Sniff And Snort

IMPORTANT UPDATE: BLOG CHANGEOVER

2011-04-21T00:37:00.000-07:00

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Dear Friends,

You might have noticed that there hasn't been much activity on this blog lately. I have moved the blog over to Wordpress as it is a more secure platform for me as I am using the iPad mainly to update the blog.

I would really, really LOVE to see you there and to those who have followed this blog, cash I please ask you to follow the new blog.

The address is;

www.sniffandsnort.wordpress.com

This Blogging Lark

2011-03-01T05:16:00.001-08:00

I'm not even going to apologise for my blog-tardiness. The Sniff&Snort household has been topsy-turvied by my early Spring
cleaning (or long overdue if you consider that we haven't done any for the past six years). It got to the stage where there simply wasn't any little spots of sanctuary in the house, just piles of stuff that needed to be sorted and stored, charity shopped or thrown away.
Last month saw us reaching another milestone in our family. The 7th wonder was given the all clear by her Consultant Paediatrician. Not that any of us nearest and dearest had any reservations about how well she was doing. 7th Wonder had an episode of illness which necessitated hospital admission at day 6 after her birth and despite the fact that it was a 'we'll have to just wait and see' situation, an overly zealous Paediatrician saw it fit to diagnose her with a condition which at its worst, had a life affecting prognosis (words like brain damage, deafness, long term hospitalisation were bandied about). He even went as far as referring us to the Social Services.

Honestly, harsh as this may sound, I don't give two hoots if she is deaf, or will have learning difficulties or will have trouble interpreting the sounds that she hears. She smiles back. She is crawling. She throws her toys aside when you walk into the room with a plate of food. She turns to her name. She goes 'oooff' when she sees her sister's soft toy named Woofy. We love her regardless. The truth of the matter is, I believe that things happen for a reason. Yes, 7th Wonder was dreadfully ill. She almost had a full blood exchange. She could have been worse off than she is now, due to her illness. However, the reality is, 7th Wonder saved my life. Had she not become ill and required hospitalisation, they would have not picked up on the fact that I had contracted a rare but potentially life threatening infection which has since been categorised as a notifiable infection. The onset came on rapidly and in a different circumstance, I would have stayed at home, wrote it off as mastitis, gone to sleep to wear it off and possibly not wake up from it. It is realities like that that really puts into perspective that whatever special requirements 7th Wonder might need later on in life, we are still truly blessed.
Last month, also marked the 2nd anniversary of my leaving midwifery practice. Every single passing month, I expect to regret that decision and yet every single passing month, I find myself breathing a huge sigh of relief. Midwifery has been a huge part of my life, and has shaped who i am as a person, a woman and also a mother. It has changed my parenting style. It has led us, as a family to home education.

What it hasn't done is grant me the patience to brush the Small Shouty One's hair.

Every time, there are tears. From both of us. You can always tell when things get a bit tense during the hair brushing. The pets are cowling in a corner, the rest of the brood will suddenly discover chores unfinished and Slaveboy will retreat to the kitchen to crape burnt bits off from the bottom of pans. The Small Shouty One will be 5 this month and she will be having her first sleepover. I've offered to take her and her friend to a posh French cake boutique. She wants to go to Macari's for Mr. Whippy. Sigh. So many other landmarks too. My 2nd son winning 3rd place for Classical Guitar at the Chichester Music Festival. My 4th daughter doing her 1st ballet exam. My 3rd daughter passing yet another diving assessment. My firstborn below getting well and truly stuck in with her theatre work. That's her dunking a shirt in a coal bucket filled with soot. The things the Chichester Technical Youth Theatre get up to.

And finally, I leave with this. I promise to blog about cakes & flour confections soon. Once I find the floor in my bedroom. I will share with you Whipped & Baked's recent adventures. I might even post about my grand plans for the postage damp size garden plot. Until then, I would like to share this gem. I hope my children will one day read this. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Day of Rest

2011-02-13T06:01:00.001-08:00

So I won't be finishing up those drafts. I know I'm taunting you guys. I sort of spent last night watching the latest episode of True Blood (Erik the Viking, sigh, how unoriginal but isn't he easy on the eyes). Then I got caught up catching up with Being Human and the first instalment of The Killing. Hence this morning, I felt absolutely murderous. The sight of the cartoons of 2chicks egg white in fridge just highlighted my sense of failure. So I made these.

I like them knobbly. I simply warmed up the egg white & sugar solution in a double boiler and then got it whisking in my table top mixer. I can't remember for how long but I usually wait for it to get glossy and stiff, but not dry (this, dear readers, is a rule I apply to MANY MANY things).

As you can see, the inside is marshmallowy, we like them that way as we eat them straight up.

Chewy and soft, none of that hollow crunchy type that you buy from supermarkets. So what have you been baking today, dear Snorters? - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

On the sofa

2011-02-12T11:24:00.001-08:00

Again. With the small, shouty one.

She took offence to my lying my head on her back. Always quick to rectify any injustice, she is. My to do list includes several blog posts which are in draft mode. There is the bane if my last Tuesday,

And this,

But until then, I'm on the sofa, righting the wrongs of the world, universe and CBBCland with my 4 year old.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Crikey Stripey

2011-02-05T16:14:00.001-08:00

What I would really like to do is swear. I get antsy from time to time and suffer from an epic proportion of melancholy. Truly, I become winter of discontent personified. So, last night saw me making white chocolate mud cake for my daughter's birthday get together. I'm still playing around with temp control on my new oven and wondering why the heck they only gave me one shelf. It irked me a bit last night and I'm thankful that the thought didn't cross my mind today as it would definitely have tipped me over the edge. And there were other crap that was bugging me, petty minded little eejits who've rattled my cage a little. However. I must remember what my newly found Twitter friend, @wraggamuffins told me. Things happen for a reason. Amen. I do wonder though how long it would be before new parents name their babies with an @ prefix. Gotta be done. I'd even half consider renewing my midwifery registration to the NyouarenotthebossofmenowMC just for the opportunity to sow the seed of this idea to new parents in the delivery ward. Anyway, this cake. Saturday is always a crazy day at the S&S camp. 7th Wonder wad particularly unsettled - I think she's teething. Some friends were popping in and I had this cake to decorate. I was just hoping that it would turn out alright as I would look a right numpty if I had to redo the decorations. The cake design was fairly simple.

It was filled and covered with chocolate buttercream (made with chocolate, not cocoa). I find that there are a few tricks/tips that help when trying to ice/cover a cake.

-when torting the cake into slices, stick a cocktail stick on the side of each layer in a neat well aligned vertical line. That way, you know which is the right aspect of each slice so when you sandwich back together, you're not sticking the left side of one to the right side of another.

- Always whip your buttercream til it's nice and sloppy. That way it spreads well and doesn't take a chunk out of your cake when you spread it.

- If you are making a 9 inch cake, then place it on a 9 inch board. That way, when you apply the buttercream, you have the border of the cake board as a guide. Use a flat plastic scraper to get the surface nice and level.

- always coat the side(s) of your cake. That way you won't mess up the top.

- chill your cake so the buttercream set. - knead, knead, knead your fondant til its pliable. - roll out more fondant than you need and dust your surface well. Keep moving the fondant, dusting as you go.

- bring the cake to the rolled fondant, not the other way around.

- work fast but don't panic. Always smooth the top first. Make sure you pull out the sides before you smooth it down. This way you don't end up with overlaps of fondant at the bottom.

- always, always work with dry hands and implements. Fondant sticks to everything and tears. -and most importantly, have fun. I love it in most parts. I only hate it when I've rushed it or not used enough fondant. More from me tomorrow when I will gibber on about fudge. Maybe.

On the Road (again)

2011-02-04T08:09:00.001-08:00

Again in the sense that I am having a deep sense of déjà vu writing this cos I have already written it. On my iPhone. Except that the blogpress application crashed on me and took with it my whole post. So I have dug out my iPad and am writing the post on here and will have to wait to publish it til I get home. So I'm on a train to London because numpty here, despite her resolve to simplify 2011 and take it easy in light of the pretty much horrendous and traumatic 2010, have been asked by the Great British Bake Off crew to bring along some baking samples to an audition. A few weeks back, probably mid January, I sent in an email application for Season 2 of The Great British Bake Off. No agenda at all, just this overwhelming notion that I'd be plagued with 'what ifs' had I not. The questions were quite thorough, and highlighted LOTS of my shortcoming as I discovered that I do bugger all of pastry or pies or tarts. They also asked questions like What is Your Greatest Achievement, to which answered 37 yrs old, midwifery training, 7 children, home educating and I still have hair and all my teeth. I also declared that one of the reasons why Slaveboy and I are still together is because I make a damn fine baked American vanilla cheesecake. So you get the gist here. I really didn't rehearse my answers. The day after I submitted my application, I received a phone call from the Production Company asking to do a phone interview. A week or so later, in the midst of crazy planning and baking for the Brighton Tattoo Convention, whilst shopping for a table cloth, I get a phone call saying that I was through to the next round and can I please turn up at their London's office in a week's time with some samples of my baking. One sweet. One savoury. So the whole Brighton Tattoo Convention weekend was spent stewing over what I would bake, that and kissing various Hell's Angels (Slaveboy understands this proclivity of mine) and swatting women in the boobs (very animated arm gestures when nervous or having consumed too much sugar). By around Wednesday, I had pretty much decided. You might presume that I would have arrived to the sweet decision first but I didn't. I decided on caramelised pear & Stinking Bishop cheese individual tarts. I think I made in once before, like two and a half years ago. The sweet was going to a fondant decorated lemon cake. Until I wobbled and thought that the cake would give the wrong impression. The cake was going to be scrummy but I worried that would be overshadowed by the fact that it would have been White chocolate ganached, fondant covered with handmade White chocolate plastique roses. It just didn't sound like baking to me. *In retrospect this might have been a better option but I was too shattered from my Brighton Tattoo Convention weekend to gauge properly*. So I switched to my crowd pleaser - cinnamon rolls. This involved scalding milk, proving, kneading, rolling, chilling and making a frosting. Unlike the tarts which were made the day before, I woke up at 6:20 on the itself to get the already rolled dough out so I could bake them as near to leaving time as possible (8:30am). Twenty minutes later, having left the 7th wonder in bed with Daddy Slaveboy fast asleep, I get a phone all from him with 7th Wonder wailing in the background. The question was simple, can he bring her downstairs? So, there Slaveboy stood, jiggling a growling baby as I frantically mix the maple frosting that is to go on top of the rolls. And in true comedic fashion, midway jiggling the baby, Slaveboy's sarong fell to the floor. And I tell you this, it's not only Scotsmen in kilts who go commando. Once I finished rolling around on the floor laughing, thinking that what would properly complete the scene was our hermit neighbour walking past our non-screened off kitchen window, I took the 7th wonder off of him so he could regain his dignity, if not decency. It amazes me how surprised I am by how crazily hectic trying to bake with a young baby is. At the same as breastfeeding the 7th wonder, I was applying make-up, pulling on tights and fending off requests for DVD viewing from the shouty one. There really isn't much more I can say about the experience as I've signed some doo dah saying won't say anything until the show is aired but office to say, I didn't get in although they did compliment me on the cinnamon rolls, saying they were delicious and my tart cases felt and looked right (I fear caramelised pea in tarts is still an acquired taste). Just as well really since upon arrival at the audition, I developed a hives on my ore head and by halfway through, my right eye was watering and stinging so much that I would have looked like someone with a nervous tick had I been asked for screen test. That's happens when you poke yourself in the eye with your mascara wand. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Brighton Tattoo Convention

