Obsession

Despite eating everything (bar sourdough), I seem to require vegan, egg-free or gluten-free cakes quite regularly, usually because of other people's allergies and if you want of get rid of (almost) everything, vegan is a good option which everyone can eat. I did it for my wedding dessert table. Actually the best thing I did was jelly and lots of it. Guaranteed not to have kids reaching for their epipens. Well, highly, highly unlikely I should say. Previously though, I've always either used the "with vinegar" option and these cakes tend to be chocolate or apple based. This year I've been asked to make a vanilla cake for my friend's son who is allergic to eggs. Thankfully he is now a little older than the first time I baked for him (so dairy products are now IN!) The following was adapted from the following site , I actually made it in its coffee form as a part of a hospital drop off and it turned out well hence I adapted it to vanilla. Moreover though, as i...

I attempted to start a lock-down bakeoff online and for the first challenge I set swiss roll or babka. It may die a prompt death if no one joins me but at least I tried. There's something addictive about designing challenges and I have a shedload. Geeky bake idea queen - and out there I'm guessing some frustrated producer of Bakeoff is dreaming of filming a football documentary or something. Here was my swiss roll anyway. I have previously made the Tokyo Banana recipe from here and whilst it makes the best sponge, the custard flowed straight out. It tasted really nice though and I need to work on that, but for this I wanted an actual banana custard and therefore I turned to this site for a creme patisserie recipe which I adapted to my ingredients. Decopaste: 1 egg white 30g caster sugar 40g plain flour 20g butter Food colouring. Method: Mix everything together in the order above. Divide into bowls and colour with food colouring or in my case, some cocoa ...

I've made chocolate cage cakes before, but never brilliantly. In fairness, this isn't brilliant but it did get a lot of attention. The whole process is very, very simple and is very handy for covering up the less than brilliant buttercream smoothing I do on the sides. Did I mention I hate buttercream? Gets sugar everywhere, dries hard and is far, far too sweet. I did  try a cooked flour frosting the week before but my friend complained it wasn't sweet enough. Anyway, let's talk chocolate cage. You have a cake which you've covered with some kind of frosting. Assuming your oven doesn't suck as badly as my current one which messed up even the simple victoria sponge inside this cake, you'll have a cake. By itself, that's fine. To the cage - measure around the cake - and do it AFTER you've frosted it. I did this based on the cake pan and ended up about an inch short. (FYI not an issue, just squiggle some chocolate on a spare bit and patch...

I made one attempt at finessing the chocolate cake, but with no melted chocolate and 50g less cocoa (replaced with flour) it STILL tasted super rich. So when we found out the cake was to serve 40 we figured super rich was fine. Tiny slices, super rich... it all works. So recipe wise, we used the recipe below but made two batches worth in a roasting tin. I actually carried my nice flat based roasting tin home from my house to my mum's to make it. Anyway, it was fairly standard, left it in for about 5-10 minutes more and it was baked through. The only problem is the edges are slightly more crumbly than normal (but that might have something to do with adding twice the required baking powder to one batch because I forgot whether I had added it or not! The Totoro is made of rice krispies and melted marshmallows with a bit of butter. Coated in a little ganache, the icing went over the top. Can I say, this was the BANE of my night. It's the reason that having started bak...

I got a request for a birthday cake for the end of the month and how she put it was  "please make the same chocolate cake [from last year] as everybody loved it".    Gleep.  I tried to move her on to trying something a little new... Oreo buttercream maybe? But I knew she really didn't want it.  "heavenly"  as she described the cake last year.  Gleep two.  Admission time. It took me two days to remember(ish) what her cake was. I did a ninky nonk. That was known. But all I remember was that I thought the cake was dry. Very dry. So I sandwiched it with extra layers of ganache. Three in fact. I am now (post searching online and realising it wasn't there) that I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's cake recipe from her book the Cake Bible. (How bad is that I forgot I actually used my hundred odd books sometimes?!) After wandering the shops I realised I used Galaxy in the ganache rather than dark which is quite bitter and grown up. Afterall, this was a ca...

How do you follow the farm cake and the Ninky-Nonk? With a Carcrash cake that's what! My nephew's latest obsession is Traffic lights. In fact he ran off with the two spare ones and then complained loudly every time we removed them so he could, you know, eat dinner, get a bath that kind of thing. A bit of a low effort one from me, but I'm studying at the moment. The cake was baked before midday and iced quite quickly in the afternoon. Mum (aka grandma) was disappointed I wasn't going to be making a carved number but personally - study and the prospect of needing a chiropractor after I'd made it... figured I'd wait till he was older. I'm sure car cakes will make an appearance again. Traffic lights made of those sweets called Drumsticks (Poundland!!) dipped in water and wrapped in black fondant with jelly tots dabbed with water and then pressed in. Now that was impressive - I thought they'd fall off pretty quick but they lasted all the running aroun...

