rise a huge amount and so you really do need a tin with a smaller circumference to add more height. I used 19 cm tins and this meant that the final product was a bit flatter than I would have liked.

• Foil lined tins sound strange but do go with it, and *do* leave them to cool completely in their tins. The cakes are quite fragile and they really will crack if you take them out sooner.

• When the cakes are cool, spread one layer of icing on and then pop the cake in the fridge to set. Once cooled spread on another layer of icing and decorate as you wish!

For more Konditor & Cook inspiration, check out their Flickr photostream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/konditor/

Wedding Baking Part 2!

Vanilla Cake Pops for the kids (and big kids….!)

Along with the cupcakes that I made for my sister’s wedding, I decided that if I had time I would also make some cake pops. The reason I gave myself even more work is that there were almost 30 children attending the celebration (all of which were under the age of 9 years old) and I was worried that cupcakes may be a tad too big for some of them, especially for the tiny tots.

I had never, ever made cake pops in my entire life until one day before the wedding – I know how bonkers that sounds now – but decided to give it a go as I had some time to play with, and if they didn’t work out it wouldn’t be the end of the world as I hadn’t actually told or promised anyone that I was going to make them.

I scoured the internet and found this recipe by Molly Bakes: http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/529103/basic-cake-pops. ‘Molly Bakes’ make fantastic cakes and all sorts of other lovely treats over in East London, and they also have a cake pop book out, which I believe this recipe would have come from (see here: http://www.mollybakes.co.uk/).

The recipe was *amazing* – for someone who has never made them before it was pretty idiot proof if you follow all the steps correctly – I never seem to have much luck with internet recipes but I didn’t need to change a thing. The only note that I would make is that I took my cake out of the oven sooner than the 35-45 minutes that was stated on the instructions, but I was using a very hot oven so this timing could be correct – my advice would be to sneak a peek through the oven window after 25 minutes or so.

I decided to tie the cake pop design in with the colour scheme of the cupcakes, so I melted my candy melts and split the mixture into three, using colour pastes to make one batch pale pink, one pale green and leaving one plain white. I also wanted to tie the flower detailing into the design but equally they had to be fun as I wanted the kids to love them, so I freestyled the decoration part with lots of colourful sprinkles and mini icing flowers (I bought mine online from www.cakecraftworld.co.uk/ but you can get similar from most supermarkets). To effectively get the sprinkles on you can either empty them into a little bowl and roll the coated cake pops into them, or you can sprinkle them on from above. Either way work fast as they do dry quickly and once they’re set you can’t add any more decorations. Stand them up until they’re completely dried – you could use florists oasis to stand them in, or even an upturned egg box would do the job!

Once dried pop some mini cellophane bags over each one and individually tie with a ribbon or twist tie – have a look on Ebay for these, I got 50 sticks, bags and ties for a few pounds– and they’re done! We displayed mine on a wire stand (that my sister had also picked up at a car boot sale for 50p) but once they’re dried they’re not too delicate so you can even just lie them on a pretty tray, it doesn’t have to be fancy.

Sorry for the cliché, but the proof is in the pudding and these were absolutely and completely delicious, probably more so than the cupcakes. Most importantly, the kids loved them! One little girl came to ask me if she could have one, and within minutes there were suddenly thirty children running around with cake pops in their hands – to see their excited faces made the extra effort so worthwhile! It is fair to say that a couple of big kids loved them too and the few extra that I’d made kept a few rumbling tummies quiet during speeches ;)

Some tips to make these even easier for yourself:

- If you’re in a real hurry to whip these up you could equally use a ready-made shop bought cake such as a madeira sponge rather than taking the time to make it from scratch.

- If you can’t find ‘Candy melts’ or  ‘Renshaw Simply Melts’ (which seems to be the UK version though you can get both from good cake making suppliers) just melt some chocolate, I would say probably the cheaper stuff (for example Milky Bar or Dairy Milk) would melt best.

- You don’t need to buy fancy decorations to make these look good – some chocolate for covering and hundreds and thousands, or simple penny sweets would look just as effective! If you can’t find cake pop sticks easily just use some lolly sticks instead , use greaseproof paper for covering  and tie them with pretty ribbons – just as lovely and more individual!

Blue Monday? Stop moaning and make some Che(e)rry Cupcakes!

Cherry Bakewell Cupcakes

So according to Exeter University, today is 'Blue Monday' which is the most depressing day of the year.

This is apparently due to us having no money left after Christmas, bad weather and lack of sunlight. This one day results in workplace malaise and £93 billion in lost productivity in the workplace. What a load of old codswallop! Life is what you make it and if you ask me, today was no more miserable than any other day, unless you too chose to be a misery guts! 

To put a stop to this depressing nonsense and just in case you do have the January blues, I have decided to post possibly the cheeriest recipe ever - the Cherry Bakewell Cupcake. Based on the famous British tart it features an almond sponge, gooey raspberry jam, lemony fondant icing all topped off with a kitsch glace cherry - if this doesn't make you happy then nothing will!

I can't claim the recipe as my own unfortunately - it was featured on the last BBC 2 series of the Great British Bake off. I've taken it from the shows most recent book 'The Great British Bake Off: How to Bake' and have followed the recipe pretty much entirely to the word.

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

150g/5½oz Margarine such as stork, or butter – I used stork but I think butter may give a better result
150g/5½oz Golden caster sugar
100g/3½oz Self-raising flour
3 free-range eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp Baking powder
60g/2¼oz Ground almonds
1 tbsp Milk
90g/3¼oz Raspberry jam


Icing:
250g/9oz Fondant icing sugar
3 tbsp Fresh lemon juice
12 Glacé cherries


Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas mark 5. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2. For the cupcakes, cream the margarine in a bowl until light and fluffy. Add the remaining ingredients, except the raspberry jam, and mix until well combined.
3. Spoon or pipe the mixture into the cases (they should be two-thirds filled) and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until risen and golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool in the tin for 10 minutes.
4. For the icing, mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together in a bowl until smooth. Don’t be tempted to add more liquid! It may seem thick but go with it – it will become surprisingly runny if you keep working it and it will be more than enough for 12 cupcakes.
5. Using an apple corer or a small sharp paring knife, carefully remove the middle of the cupcakes - not the entire middle, just go about two thirds of the way down. Fill the holes with the raspberry jam,being careful not to over fill each hole otherwise it will mix in with the fondant icing. Don’t despair if it does, pink and white does look quite pretty!
6. Carefully spoon the icing onto the top of each cake until the icing floods to the sides of the cake case and top with a cherry.