2011-02-02T02:51:00.001-08:00

There are very few events that I really look forward to every year. The Brighton Tattoo Convention, organised by a lovely man called Woody is way up there in the top 3. It's vibrant, quirky and very friendly. This year was doubly better because we were returning to the event with our cake stall. You guys here to look at photos of tattoos, you can just scroll down ;)

These sold like err, hot cakes. Coca Cola cupcakes with Sailor Jerry rum buttercream. Half a bottle went into 50 cupcakes' worth of buttercream.

I actually love this photo.

They were so cute. If anyone know who they are, please let me know. I would love to send them a copy of the photo.

Some wickedly fantastic ladies.

I had hair envy.

The moustache Mafia were out in full force at the weekend. Between them and the men donning trouser braces, I had plenty to ogle at.

Pretty sure he's a tattooist.

Pretty, pretty ladies. And they liked my cakes!

Her hair reminded me of Neil Gaiman's Crazy Hair book. It's phenomenal.

Aaaaa, the Wildcat gang. I do love them. Ever so jolly and funny. With their bling bling sign that they only take out twice a year because it's too big to fit anywhere else. The guy there loves big bosomed women bearing cakes.

And this is what all good girls get when the come bearing brownies and cinnamon rolls for the Wildcat gang.

I saw some pretty spectacular chest pieces at this convention.

This reminds me of the bizarre conversation I had with one of the staff. I had been asked to make the prize cake for the best decorated tattoo booth. I was trying to look for Woody, and the guy had a radio communication jiggy thing. The conversation that followed; "The cake is for best decorated booth..." "Best decorated boobs you say?" "No, boothS. Not boobs." "Yeah, boobs, that's what I said." At which point he flashed us his decorated chest. Sigh. I could have gone on with that conversation for a fair while, voluntarily.

He was a bit nice. According to my firstborn.

And I'm pretty sure this lovely lady was born with a few rib bones missing. Check out her tiny waist.

I'm always a sucker for tattoos of roses.

My piercer sought me out on Sunday. Being a vegan, she couldn't have any of my cakes. Must get round to making her vegan cakes.

The winners. Blackheart Tattoo Studio. Unbeknownst to me, this turned out to be Woody's studio and he was a bit reluctant to accept it, seeing that he was the organiser of the convention. However, he relented and said that it would make his wife (pretty lady in black) really happy to have won it. All in all, a great weekend. Looking forward to next year's.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Brighton Racecourse

Tardiness

2011-01-31T14:23:00.001-08:00

Not TARDIS. Just a quickie to say that I'm in the middle of sorting out the photos from this weekend's Brighton Tattoo Convention before I publish my post about it. The post will be gratuitous. I will be somewhat waxing on lyrically about the eye candy Continental men I met (there was that one with silver teeth and a lilting French accent) and charmingly gruff Hell's Angels. See you soon. ;) - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Beet It, or Beet Velvet Cake

2011-01-21T07:46:00.001-08:00

Slaveboy was really sweet to clean one of my baking drawers. I had spilled meriwhite in there and in a head-in-the-sand ostrich way, I simply abandoned using the drawer. Not long after handing the task of organising my baking stuff back to me, I had to call him back to fix a plastic bit of the Kenwood mixer that I broke in my mad, panicked cleaning frenzy. Slaveboy is the superglue pimp. It is the answer to everything. We have a special surface where all the children put deposit broken toy cars, dolls' limbs and eyeballs, broken spine of a favourite book, busted belt buckle, snapped handbag clasps. All waiting to for the special glue. Other families have special ouchy cream. We have superglue. So in my mad, cleaning frenzy, I found my Steenbergs jar of beetroot powder. I am a sucker for jars. The only time I have used this powder was when I made beetroot pasta.

It got me thinking about red velvet cakes, and my love/hate relationship with it. I reckon Spiker thinks I am a cake heathen for even eating it but I am drawned to the colour. The thing that puts me off from making it is the fact that some recipes tell you to use 2 fl. oz. of red food colouring. Waaaay too crazy amount. Seeing that Google is a friend to ALL of us, I had a look for alternative recipes and found this one. It sounded feasible enough. I wasn't too sure that the cake was going to taste like red velvet cake seeing that it called for a hefty amount of beetroot powder. But it was Friday, and I was feeling brave, plus I'm getting a new oven. And I bought two tops I actually liked yesterday. In a smaller size. It felt like the stars have aligned themselves right today. So off I went to dirty the kitchen some more and mess up my orderly baking corner.

So the egg yolks and half the sugar and the buttermilk goes into a bowl over pan of simmering water.

I'm really bad as I never write down the recipes I try out, I just rest my ipad against the toaster and cover it with cling film. This photo is prior to the cling film fetish adornment.

You whisk the egg yolks, and sugar and buttermilk til they mix almost triples. I actually didn't have buttermilk so subbed with equal amount of milk with vinegar added to it.

I think at some point, I added my home made vanilla extract. I try to remember to not add it to anything too warm as that will affect the extract.

Add the other half of the sugar to the egg white and whisk it. Don't forget the cream of tartar.

It was all a blur, I tell you.

I love these guys. They look like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. So prim and proper.

This is what they look like after a really good night out.

Add the egg white mixture to the yolk mixture. At this point, it looks absolutely delicious. Gloopy, glossy and made a whack-whack sound when folded to fast.

The flour, cocoa powder and beetroot powder mixture. I strongly recommend sifting the mix. Beetroot powder appears like it clumps easily. Just fold it into the wet mixture.

I assure you, the mix this look like this. Bright and almost luminous. In the oven at around 175c, or if you've got my oven, just throw salt over your shoulder, cross your fingers and hope that the temperature stays relatively constant.

20 minutes later, they ought to be ready.

I wasn't too happy about the browning around the edges and tops. I think next time (if there is one, I would probably use a baking strip or wet folded newspaper and cover it. I'd have to bake it for longer but it would mean that the cakes would colour less. I whipped some double cream with vanilla extract and icing sugar and sandwich the cakes together. I didn't have cream cheese in the house and in retrospect, I think cream cheese frosting would soften the beetroot flavour. It tasted earthy, and I certainly think it would benefit from being a tad bit buttery (the recipe doesn't call for butter so I might rework the recipe). As opposed to conventional red velvet cakes where I struggle to taste the cocoa powder, you could taste it in this recipe.

Texture was beautiful. Moist, light and fluffy but not wimpy. You know what I mean by wimpy cakes, so light that it's made with just flour and air. But you wanna hear about the colour, dontcha? It was definitely red. Just not bright red. However, I liked this red. It looked edible. Would I bake it again? Hmmmm. Not unless I plan to rework the recipe. Slaveboy loved it for its earthiness. The children didn't really ask for seconds, the Small Shouty one said it tasted too red and Potato Bottom claimed that it was slightly akin to chilli chocolate (??). I also thought it left a strange, dry tingle in my throat, despite the silky cream filling. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I forgot something..

2011-01-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

You know I told you about the burglary we had? Well, I forgot one minor detail.. They almost went off with my Willie's Cacao block. For those who don't know what it looks like, I googled a photie for you.

It's usual residing place was next to my Kenwood mixer on my baking work surface. We found it on the windowsill. In their drunken haze, for they must have been drunk to have taken my washing up liquid, they must have taken it thinking it was something else. The cold Southern softie winter must have knocked some sense into them and they must have come to the realisation that it'll be a long time before anyone would start selling gold foil wrapped wacky baccy hash in Waitrose.

Making Whoopees

2011-01-16T13:56:00.001-08:00

Sigh. Whoopee pies. So what is the big deal? I LOVE the idea of cupcakes. Done well, they are just frivolous and flamboyant. So much avenue for creativity, from the choice of cases, to the cake flavours to the piping of the frosting and selection of decorations. Whoopee (?Whoopie) pies on the other hand is a bit bleuurgh. They look like someone had overfilled their muffin tins, ended up with muffins that wouldn't shift from the tin and they ended having to be lopped off in order to extract the bottom half of the muffins. I thought I would give it a go anyway, and I have been working on some ideas of fillings and cake flavours. I felt it would be prudent if I started my experiment with a tried and tested cake recipe. As always, I forgot to take photos of the process. I would encourage you to try out this cake recipe as it is easy peasy and I doubt many would struggle to find the ingredients. You don't even need eggs for it so it's practically vegan/dairy-free. Get yourself some Pure spread and add to the buttercream mix some home made caramel syrup extract and you would have a really scrummy vegan treat.