Meet Peppa Pig! I think this might be the one for me. Not perfect, but for a chocolate birthday cake, I think this is the one. The recipe is the "best" chocolate cake recipe which I tried before and didn't like, but tried it again in preparation for this and I thought... "Wow. Okay, this works." I made it in a victoria sandwich tin which at about 6.75 inches? (I don't know... it was in my cupboard!) and takes 45minutes. It tastes like a damp chocolate brownie, complete with the papery top. The only tiny dampener on this is that because it is a brownie essentially, it  doesn't slice so neatly. It does rather crumble a lot. Which is just as well we have that much milk chocolate ganache on it. Peppa is the second "commission" from my sister-in-law's friends. I say "commission" as in they pay me for my materials so I can afford to play with fondant for fun. With 4 large bars of Galaxy and about 100g of dark going into the ga...

I gave it a go. After following the Great British Bake Off for weeks (and irritating the people at work by reminding them I had to get home to watch it!) I finally made one of the numbers. I've actually made a full list of the bakes and will work through them at some stage but for now, here's the Fraisier . I kept relatively true to the recipe - minus the marzipan because no one likes it. The key things you should know about this cake though is that the sponge becomes very lemony as you add the juice of a lemon to each layer effectively. The other aspect is that the creme patisserie... tastes like wallpaper paste. That is to say, it has a distinct lack of flavour despite me adding a touch of vanilla extract once I realised the pod hadn't made an impact and I just had a feeling it should be more... french? That is Mary Berry I guess. It felt... austere. I crave something silky and French. Like a deep custard tart. Like creme brulee the double cream edition. I was proud of...

It's not the most elegant of cakes. It's covered with crumbs which defaults to messy. Very messy. Messy in a sweep all the counters and a few floors cake. It is however, really rather yummy in a Sara-Lee / Trifle kind of way. I did this for my sister's birthday when she requested a chocolate and cream cake. I didn't quite do double cream but it did meet the not too sweet criteria. I would say this though. Lower the sugar in the cake. The frosting is actually really nice. Not too sweet, pleasantly foamy and easy to cover the cake. The cake itself just has a slight aftertaste which may have came from my choice of chocolates and cocoa. Words of warning to follow: Watch out when you transport it. The top two levels slid an inch across and left the rest of the cake... it did gently smush back in place, but just in case it's for company. Warning 2. The book may have it showing beautiful, full, crisp white layers in between the chocolate. Mine... less so. And based on...

Perhaps it's wrong to call this a gateau. It's only got two layers for a start. Anyway, it's my attempt at the chinese-ified gateau's that you get in Chinatown, without the faux cream because I still don't want to try the lard concoction. This is the sky-high vanilla buttermilk cake (rather than chiffon) and covered with whipped cream and fruit. The intention was to wrap the cake in mango like they do in the shops, but I realised that a) my mangos were overripe and slightly squishy, b) I'm a bad slicer, c) the mango is not very "tall" compared to my cake (even though there are just two rather than the three that the sky-high recipe makes - that other layer was eaten hot.) Anyway, just a picture then.Nom.

This lady made a cake at work and it tasted amazing. I asked for the recipe and I was surprised to hear it was Nigella's Victoria Sponge from How to be a Domestic Goddess. I very rarely make anything from Nigella's cake book any more and never this sponge. Probably because it was a Victoria Sponge as well, for which I've used the Good Housekeeping book that my mum has had since the 80s. I think I messed up the temperature somewhat as it didn't taste as good though :( Just slightly tighter somehow. As it was Father's Day today I made it for him. Just cream, minimal fruit decorations etc. Parental approval all round.  I've been messing with chocolate lately and that's why it's got some leftover chocolate squiggle squares on top. The other little chocolate number I made was the below for my sister's colleague's birthday. They had a £5 kitty for a cake so I figured I'd experiment so she might get something nicer than a standard M&S tray b...

I made this cake after watching Kitchen Secrets and thought WOW that cake is YELLOW!!! Sadly it seems, this was not something to be repeated with mine. Note to self - retune the tv. Anyway, the recipe is here , but oddly the voiceover lady gets it wrong (based on the producer comments) so when the recipe says add zest only to the cake, and she says add the juice, she is wrong. Ho hum. Having made the cake, I'd say ADD THE SODDING JUICE. Without it, it tastes distinctly... eggy. And not of lemon. So after the first mini cake (I split the cake into two batches - one for work and one for a taster for my hard-done-by dad who had to watch me make cheesecake yesterday and waltz off with it to a friends.) I made some adjustments. 1. Stab and drizzle. If you've made lemon cake before, the usual rule is when it's warm from the oven, stab it with a skewer and pour over lemon juice mixed with icing sugar. 2. His recipe calls for an apricot jam layer of glaze. I used lemon curd. ...