Woo hoo. Check out my new cooling rack. 7 years of baking and I've just got my first cooling rack. Who knows, next year, I might splash out on a balloon whisk!!

Aesthetically, I would like rid of that muffin top rim. My children on the other hand loved its crunch factor.

The filling was piped using a 1M tip. Apologies for the rubbish photo, the flash kicked in obliterated the dark cakes in he photo.

I am not happy with how the tops have volcanoed. I think it has got something to do with the fact that my oven has a dodgy temperate gauge and I have been relying on an oven temperature.

Aawwww, it looks like lips!!! It had a lovely brownie type slight crunch to the outside and the inside was light and moist. The filling was not too sweet and it just melted with the whoopee pie beautifully. A bit like eating a pavlova, you know you are eating a good one when you don't know when the meringue stopped and when the cream started. Recipe (borrowed from David Lebovitz and adapted a little) 1 cup of water 1/3 of vegetable or sunflower oil 1tbsp of white vinegar 1tsp of vanilla extract Mix the above in a measuring jug. 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour (use plain flour and sub the last 1 1/2 tbsp. with cornflour - why exactly I don't know, I reckon Joe Pastry would be able to explain the science) 5tbsp of cocoa powder (please avoid instant drinking chocolate) 1/4tsp salt 1 cup packed light muscovado sugar 1tsp instant coffee Mix the dry ingredients well. Take the wet mixture and fold it into the dry ingredients. Take great care in not over mixing as you'll end up with a dense cake, err whoopee. Buy yourself one of those inexpensive whoopee pies tin from Lakelands or you could pipe the mixture out into 2 1/2inch rounds. However, there are disadvantages two both methods. Use a tin and you can end with a muffin top effect (like I did as I wasn't really sure how much you should fill the holes). If you decide to pipe them on, you gotta be aware of the mixture's flow velocity (yes, that is a real baking term) or you'll end up with rounds that don't match. As I said, I used a tin and tried twice before the baby needed me. The first time, I used just under an ice cream scoop's worth and it did create a muffin top effect and my whoopees didn't dome the way I wanted them (this could be due to the fact that all the print for the temperature setting on my oven has rubbed off and the light in my oven has gone so I couldn't quite read the oven thermometer properly. Set your oven at 180c and bake for 12-15mins. What you are looking for is a pie that has a slight biscuit crust, sorts in between a cake and a biscuit really. Do remember that like any cakes, they do firm up and become crisper so maybe consider when you want to serve them as this should influence your baking time. Leave them to cool before sandwiching them together. As I was just experimenting, I made up a modified buttercream using equal amounts of icing sugar and butter (please people, NOT without salt. I used half unsalted, half salted. If you are using unsalted butter, salt to taste. Fleur de sel would be lovely). I sploshed a glug of milk too just to create a light and p whipped texture. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Roll (over) and dye

2011-01-15T10:19:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, there are foodstuff so luridly coloured that you sort of decide not to eat despite its edible status. The fondant below was one of them. It had an extra-terrestrial glow to it which screamed radioactive.

I occasionally make cakes. Fondant covered cakes. I've yet to convince enough people that cakes with Italian Meringue Buttercream piped in French ruffle pattern is the way to go. I actually detest fondant. The whole process. The kneading to get it soft and pliable enough. The tinting to get the colour just right, I just end up with colour paste on my clothes, on the baby, on every single tea towel in the kitchen. Then it's the rolling out, and forever moving it so it doesn't stick to the surface. Finally it's that death defying task of getting the fondant on to the cake without it tearing or stretching. This is when I find that the wretched thing is too small in diameter to actually cover the damned cake. This is when I am painfully reminded that I am not a professional cake maker. Diddums indeed. Nevertheless, there is a certain level of therapy to the process. It is all just the process, like in a Karate Kid wax on/wax off moment (original version, circa probably before you were conceived). I find myself reflecting upon our first burglary experience. Two days ago, my daughter (the Potato Bottom one) told us that the kitchen window was wide open. Both Slaveboy and I were still in bed - my excuse is that I was breastfeeding the baby. Upon inspection, it had appeared that that the burglar had some crazy sense of humour. He took: The bottle of Drambuie (I didn't even know we had it), The almost empty bottle of Sailor Jerry Rum (original recipe, bastard burglar), Our last jar of Reese's peanut butter (I hunted high and low for this on EBay), My pink enamel pail with 16 eggs in it (I'm pretty pissed off about this), Our Fairy washing up liquid (and to show how lapsed we are with washing up, we didn't actually notice this til 24hrs later). In return, he left us a crystal vase and a bag of sprouts. I tell you, it's some crazy arse barter system. We debated (for two minutes - it's all go in the sniffsnort household) about calling the police and we did in the end. I thought nothing of it but was amazed when a police officer appeared In under an hour, and soon after, the CSI type people with the blue dusting powder. The whole process was pretty normal, the police officer found the choice of missing items curious, he lamented with me about the loss of Sailor Jerry and he complimented us for our stock of pear Koppaberg. He even didn't patronise me when I told him what main concern was the fact that my kitchen had been broken into and it's been a while since we'd oiled the wooden surfaces and mopped the floor. They took photos of our drive (thank you, nephew Chunk for having cleared and levelled our drive, boo hiss to Slaveboy for leaving that broken heater next to the wall). Then they left. I suppose I should feel violated. After all, some stranger entered our house uninvited, but there were planes to catch and bills to pay and yes, I'm definitely quoting Cats Stevens's song. So what does this have to do with that lurid fondant above? Nothing much really. I meant it for this cake here.

I intended to make the swags out of that particular colour, but in the end I decided against it. I just thought it would make it look garish and cheap. I'm still learning about this process. It's like having the words but needing to learn the most effective way of stringing them together and that's what I think cake decorating is like. I has some time today to look back at some of the cakes I have made this year, and seeing what I have achieved. I even plucked up the courage to post some photos on the British Sugarcraft Guild forum. I love the women on there, they are so encouraging. So here are some of the photos. In the process of doing all these, I've settled on the most perfect recipe for fondant covered cakes. I've learned how to crumb coat cakes and also torte them properly. There were lots of hit and misses with covering them. Mishaps with paints and lustres.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Playing Catch-Up

2011-01-12T11:54:00.001-08:00

2011 is here. Sigh. Desperately trying to muster up enough get-up and go. We started the New Year with a lingering illness. The whole family came down with flu. Except me. Now, I will be the first to admit that I make a crappy nurse as nothing irks me more than not-dying-ill people. At some point, I had 8 sick people in the house delighting me with a five minute long cough chorus. Anyhoo. The illness lingered. We saw in the New Year feeling absolutely drained. How is it when you are ill, instead of drinking copious amount of water and fresh, simple foods, you end up swigging 5-day old Coca Cola, eating Marks & Spencer's cheese straws and warming your croissants on the radiator (a habit I acquired from University days)? We even had to postpone my daughter's birthday celebration with her friends. I'm not going to bore you with the cake baking process. It was vanilla. It was nice. It took AAGEES to bake. Slaveboy preferred the other recipe but he likes his pastry soggy anyway so I don't think he's a reliable critic.

It's Totoro, the character from Studio Ghibli's film, My Neighbor Totoro. Those who have never watched it, please do. It's such a feelgood film and full wonderment. Totoro was crazily hard to get right, despite being an amorphous brown lump. As with most of the baking, this was done at night time. My eyesight was failing, Totoro's eyes kept going wonky and Slaveboy was berating me about the fact that Totoro's ears weren't 'ziggy' enough. Right then.

But Potato Bottom (aka 10 year old birthday girl) LOVED it.

From this photo, you might be led to think that it's the shouty pink-cheeked one's birthday cake but we couldn't quite get her to move five inches to the left. We are still playing catch-up with laundry, diary and various others. I need to overhaul this blog as I have been fannying around with moving platforms and in the process have managed to mess up my layout. Bear with me. Promise to blog more. Somehow I think I might have about three readers though ;) - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

You May Experience A Few Hiccoughs

2011-01-08T03:32:00.000-08:00

I am in the process of transferring this blog to typepad so please do bear with me.

www.whippedandbaked.typepad.com

Bah Humbug-ness

2010-12-27T12:25:00.001-08:00

In this season of goodwill and cheeriness, I do wonder why I persist on pissing off frantic Christmas shoppers by joint the lengthy Marks & Spencer's queue with the intention of paying for a pint of milk. Full fat. Organic. Chichester for the first time was plunged into sub zero temperature like it had never experienced before. Six out of seven of my children caught some dreadful lurgy which rendered useless for pre-requisite Christmas tasks such as hoovering and refreshing the kitty litter. In an attempt to resurrect my blog, I am going to post random photos taken by my eldest daughter.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Chichester Food Fare: Sneak Peek

2010-09-11T04:58:00.000-07:00

Still running around like a headless chicken.

Here's a sneak peek of the cupcakes I took to the Chichester Food Fare.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Bye bye Dollies

2010-09-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

It was a sad day all around in the Sponge household.

My son, on his way back from the beach fell off a curb and hurt his foot on Thursday. He didn't complain much about it and got up Friday morning to do his paper round. I listened to him hobble down the stairs and wondered how long it would be before I would receive a phone call from him to say that he can't complete his round.

Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. Slaveboy, who had been engineering at a live gig the night before crawled out of bed to pick him up. With the help of our daughter, they completed his paper round before taking him to Accident & Emergency. It turned out that he had broken a bone in his foot and the nurse was amazed that he even attempted to do his paper round.

On top of this, DumbDawgExtreme (our pet dog) ate a wasp. Maybe a spider. Something or other. His jaw grew double its size and then, he developed irregular lumps all over his body. I'm pleased to say that he is better and is back to eating tumble dryer fluff.

But, the saddest of them all was this. When we moved into our new home (which originally was my mother-in-law's), I found a box of old dolls with all their clothes. My daughters and I spent some time cleaning them up and then displaying in our Morbid Corner in the living room.

They had been living there for at least six months. Quite happily. Out of the box they had been stuffed in for decades. Over forty odd years.

Turned out, they were my sister-in-law's. She brought my son back from the hospital and spotted them for the first time.

"It's Lysette!".
(What???)

"And Rosa,"
(Excuse me?)

"And Tommy!"
(Oh, no.)

"They're mine. I was given them as a child"
(Bye bye, Dollies)

So I said, "Take them home with you."

"Don't forget their clothes."

Yeah, I know. They are fugly. And scary. And despite being told that the one in the bottom left does not have real human hair, I am still not convinced.

But these dolls drew me in.

Especially the one with the sticky head, where the plastic is disintegrating. That'll be Lysette.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Build up to Halloween's

2010-08-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

Uh huh. Oh yeah.

We are THAT keen.

Nevermind the laundry room is so full of dirty laundry, I fine that socks are migrating into the freezer when we open the freezer door.

Sure, occasionally we think we have visitors because the doorbell has malfunctioned and it intermittently chimes at odd hours of the night.

BUT,

Halloween's next month, people Priorities!!!

Ok, so I know technically we are still in August. Details really.

So I dug out this Day of The Dead mould I was given by Thing. Yes. I said Thing. Well, to be exact, it is Thing RM. RM being Registered Midwife. I have known Thing for yonks. I got to know her on an online midwifery forum. it used to be likened to a midwifery equivalent of the online biker bar. In its hey days, boy, didn't the forum live up to that reputation. Toys got thrown out of prams, individuals were ridiculed for the non-savvy-ness (I know that's not a real word so you can, if you choose to, close your eyes and pretend it's not there) on the subject of vegetable pakoras and I acquired my vast vocabulary of creative verbal insults from there. Seriously, how genius is 'cockwomble'?

Oh, and of course, we discussed bucket loads of clinical midwifery 'stuff'.

That was until The Man got us to behave.

Anyway, back to Thing. She bought me this mould for our Secret Santa project. I was really made up with it as I'd coveted it for ages. I love her so much. I've met Thing a few times. My lasting visual memory of her is of her dressed up as a witch (how apt of a midwife) from The Wizard of Oz.

Even her face was painted green.

So today, in preparation of impending Halloween's, I started making the decorations.

The instruction was easy. Mix a cup of sugar with a teaspoon of meringue powder and a teaspoon of water. It'll end up looking like you've got something wrong and if it does, then you know you got it right :P

So scoop the mixture up and press it into the moulds. It'll be a bit sticky. So press it in, making sure you get the grains into the dips and crevices.

Now, you don't need to wait for anything to set. Just pop them out onto a stiff card. Brush away any excess sugar and pop the card into the oven on very low heat. Mine was set at 100C and leave the door slightly open, making sure you shout out loud to the rest of the family that they shouldn't run into the kitchen at light speed. Then go get the bandages and arnica in anticipation.*

*DO NOT PLACE ARNICA OR BANDAGES IN THE OVEN.
It has nothing to do with the skulls.

Do remember, do not make the oven any hotter. Any hotter, you'll just end up with a pool of caramelising liquid sugar at the bottom of your oven, and the smell will drive you crazy and rather than cleaning the mess up, you'll just end up making creme caramel instead.

Believe me. Some things you need to experience yourself, other things you really ought to just read about and take heed.

So bake it for about 20 minutes and then, just leave them out to cool.

That's the end of the first installment. Be prepared for the next one. Once I figure out the best way to decorate them. I have only made fondant version of this before and that actually created a smooth surface which you could paint on. Unlike the porous surface these babies have.

Until then, have a gander at some pictures of the Sponge family's Halloween from a couple of years ago.


They start off looking pretty fiendishly normal


Ok, so maybe if you see something like this in the middle of the night when you are calling your cat in, you might not be asking, "Are you lost, little boy?"

The smiles are deceptive, I tells ya. I wouldn't let any one of these near my pets.


Oh hang on, they ARE my pets


Terror comes in small packages

She actually gives us the evils like this often


This however, gave grown men nightmares

Please note. I didn't make my children dress like this. They came morbid that way

Homeschooling Space

2010-08-30T04:12:00.001-07:00

So Slaveboy and I have reached a dead end again. What with seven children and home educating them all, space is always an issue. We have been trying to create a space where we could house all the home ed resources, the computer and enough working area for the children to undertake any major creative projects. We have this room in our house. It's not a spare room. It's our dining room. Currently, it's housing nine chairs, two buggies, one guitar amp, a table, a chest of drawers and a myriad of 'stuff' under the table. And fluff. Lots of the stuff. I'm sick of it. We can't even agree on the shape of a table. But I do know which tablecloth I am having though so I am pretty sure you will conclude that I am not the indecisive one of this coupledom. While this is going on, the children are growing older and if we don't watch it, they'd be leaving home before we get round to doing anything. So, I would post pictures and all but the parquet flooring needs cleaning and polishing. The fluff needs sweeping up. And I'd hate to move the guitar amp. So how do you guys who home educate do it? How does your work room look like, if you have one? If not, what's the deal? Send me pictures so I can post them up on here. Until then, I'm pretty sure having these will motivate me loads.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Blogging for the likes of me

2010-08-29T16:07:00.001-07:00

As you probably have gathered, I spend a lot of my time online. I am fascinated with the social networking aspect of it. I love reading other people's blogs and I am constantly inspired and motivated by other people's lives and creativity. I mean, I owe it all to the Pioneer Woman for my obsession with anything Americana. Her, and Dolly of course. If you have to ask, "Dolly who?", then you must also be one of those people who shirk away from real butter and buys veganese lard or such like. I've heard of people like you. This is where I ought to say that some of my bestest friends are vegans but that would be akin to starting a sentence with, "Now, I am not racist, but........". Talking about Americana, you guys really ought to check out Drive-by Truckers and William Elliot Whitmore. Aaaaah, William. He is like the coffee candy in a family size bag of Revels. I'd suck him from out of anyone's mouth.

Anyway, I digress. So, I started this blogging lark without fully realising the implications. I mean, just how does one take a flipping picture of yourself cracking an egg???? Since I started blogging, I have highlighted my shortcomings. You need to be able to take good pictures to make your blog look good. Lacking creativity and a good camera will definitely hinder this. Having a light box will maximise the quality of your pictures. Uh huh. Building one is no. 386 on Slaveboy's to-do list. After he buys me this for our downstairs toilet.

Slight problem with this request though. The tiles cost as much as the total amount he intends to spend on getting the toilet redecorated. So, I have a bunch of pictures that I have taken of the cakes I have made in the past few months. None of them fancy at all. I would have had pictures of the cupcakes I made for the disastrous I Am Joy festival this year. Disastrous because a strong gush of wind broke our tent canopy and destroyed my whole stock of cupcakes. And I made AWESOME looking cupcakes. The whole day was not a loss though. I got to witness Spiker's wax on, wax off Karate Kid move. She even broke my cake tongs trying to whack a wasp. I would hate to see what damage she might cause with a pair of chopsticks. One day, when we have got to know each other better, I will share with you what I likened her Vietnamese Bitesize Coffee Jelly to. Especially the sensation they create if you eat two at the same time. I do have to say that Spiker is not Vietnamese, although she is quite posh and does very English things likes make wool or something like that. Ok. So some cake pictures.

I made this one for this mischievous lil' diva.

I also stepped out of my comfort zone and made something my late mum-in-law used to make.

She used to make delicious rice pudding. I like mine a little bit runny and Mother was a little touch and go with her rice puddings. Occasionally, she used to oversleep during cooking it and it would come out a bit dense. You could have actually sliced it up into squares. And then, there was also the times when her potato salad started tasting odd. We didn't know why until a friend pointed out that she'd been growing good ol' grass (the moo cow chomping variety) in her chives pot. I loved her. She was a sassy, cantankerous lady.

And then, there was this crazy cake stack that I made for my son's 8th birthday. It was mayhem. It was in the height of summer, everything was melting, the kitchen was a smog of icing sugar and every single kitchen surface had caked-on fondant on it. I must have had only a total of 2 hours to spend decorating this cake. To top it all, I had the droopy spout to content with. Thankfully, Slaveboy helped by giving some architectural support in the form of a dowel rod insertion. Of course, there were cupcakes too.

Oh, and the birthday cake I made for Oakley. He's Slaveboy's nephew's one year old son.

I think the duck is still alive and well somewhere in a kitchen cabinet. Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

How to look like you've been doing 'stuff'.......

2010-08-29T11:04:00.001-07:00

Slaveboy took me to Waitrose earlier today and he thought I bought lemongrass. That would've been great with the Asian fish balls we desperately need to use up. The reality is, I was merely stroking the lemongrass. It reminds me of my old home and the big lemongrass bush (?) my Mum grew. What I did buy was posh crisps on offer and shortbread made by Prince Charles. Snort. I do like other people's biscuits. Slaveboy bought girly pink roll-on deodorant for himself because he doesn't like smelling of man. I suppose he is already man enough. Double snort. Anyway, some of this blog readers might remember that a while back, I made some homemade vanilla extract. If I were tech savvy enough, I would have put a link up of said blog entry but I am sat on the sofa, holding the new baby who is dribbling on my arm and scratching away at me. This is her. Meet Harper.

Yes. Her ears are naturally like that. Back to my Waitrose escapade. I bought vodka. I was running out of vanilla extract and it was time to make some more. Waitrose had some 37.5% ones on offer.

Notice that the bottle on the left is the export variety. I'm hoping the Red Label stuff will be fine. I also bought 4 vanilla pods, they cost me about £10 but the amount of vanilla extract I will end up with actually means that it is cost effective. The vanilla pods I bought claimed to be doubly intense.

I actually got them because I liked the glass vials they came in. What a geek. So basically, I split the pods, bunged them into the new bottle. I also chucked in the old pods from the old bottle and swishes some vodka round just so I can capture the seeds caught at the bottom of the old bottle.

This actually reminds me of the jars of herbal concoctions lining the walls of the Chinese herbalist shop my Dad used to frequent. My Mum used to tut-tut at this. I doubt any of the jars actually had vanilla pods in it.

Just in case you're interested, the old pink lemonade bottle on the left actually contains Vanilla Extract v. 1. It's about six months old and look at the wonderful amber colour it's turned into. Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I'm back! Again.