After obsessing about the Sky High baking group pics from several years ago, and buying the Sky High book, I've funnily only ever made one recipe - the buttermilk cake recipe, that is *drumroll* up till now!! It was my brother's birthday and ... I realised that in our family we don't have any "favourite" cakes. My sister doesn't do raisins, my parents don't like cinnamon or anything other than vanilla sponge with whipped cream, but we have NO FAVOURITE CAKES. Which, can be quite handy. So today I made Banana and chocolate chip cake from the book. Shockingly easy, but also in the american way of baking, not so great on the results. Let me explain, if you gave me a list of ingredients I am almost always going to go butter, sugar, eggs, flour - in that order. This cake is almost muffin-like in it's creation. Dry meets wet, meets some more wet. I think the texture suffered as a result and it didn't have the lushness of banana bread. A bit more cream...

As cakes go, this one is a-may-zing! In imitation of one Joey Tribbiani "What's not to like? Cream good, strawberries good, cake good, meringue goooooooooooooood" :D This has parental popularity which is rare, but is enjoyable all the same. This recipe cake from the Good Housekeeping Simple and Stunning Cakes (by Greg an Max). Very, very minor tweaks on my part - I used unsalted butter rather than margarine (you can tell the age of the book!!) and added a little vanilla (like 1/4 tsp) to a pot of light double cream. Note that I didn't chose to use light double cream (Elmea no less :S) just that someone bought it and we had to use it up. Something you need to watch out for is the flipping of the cake on top of the other one when you finally plate up. Very delicate and very breakable!! Ingredients: Cake: 50g unsalted butter 100g caster sugar 1/2 tsp vanilla 4 egg yolks 100g plain flour 1 tsp baking powder 3 tbsp milk Meringue: 4 egg whites 225g caster sugar 50g flaked a...

So it was the tenth anniversary of this web forum I belong to - see right for link, and we were asked if we would consider making some cakes to mark the occasion. Much stress!! There were two practice cakes where I tried to make a chocolate gateau, but finally decided that the chocolate mousse filling would make it incredibly difficult to eat on serviettes. But, here it is finally. Despite dropping my ipod on the "y" in "Anniversary when I put on my coat on the train (it landed on the clingfilm which I think saved it from being squished completely!). Despite the pouring rain and Piccadilly Circus closing most of it's exits because of the flooding. Despite me wrangling for my umbrella and mobile with cake boxes in each hand. It made it through the storm!!! The cake itself is a Vanilla Buttermilk Cake from Sky High Cakes. I've made it before but for cupcakes (the lemon jam centre ones). This time I did try to emulate cake flour to an extent by replacing two tablesp...

Third time's the charm. I gave in and bought cake-release from the dreaded Lakeland. I love it. But I hate it as well. Love hate Lakeland. So commercial. But so necessary. It never has quite as specialist a gear that I need, but it still has more than the regular high street and more over, I have to go to odd places to get it!! Still, this concoction of hydrogenated fat allowed me to turn out a perfect bundt cake without any digging at all! *pop* cake. The recipe itself also was a winner. Dorie Greenspan's recipe, I do not believe I've made her before but boy does it rock. The recipe repeated here so I don't lose the yummy recipe which I did not change for once (although using my usual subs for sugar when I ran out) is as follows: 2 cups flour 1 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 2 sticks (220g ish) unsalted butter, softened 1 3/4 cups sugar (used 1 golden caster, 3/4 granulated white) 2 large eggs 2 tsp vanilla extract (used one) 1 cup sour cream 3 Tbsp jam, optional 1. P...

It's that time... yes I need to use the slightly out of date leftover stuff from the weekend. The glup of buttermilk and the sour cream. Unfortunately there is still a half cup of sour cream I have to find a use for, but! To the Banana Cake Batman! The recipe is from Betty Crocker, free application on the ipod touch. It's one of those pigging annoying recipe books where 99% of the recipes use a mix created by... Betty Crocker!! However, it has a recipe search where I looked up buttermilk and so, made banana cake. If you are doing this, one assumes you'd actually have buttermilk. I used my glup and made the difference up with sour cream. Please note that Frau Crocker also grossly underestimates the baking time. Mine took an hour or more using a 9 inch pan? Don't let it put you off though (apart from the gas bill I guess) because putting the cake itself together took less than ten minutes. I admit though, I had my brother mash the bananas for me, and being my brother he c...