2010-07-13T06:05:00.001-07:00

Quick one. Finally made it back to Blogshire. Excuse the absence. I went away to have a baby ;) Pictures to follow. And the gory details. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Priory Rd,Chichester,United Kingdom

Just a little mention.....

2010-02-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

I forgot to say that for the Brighton Tattoo Convention, all the cupcakes and frostings were made with my own homemade vanilla extract. Such a colossal undertaking would have cost me a fortune in shop bought bottles of vanilla extact but by using my own concoction, I am still left with over half a litre bottle. You guys should really make your own. -- Post From My iPhone

Location:Priory Rd,Chichester,United Kingdom

Brighton Tattoo Convention

2010-02-05T04:55:00.000-08:00

Those who know me will know about my fascination with body modifications, especially tattoos. I haven't been a religious visitor to tattoo conventions, not out of choice but more due to other commitments getting in the way but this year I am determined to attend the two which are relatively local to me - the London International Tattoo Convention and the Brighton Tattoo Convention.

The whole project started off with me emailing Woody, the promoter of the Brighton Tattoo Convention about me having a cupcake stall there. Being a complete beginner, I really had NO idea what I was dealing with and you can imagine my absolute shock when Woody said and even went as far as striking a handsome deal with me as far as what acquiring a stall would cost me.

The month leading up to the convention involved me ordering banners, postcards and business cards for the cake enterprise, Whipped & Baked and also the daunting task of getting in touch with the Environmental Health department in order to get my domestic kitchen inspected. There was the last minute process of obtaining a Public & Products Liability insurance and also the sudden realisation that I would need sneezeguards for my stall. Then there were the cupcake cases to be bought in bulk, the Cash & Carry account to be got, the long list of ingredients that needed to be compiled, rechecked and sourced from the most economical supplier.

Two days leading up to the convention, I must have had on average 3 and half hours of sleep per night. I would start the process around 7.30pm and would crawl into bed at about 7.00a.m only to have to wake up at 9.00am on the Friday in order to get to the Brighton Racecourse to set up my stall.

One of the two sneezeguards I had made for the convention

I love the fact we were under the Runners & Riders sign

The view across the hall as we were setting up

I did have the wisdom to make the handmade decorations for the cupcakes ahead of time as they were made from fondant. I think they look pretty quirky and cute.

And this is how the stall looked like on the day. I was pretty happy with it. It was as close to what I had imagined it looking given the short period of time we had to prepare for it.

That is Slavie (aka he who moves heavy things for us) behind the stall

We actually did really well. Our stall caught everyone's attention and we had several photographers requesting to take photos of our cakes. We sold out of brownies and cinnamon rolls. People were repeat buying and asking us if we did weddings and where we normally traded from. Whipped & Baked's website has received more fresh hits since the convention and I am now working out the logistics of getting a stall at the London Tattoo Convention.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Back. FINALLY!!!!

2010-01-02T13:34:00.001-08:00

After a few months of being offline to the madness of moving houses, I am back online again. We had a wonderful and peaceful Christmas where we ate too much and and I overdid on the baking. Look forward to posting back on here again with some of my baking shenanigans.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

The-Never-Send-Your-Invalid-Husband-To-The-Supermarket-Post

2009-09-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Living with the Stephens family is without a doubt a bit crazy. I've always said that had Slaveboy and I not had children, we would probably by now be the modern day Bonnie & Clyde. SO we are pretty grateful to our children for keeping us on the straight and narrow-ish.

Slaveboy hurt his back somehow after returning from sound-engineering a live band on Wednesday. When he crawled in at around 2am, I was still up, completing the last details of this roulette wheel cake I had been asked to make for someone's birthday. The floor was plastered with flour, icing sugar was in my hair and sugarpaste icing was stuck to various implements.The pets were getting twitchy and even our friendly poltergeist didn't dare chuck any mini cheesecake at me.

I crazily thought that it was going to be pretty straightforward but I failed to take into account that the given the size the cake will be, it was going to be a real pig to get the numbers on the little sections at the outer rim of the cake. Not helped by the fact that I had to hand cut the numbers as nowhere in town had in stock small number stencils. And my hands weren't strady enough to pipe with royal icing numbers that small (that made me feel quite inadequate - there I was, able to lambdoidal suture manouvres but unable to ice numbers to that size).

The woman who ordered the cake from me was really chuffed with the cake, I wasn't so much but I think I did pretty ok. I know I chickened out on showing you a proper photo of it but I took the photo late at night and it didn't turn out very good.

And to top it all, because Slaveboy had hurt his back, he couldn't bend down to pull his socks off. Totally ming and indeed mong. That's all I have to say on the matter.

Slaveboy didn't get long to recover though as the next evening, he was despatched to the local supermarket for cat food, vegetables and some other essentials. He came home with 6 bags of potatoes, 2 bags of parsnips, lots of salad leaves and 2 punnets each of strawberries and redcurrants. The strawberries did look a bit sad for themselves (he got them off the bargain shelf) and after having got ready for bed, I decided they couldn't wait til the next day to be used. So down the stairs I marched and I weighed the four punnets of soft fruits and added to them the same amount of preserving sugar and left them in an airtight container in the fridge.

The next day, it was just a matter of emptying the content into a pan and allowing the sugar to dissolve and bringing it up to boil for about 5 minutes. Halfway through this process, after the fruits had gone soft, I pushed them through a sieve and continued with the boiling process. Then, I emptied it into three sterilised jam jars and allow them to cool down at room temperature before placing the jars into the fridge.

And in a backward fashion, I made some scones using the sour milk I had in the fridge and some lemon curd buttercream I had skulking around in the freezer. I simply replaced the sugar from the recipe with the buttercream and the end result was delicious!!!! All 30 were gone by the time breakfast was over (that was before they moved on to making themselves porridge).

RECIPE*

8 oz. self raising flour

2 oz. butter, at room temperature

1 oz. caster sugar

Pinch of salt

5 fl. oz. sour milk

Method:

Preheat oven at 220C or 200C for fan oven. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment.

Rub flour and butter quickly til a fine breadcrumb texture.
Add the sugar
Gradually mix in the milk with a palette knife and you'll probably end up with a soft mix.
Flour your work surface and rolling pin. I usually line my work surface with baking parchment.
Roll out the dough to around 3/4 inch thickness. Please, please, resist the temptation to fiddle with the dough or add more flour to it to make it less soft. Just work fast and confidently. You are going for taste, not cookbook perfection visual impact.
Use a 1 1/2 or 2 inch round cutter (I prefer fluted cos I am girly that way) and tap them out on the baking sheet. The dough should make around 12.
Bake for around 12-15 mins.

These keep pretty well, and you can freeze them too. Or you can be totally unconservative (gooo on, you know you wanna), and make them at 11.30pm and eat them at 1.00am and call it breakfast. That way you will never need to feel guilty about missing breakfast ever again. Promise.

*This recipe was adapted Delia Smith's recipe. Yes, I admit it. I am a secret Delia whore. I am unashamed.

As you can probably guess, my task for today was to bring some sense to my fridge and in my rummaging, I found a bowl with egg whites in it, something I had stored two days ago. I remembered reading a completely new way of making meringue in Baking With Passion, a book lent to me by Spiker. She probably won't lend me anything anymore after that ransom note debacle.

It involved actually measuring the weight of the eggwhite and adding to it caster sugar and then heating the mixture up on a bain marie until the sugar dissolves. You then take it off the heat and whisk it until it becomes thick and stiff, and this it did significantly faster than my usual method.

The recipe asked for it to be baked at 150C for a specific length of time and then the oven switched off for the rest of the night (dunno what you were supposed to do if you baked it in the day - hee hee). I couldn't afford the time to do that as I had mackerels to bake so I baked the meringue, which I had dolloped into individual sized ones, for about 30 minutes and took them out when I felt the shells were nice and crisp.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Hee hee. Snort.

2009-09-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

Both Spiker and I have been having a crappy time lately so I sent her this photo that I mocked up using the bowl she left here and the icing nozzles she lent me in order for me to do this Roulette wheel cake for someone's birthday.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Sometimes the wind blows a certain direction..

2009-09-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

And I just get some mad idea that I would just randomly cook from a recipe out of the pile of ripped-out-of-old-magazines. I think I was having a bad day yesterday. Which was a follow-on from the bad day I have the day before. Tis all related to this house move and I shan't bore you with it. Suffice to say, I despair at the rate some things are being done.

So, I found this recipe called Candied Sweet Potato. I really should have figured that it was gonna be a no-goer just from the title. Note the optional extra - MARSHMALLOWS!!! I omitted the marshmallows and we had it with cous cous and the kids said that it tasted like cinnamon rolls, and that time, it wasn't a compliment.

So, this morning, I decided I would make a sweet potato loaf cake out of the leftover. I found a recipe on the 'tinternet and I assure you, it is very yummy and moreish. I adapted the recipe to take into account the added sugar and spices already present in the ~~cinnamon rolls casserole~~ candied sweet potato dish leftover.

SWEET POTATO LOAF CAKE

1 1/2 cups sugar I used soft dark brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil I used sunflower oil with a little dash of light olive oil
2 eggs
1/3 cup of water

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour I used plain flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup mashed, cooked sweet potato I used my leftover
1/2 cup chopped pecans yum yum
1/2 cup raisins I used sultanas

Method

1. Combine sugar, oil, eggs, and water.
2. Add next 5 ingredients, mixing just enough to moisten.
3. Stir in potatoes, pecans, and sultanas.
4. Pour batter into 2 greased and floured loaf tins.
5. Bake at 175C degrees for 1 hour. Cool 10 minutes, then remove from tins and allow to cool completely.

Yesterday was Day 2 of Chichester's Local Food market. I have to say that despite valiant attempts, it was rather lacklustre in the sense that none of the stalls had that visual impact from afar. There were my usual haunts, Debbie from Veg Out from whom I bought 2kg of onion which I made onion marmalade with. The game stall man with his scrummy game pie mix. The Weald and Downlands Museum stall was there and I managed to restock on their stoneground wholemeal flour - a rather large 10kg bag of it. I was happily chattering away to the stallholder lady but I don't think she thought I was orally legible enough, despite my affected semi Sussex accent, or maybe she was just utterly amazed that anyone brown skinned with head to toe in tattoos would be making excitable proclamations about what wonder Yorkshire puddings the flour make.

A rather unattractive view of Chichester's local food market. You can hardly see the Cross for this perspective.

This gentleman was selling hollowed out oversized breadrolls filled with soup!!! I didn't have time to try some.

Cute, kitschy. Cath Kidston-y stall, selling things I don't really need but would love to have.

I did make some bread but have failed to take photos of them. Here, have some pictures of the batch I made the day before. They're whities but still very yummy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Fig Tart, stamps and gateau

2009-09-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

My morning started with me going downstairs to the kitchen and finishing off the tart I made last night. I picked up some good priced figs in Sainsbury's (where the cashierboy was amazed that someone could calculate the total price of their shopping without the aid of a calculator) and thought I would make a simple lemon and fig tart. Just slice the figs, arrange them on to the lemon cream mixture and then brush on a sweet glaze made with lemon juice and sugar. I remember making the first time I made this tart - it was my sister-in-law's 50th birthday party and I had naively agreed to cater for a party of 60 people. From my tiny, matchbox kitchen. It was frantic. I still talk about it today (she turned 60 last week), in that I-think-I-ought-to-have-therapy-for-that-experience way.

Then it was off to the house we are about to move into. Slaveboy needed help emptying what will be our bedroom and we have a friend coming over later today to pick up the cabinet unit from that room. The thing is, the cabinet unit is filled, to the brim (if it had one) with STUFF. That would have been quite ok to tackle if it weren't for the fact that the room is filled with stuff too. And also the landing. And for that matter, the WHOLE house. There must be at least 4 generations' worth of belongings packed away in dusty boxes and dreaded carrier bags. A chair was stacked upside down on top of the pile of linen and crushed boxes. I went through 5 black bin liners' worth of old, dusty, smelly, mouldy curtains, obviously stored not with the intention of being left untouched for over 40 odd years.

Slaveboy was beginning to get quite wobbly with me as I was being quite ruthless and ploughing through the stuff without a moment's hesitation. That I can understand. Afterall, there is a lot of emotional attachment to the stuff we were going through - letters written by his Nan to her husband after he died. Old, dusty photo albums containing his grandparents' baby photos. We found Clarice Cliff's plates and jugs in amongst complete utter tat, a couple of very valuable figurines which would have fetched good money if auctioned off, had it not been for the fact that they had been badly packed, completely forgotten about and then damaged when the boxes were moved from pillar to post. No one remembered the existence of these items, let alone remembered where they had been packed away to. So, I can't help but wonder about the nation's obsession of collecting things, as I sifted through boxes and boxes of stamps (some of which would have fetched good money), coins, postcards, and, wait for it, 21 nylon(!!!!) bed sheets (oh yes, even my fetishism hasn't sunk that low to appreciate nylon). I come from a family that didn't collect things. No family China, although my Mum was fond of Pyrex's Autumn Blossom or something like that. We certainly didn't squander collectibles away to be reserved for a rainy day or for future generations. And I'm not saying that one is better than the other as I am very pleased with the fine bone china jugs and plates I have received from my late mother-in-law's collection but here is a family who are having to go through items that have been stored away for some reason or another - maybe for best, or for a grandchild or with the blind faith that one day, it would be worth a lot of money, and the sad reality is, as an outsider looking inside, the biggest thing that is hitting the remaining family members is that their elders just didn't sort their shit out at all, for some reason or another.

So a carload to the tip later, Slaveboy has some floor space to work with. The wood glue has arrived for our kitchen worktops. The sash window is about to be reinstalled. We'll just have to figure out how to deal with the rotting window sill. Oh, and the dog has yet to pee in the Belfast sink that is waiting to be plumbed in. It could be a lot worse, like bypassing breakfast and lunch completely and eating what Sainsbury's labels as their Taste The Difference Chocolate Gateau.

Which I just did. Why I insist on eating packaged supermarket cack when there is a homemade fig & lemon tart in the fridge is beyond me.

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Lemon & Almond Cake - FAIL!!!

2009-09-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

Lemons are a relatively new fruit for me. Back where I came from (and no, boys and girls, despite my gleeful claims, I do not originally hail from Bognor Regis), lemons were a pretty rare thing. We have limes, ickle ones which are thin skinned and very crisp flavoured. My Mum used to squeeze the juice out, dissolve plenty of sugar with some icy cold water for a refreshing drink.

Only recently, do I sometimes choose lemon cakes over chocolate and they have to be pretty damn fine for me to do that - for instance, Spiker's lemon cake which she made for our Tea Party. The thing is, I can't help but make the deduction that only old people would prefer lemon cakes over chocolate - and because of this, I sorta fight this growing fondness for this sharp, unassuming and common citrus fruit.

Disclaimer: I am quite happy for you to pronounce me as shallow for this very reason.

So, I wasn't planning to bake any cakes for a few days. I have some bread baking to catch up with - two white loaves, 4 loaves of ciabatta and 3 loaves of soda bread should really keep me pretty busy for the next couple of days but those damn lemons keep beckoning me. I keep thinking of them sitting there in the fridge, just willing me to boil the hell out of them.

Yes, this recipe requires you to boil them. None of this namby pamby zesting and squeezing the juice out and measuring the quantity in a measuring jug. This, my friend, is a good bit of honest, nonchalant baking. The sort that I don't have to have my contact lenses on for cos the recipe is so simple.

So, you take 4 lemons (in this case, I used 5 cos mine were weeny), unwaxed naturally, and organic if you can. Wash them and bung them in a good sized pot and boil them on medium heat for about an hour. If you are a sad blogging muppet like me, you would be spending this time writing up your blog and fiddling with your camera and getting the photos uploaded. If you are the baking Goddess I aspire to be, you would seize the moment, take your lover to bed and make love. Logic dictates that you probably would still have a good 40 mins (let's not even try to bullshit and try to drop me comments protesting this) after that to get showered, write up your blog and get your lover to make you a good cuppa. It's a win-win situation! Unfortunately, the latter option is not available to me on account that Slaveboy is at our new house hoovering after his 29 year old son who is rebuilding our sash window.

In the meantime, don't forget to watch your pot. While a watched pot gathers no dust (oh, how I love my mixed sayings), a not watched one would overspill and cause a fair amount of condensation in the kitchen. Like it has done with mine. This almost reminded me of the time we filled the heated birthpool in our last house when I was expecting the Mai-ster in 2006. The room filled with so much steam, the wallpapers were sweating and threatening to peel off.

Once the lemons have cooled down a little, cut them into wedges, dig out the pips (seeds, whatever you call them), and whizz the hell outta them til they become pulp.

In a separate bowl, whisk 9 eggs til it becomes thick and leaves a thick ribbon trail. Mix all the sugar (350g), ground almond (350g) and baking powder (1/2 tsp) together and fold into the egg mixture. Then lightly fold in the lemon pulp.

Now, this is when I tell you that this is the first time I have made this particular recipe. It is Gary Rhodes's and originally an Orange Almond Cake recipe but he did say that you could substitute the oranges with lemons. Now that I have made this cake and had some, I am n-o-t really convinced.

But I am going to go through the process anyway.

Here is a selection of photos. As you can probably figure out, I have discovered Picasa.

So bearing in mind, you would have read my mind and put your oven on to 180C, you are ready to divide the mix between two cake tins and bake them for about 40mins (believe me, 45 mins was a tad too long but not long enough to really affect the cakes).

So whilst waiting, I had this little pantalooned boy cat keep me company. He is very good at looking not amused but I assure you that this is his come-to-bed eyes. He's also had a mini-stroke recently (legend says that it was due to the four twiglets I fed him) so he gets away with a lot.

That is not a natural marking on the tip of his nose. That is a I-shove-my-nose-in-the-foodbowl-all-the-time look. I reckon the female cats don't mind the scent of cat chow that lingers around him.

And then, Slaveboy came home with this. He thought the children might find it amusing. I hasten to add that we are trying to declutter. Not to mention move house.

Oh, and don't let me forget to tell you that he didn't come home with the hoover. Ooops. Apparently, he did. I just haven't seen it.

My verdict is, well, a bit meh really. It wasn't sweet enough. It had a lovely texture and it smelled lovely.

But we will definitely be eating it with custard tomorrow.

Sigh.

Sorry. Will try harder next time. Next time I will just cut my losses and use my usual Anthony Worrall-Thomson's (or however you spell his name) recipe. Even if it does claim to be GI friendly and all that stuff.

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Brownies

2009-09-08T05:33:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me to make some fudge brownies on Sunday. This is my staple comfort sweet food. I could make this with my eyes closed. However, I was pretty excited at the prospect of packaging them as I had never done this before. Previously, I had just made do with empty plastic containers, or even worse, cling film or catering foil. I spent the drive home from Tunbridge Wells the night before thinking of ways to package them(where both Slaveboy and I fell asleep at a gig because we we were just so exhausted - honestly, we were like two old fogeys sitting in a chair with our heads leant together, propping us upright - no alcohol involved, just some substandard £2 beef burgers).

I decided on using baking parchment and making two simple origami boxes (takes you to a video demonstrating how to make one - the bloke on there has a sexy schmexy voice). I had to use 5-ply of baking parchment so the box would be stiff enough and each box happily contained 12 squares of brownies, 6 in each layer. I then wrapped the box in a simple parcel method and secured the sides with a length of pretty lace ribbon, with a small card detailing when the brownies where baked and what the ingredients were. My friend was very chuffed with how the boxes looked and texted me at 11pm (funnily enough I was actually asleep by then, which is rare for me as I am often still awake at 1 a.m.) saying that her husband thought the brownies were sublime and that no way was she ever going to be able to eat other people's brownies again. That made me really chuffed.

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Yet Another Birthday

2009-09-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

It was my sister-in-law's 60th birthday while we were away on our short holiday (an experience that I am yet to muster up enough courage to write about) and both my niece and step daughter had planned a surprise party for her in time for when we returned. I agreed to do some of the baking, mainly the dessert part and also a birthday cake. I had written down a watertight schedule as to what needed to be done at what day when I got back and was sure that it would be failproof.

Except that when I got back on Wednesday evening, the designated night to make the peanut sauce, I was absolutely shattered. The most I could do was crawl into bed and silently sing some puja to the bed Goddess. In my head, I was calculating the days I had left (party was to be on Saturday and this was Wednesday evening).

So I had 2 days to make peanut sauce, 3 lemon meringue pies, 4 salted butter tarts and a birthday cake. Not to mention the four trays of homemade pizzas and 2 trays of sticky sweet chicken wings on the actual day.

And I didn't have enough pie tins in the house.

Plus I was skint, on account that the short holiday cost us more than we had anticipated.

But I was not going to be defeated, by golly, I didn't have six children to be defeated by lack of time, sleep and energy.

If I remember, I would post up more about the actual party. My step daughter was having a meltdown as she simply was pulling in too many hours to really have the time to organise the party and my niece was pulling her hair out because her mother was getting suspicious of their frantic attempt to tidy the place for a party. There was also the small last minute issue of my sister-in-law refusing to go out with her friend who was the designated distractor, deciding instead to go sing in the church choir for a wedding that morning. In the midst of all the panic in the last hour, my niece decided that she needed to make chocolate fudge (with Nestle condensed milk - tut tut). The peanut sauce alone warrants a post on its own because it is absolutely delicious. Then there was the incident where I had to baking parchment bandage the sides of the meringue pies. But it all came together in the end. We must have waited for what felt like 15 minutes from the time of first sighting of my sister-in-law walking towards her house. I just love the English - all that build-up, all that anticipation and the intention to create an element of SURPRISE!!!!! and when she walked into the room, I reckon about 4 party poppers went off (not in a uniformed fashion) and 1 failed attempt of getting a surprised look picture and a hell lot of people just standing there like lemons hardly even muttering SURPRISE!!!. You guys really know how to party.

But until then, I just wanted to share with you the cake I made her. It was my first attempt at making gumpaste roses and I am really pleased with them. I think I can make the petals thinner next time but I am amazed at how simple they are to make.

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My friend, Sadie..

2009-09-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

Taught me a naughty word today. Vaffanculo. This was after I asked her if it is true that real Italians don't ever use dried herbs in their cooking. I think the vaffanculo was directed at that statement, although I did also ask if she thought it was acceptable to put soy sauce and blackstrap molasses in bolognaise sauce. Tee hee.

Anyway, she gave me a really great recipe for chocolate cake. I was going to publish it here but then, I just remembered that I don't have her permission to post it. So you will have to just make do with a picture of it.. until I get in touch with her and learn yet another useful Italian word and get her ok to post the recipe.

Wooo hoo, that Sadie, she said YES.

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Vanilla Extract Update - Day 8

2009-09-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

After reading a blog about making vanilla extract with 80 proof vodka, I decided that this could be a fun thing to do, in a trainspotting kinda way. I reckon I will subject you to periodic photo entry of how my vanilla extract is coming along. Basically take a bottle of vodka, bung some vanilla pods in it - I used 5 Madagascan ones and leave it in somewhere dark and give it a shake every so often. I plan to keep it going for about a year so you guys are gonna SO fed up of these photo updates by the time Christmas rolls in.

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Ta ta for now..

2009-08-31T03:03:00.000-07:00

We are off for a short holiday. The kitchen is a state. I have cut my thumb. Apple pie in the freezer. Bedding in the washing machine. Children waiting to leave, going "Are we going yet?". See you guys soon. Be good now.

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Do bear with me...

2009-08-29T08:31:00.001-07:00

I am attempting maintenance work on this blog so it might at times (heh...) look like it is being written by someone who has a bipolar disorder. I have some fine tuning to do and things will resume back to normal soon.

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Stop Press!!!

2009-08-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

So, I've killed my hand mixer. I knew it was on its way out anyway cos it started making some funky smells but that was about two months ago and I kind of figured that it might do what most of the appliances in the Stephens family - sort of start threatening to conk out and I then have to humour it and love it - no, hang on, I was thinking of Slaveboy then. Right, ho hum. Anyway. It did today, mid whisking meringue. It was only then did I realise how important it was to have replaced my normal balloon whisk, which, obviously I hadn't. So I had to abandon all that and basically give up.

BUT, not before I made an apple pie. I was given a whole load of cooking apples from my friend, Kak Hery when I went round her house last night. Seeing it is Ramadan, Kak Hery was fasting and she was almost chomping at the bit when Azhar, my friend and I were a teeny weeny bit running late. I would too if I had been fasting from around 5am and desperate to break my fast. Kak Hery is an Asian cuisine Goddess!!! She made a starters of laksa lemak noodles, with all the trimmings of coriander, boiled eggs, plump prawns, sliced chillies and freshly cut limes. She also made ayam masak lemak cili padi which is basically chicken cooked in a chilli and coconut milk sauce with kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass and ginger. There was also urap, an Asian salad dish, the recipe of which had just been translated to her on the phone by her sister in Malaysia. She also served grilled spiced mackerels which were just to delicious for words. There was some well chilled elderflower presse and also freshly made teh tarik. I really did leave thinking I ought to try harder with my home cooking.

Anyway, Kak Hery doesn't like apples. Pure and simple. She has two apple trees in her garden and she cooks none of the apples. I came home with big bag of apples and this morning, I fancied some apple pie. Funnily, enough, I have never made apple pie. I've made all sorts of apples cakes, crumbles and muffins but not pies. I had a quick trawl on the internet and found a recipe which appealed but I altered it slightly by using my own favourite pastry dough and increased the amount of sugar as these apples were cookers and had no sweetness to them. I also increased the amount of apples used and baked it in a normal cake tin, rising the height of the pie by double.

Excuse the poor presentation. I am going on holiday on Monday and we are nowhere near ready and I am feeling a tad frazzled.

And I will be sharing a lodge with bloody vegetarians. Whoever said you could choose your friends must have been a lonely guy.

I didn't quite manage to get a picture of it cut as the whole family descended on me (well, on the pie really) and pretty much got stuck in with some West Country cream from Marks & Spencer's, which in my opinion is the best supermarket cream around.

RECIPE

For the pastry

350g plain flour

200g cold butter , cut in small

pieces

2 tbsp icing sugar

2 egg yolk (save the egg whites and make a small meringue case with 4oz. of caster sugar)

The rest of the stuff

115 g unsalted butter

25 g plain flour

60 ml water

100 g white sugar

110 g packed brown sugar

8-10 cooking apples apples - peeled, cored and sliced (use leftovers for applesauce and store in fridge)

Directions

Put oven at 220C or 205C for fan ovens.
Melt the butter in a pan.
Add the flour to make a paste.
Add water, and both types of sugars.
Bring it to a boil and then let it simmer away.
Line your loose-bottomed cake tin (mine was a 23cm one) which the pastry dough, allowing the edge of the dough to come up to just under an inch from the top of the tin.
Fill with slices of apples until they create a slight mound at the top.
Then cut the remaining dough into strips and create a lattice pattern on to of the pie.
Take the sugared butter liquid of the heat and slowly pour it into the pie, making sure the latticed pastry top gets some of the liquid too.
Ensure that you place the cake tin on a lipped tray as it does ooze from the bottom during baking.
Bake for 15-20mins at the original temperature and then reduce the temperature down to 175C or 160C fan ovens depending on how temperamental your oven is (mine is a Chinese Opera dungaree-ed lesbian). Cook for another 40-50mins (or 15mins if you are my friend, Spiker).
Take it out of the oven. Let it rest for a while. You really want to let the remaining juices to get sucked back in.

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Daring Baker August 2009 - ARRRGGHHHH!

2009-08-27T03:29:00.000-07:00

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffes of Vienna. Budapest, and Prague.

So, what is the Dobos Torta (or Torte)?

The Dobos Torta is a five-layer sponge cake, filled with a rich chocolate buttercream and topped with thin wedges of caramel. (You may come across recipes which have anywhere between six and 12 layers of cake; there are numerous family variations!) It was invented in 1885 by József C. Dobos, a Hungarian baker, and it rapidly became famous throughout Europe for both its extraordinary taste and its keeping properties. The recipe was a secret until Dobos retired in 1906 and gave the recipe to the Budapest Confectioners' and Gingerbread Makers' Chamber of Industry, providing that every member of the chamber can use it freely.
Thank you Angela and Lorraine for hosting this month's challenge.

So, how, pray tell, you might ask, did I end up with the concoction below???

This is my first Daring Baker entry and I must say when I found out what the challenge was, I wasn't particularly elated. Nevertheless, it was going to be a challenge and that was the purpose of participating in the Daring Bakers' challenge. This reminded me of the lapis legit I made, with the added fussiness of having to cut out numerous rounds of parchment paper and also multiple bakings.

I stumbled several times. Firstly, I didn't halve the sugar and used it all up in the initial process, not saving any for the egg white & sugar part. This might explain why the cake resembled slightly of sweet omelette, and slightly rubbery. I loved, loved, loved the buttercream!!! It was simply delicious. The best I have ever tasted. Alas, it was at a temperamental consistency. It simply wouldn't thicken up enough or set enough. It was fine as long as it stayed in the fridge, but at room temperature, it would start to melt and going slippery slide-y. I initially thought that perhaps I just didn't cook the buttercream enough and made a mental note of this.

The caramel part, I did not enjoy at all. I didn't rate the lemon component of the caramel very highly and I felt it gave the caramel a strange aftertaste. I also didn't cook the caramel for long enough which meant the caramel wouldn't set hard and crisp.

Constructing the dobos was interesting. I had cut rounds out of the sheets of layer cake so I ended up with a tower dobos. It looks pretty dinky and cute, even when it did decide to lean sideways like the leaning tower of Pisa. I remedied this by sticking a skewer right through to the base. I also had to keep putting it into the fridge from time to time so I could slow down the melting process.

I also gave this recipe another go recently. I played around with the filling -omitting the buttercream in between the layers and using rose petal jam instead. I made the same buttercream but instead of using dark chocolate, I used white chocolate. Again, the buttercream refused to set enough to make it easily useable and I think next time, I will add some cream of tartar(?) to help it along. I don't think the white chocolate tasted as nice as the dark chocolate but that could be due to the fact I had added so much icing sugar to get the buttercream stiffer.

This time, I actually make the sponge layers according to the instructions (YAYY!!!) and I have to say, the texture was much improved.

My conclusion, I don't think I would make this dobos torte in the form that the recipe suggests. The recipe is still a keeper though. The buttercream is yummy, the cake is very tasty and there is a gem of an cake idea in the making so watch this space.

RECIPE

Recipe by: Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague, by Rick Rodgers
Yield: about 11-12 pieces of torte

Equipment

2 baking sheets
9” (23cm) springform tin and 8” cake tin, for templates
mixing bowls (1 medium, 1 large)
a sieve
a double boiler (a large saucepan plus a large heat-proof mixing bowl which fits snugly over the top of the pan)
a small saucepan
a whisk (you could use a balloon whisk for the entire cake, but an electric hand whisk or stand mixer will make life much easier)
metal offset spatula
sharp knife
a 7 1/2” cardboard cake round (or just build cake on the base of a sprinfrom tin)
12 whole hazelnuts, peeled and toasted (I used macadamia nuts)
½ cup (50g) peeled and finely chopped hazelnuts
piping bag and tip, optional

Prep times
Sponge layers 20 mins prep, 40 mins cooking total if baking each layer individually.
Buttercream: 20 mins cooking. Cooling time for buttercream: about 1 hour plus 10 minutes after this to beat and divide.
Caramel layer: 10-15 minutes.
Assembly of whole cake: 20 minutes

Sponge Cake Ingredients
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 1/3 cups (162g) confectioner’s (icing) sugar, divided
1 teaspoon (5ml) vanilla extract
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (112g) sifted cake flour
pinch of salt

Chocolate Buttercream Ingredients
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (200g) caster (ultrafine or superfine white) sugar
4oz (110g) bakers chocolate or your favourite dark chocolate, finely chopped (I used Belgian chocolate)
2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons (250g) unsalted butter, at room temperature.

Caramel Topping Ingredients
1 cup (200g) caster (superfine or ultrafine white) sugar
12 tablespoons (180 ml) water
8 teaspoons (40 ml) lemon juice
1 tablespoon neutral oil (e.g. grapeseed, rice bran, sunflower)

Directions for the sponge layers:
NB. The sponge layers can be prepared in advance and stored interleaved with parchment and well-wrapped in the fridge overnight.

1. Position the racks in the top and centre thirds of the oven and heat to 400F (200C).
2. Cut six pieces of parchment paper to fit the baking sheets. Using the bottom of a 9″ (23cm) springform tin as a template and a dark pencil or a pen, trace a circle on each of the papers, and turn them over (the circle should be visible from the other side, so that the graphite or ink doesn’t touch the cake batter.)
3. Beat the egg yolks, 2/3 cup (81g) of the confectioner’s (icing) sugar, and the vanilla in a medium bowl with a mixer on high speed until the mixture is thick, pale yellow and forms a thick ribbon when the beaters are lifted a few inches above the batter, about 3 minutes. (You can do this step with a balloon whisk if you don’t have a mixer.) Note: I leveled each sponge layer after baking per a great suggestion from other Daring Bakers. I did this by covering the layer with an oiled, cocoa powder dusted sheet of parchment paper and then pressing another sheet pan down on the layer to even it out.
4. In another bowl, using clean beaters, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the remaining 2/3 cup (81g) of confectioner’s (icing)sugar until the whites form stiff, shiny peaks. Using a large rubber spatula, stir about 1/4 of the beaten whites into the egg yolk mixture, then fold in the remainder, leaving a few wisps of white visible. Combine the flour and salt. Sift half the flour over the eggs, and fold in; repeat with the remaining flour.
5. Line one of the baking sheets with a circle-marked paper. Using a small offset spatula, spread about 3/4cup of the batter in an even layer, filling in the traced circle on one baking sheet. Bake on the top rack for 5 minutes, until the cake springs back when pressed gently in the centre and the edges are lightly browned. While this cake bakes, repeat the process on the other baking sheet, placing it on the centre rack. When the first cake is done, move the second cake to the top rack. Invert the first cake onto a flat surface and carefully peel off the paper. Slide the cake layer back onto the paper and let stand until cool. Rinse the baking sheet under cold running water to cool, and dry it before lining with another parchment. Continue with the remaining papers and batter to make a total of six layers. Completely cool the layers. Using an 8″ springform pan bottom or plate as a template, trim each cake layer into a neat round. (A small serrated knife is best for this task.)

Directions for the chocolate buttercream:
NB. This can be prepared in advance and kept chilled until required.

1. Prepare a double-boiler: quarter-fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with the sugar until pale and thickened, about five minutes. You can use a balloon whisk or electric hand mixer for this.
3. Fit bowl over the boiling water in the saucepan (water should not touch bowl) and lower the heat to a brisk simmer. Cook the egg mixture, whisking constantly, for 2-3 minutes until you see it starting to thicken a bit. Whisk in the finely chopped chocolate and cook, stirring, for a further 2-3 minutes.
4. Scrape the chocolate mixture into a medium bowl and leave to cool to room temperature. It should be quite thick and sticky in consistency.
5. When cool, beat in the soft butter, a small piece (about 2 tablespoons/30g) at a time. An electric hand mixer is great here, but it is possible to beat the butter in with a spatula if it is soft enough. You should end up with a thick, velvety chocolate buttercream. Chill while you make the caramel topping.

Lorraine’s note: If you’re in Winter just now your butter might not soften enough at room temperature, which leads to lumps forming in the buttercream. Male sure the butter is of a very soft texture I.e. running a knife through it will provide little resistance, before you try to beat it into the chocolate mixture. Also, if you beat the butter in while the chocolate mixture is hot you’ll end up with more of a ganache than a buttercream!

Directions for the caramel topping:
1. Choose the best-looking cake layer for the caramel top. To make the caramel topping: Line a jellyroll pan with parchment paper and butter the paper. Place the reserved cake layer on the paper. Score the cake into 12 equal wedges. Lightly oil a thin, sharp knife and an offset metal spatula.
2. Stir the sugar, water and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over a medium heat, stirring often to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved into a smooth syrup, turn the heat up to high and boil without stirring, swirling the pan by the handle occasionally and washing down any sugar crystals on the sides of the pan with a wet brush until the syrup has turned into an amber-coloured caramel.
3. The top layer is perhaps the hardest part of the whole cake so make sure you have a oiled, hot offset spatula ready. I also find it helps if the cake layer hasn’t just been taken out of the refrigerator. I made mine ahead of time and the cake layer was cold and the toffee set very, very quickly—too quickly for me to spread it. Immediately pour all of the hot caramel over the cake layer. You will have some leftover most probably but more is better than less and you can always make nice toffee pattern using the extra to decorate. Using the offset spatula, quickly spread the caramel evenly to the edge of the cake layer. Let cool until beginning to set, about 30 seconds. Using the tip of the hot oiled knife (keep re-oiling this with a pastry brush between cutting), cut through the scored marks to divide the caramel layer into 12 equal wedges. Cool another minute or so, then use the edge of the knife to completely cut and separate the wedges using one firm slice movement (rather than rocking back and forth which may produce toffee strands). Cool completely.

Angela’s note: I recommend cutting, rather than scoring, the cake layer into wedges before covering in caramel (reform them into a round). If you have an 8” silicon round form, then I highly recommend placing the wedges in that for easy removal later and it also ensures that the caramel stays on the cake layer. Once set, use a very sharp knife to separate the wedges.

Assembling the Dobos:
1. Divide the buttercream into six equal parts.
2. Place a dab of chocolate buttercream on the middle of a 7 1/2” cardboard round and top with one cake layer. Spread the layer with one part of the chocolate icing. Repeat with 4 more cake layers. Spread the remaining icing on the sides of the cake.
3. Optional: press the finely chopped hazelnuts onto the sides of the cake.
4. Propping a hazelnut under each wedge so that it sits at an angle, arrange the wedges on top of the cake in a spoke pattern. If you have any leftover buttercream, you can pipe rosettes under each hazelnut or a large rosette in the centre of the cake. Refrigerate the cake under a cake dome until the icing is set, about 2 hours. Let slices come to room temperature for the best possible flavour.

Don’t forget to visit Daring Bakers and see other interpretations of the Dobos Torte created! And don't forget to come back to tell me that I really didn't do that badly.

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I Got Bored...

2009-08-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

And Dr. Christine Northrup did say in her book that women who deny their creative side are more susceptible to women's problems.... (I think she meant stuff like fibroids etc. which is really ironic as the one woman who had fibroid whom I was a midwife for, well she was like the MOST creative woman I had ever come across, so go figure).

So anyway, I have had in my possession some gel food colouring that I have been using for tinting my fondants. Today I thought I would give doing tattoo inspired edible artwork a go. Well, edible they still are, but I am not sure if I would call them artwork. It has been 19 years since I picked up a paintbrush and painted, or drew for that matter and even when I was in high school, my lovely Chinese Arts teacher Mrs. Tan discouraged me from using colours and used to hand me pencils instead. I think I know why now. The gel food colouring was tricky to get used to and I didn't have a range of brushes to my disposable and I was unsure as to whether I could successfully dilute the gels.

I am quite happy considering this is my first attempt and I think I will keep at this. One thing for sure though, I don't think I will be chancing this process on the birthday cake I will be making for my sister-in-law's 60th birthday party.

So here they are, my colourful etchings on rolled fondant.

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Spiker

2009-08-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

Pfffffttt. I confessed on Facebook to having dulce leche splashed into my left eye when making some at home the other night. Spiker queried as to how I managed to make any without using Nestle condensed milk (I suffer from midwife guilt - I avoid all Nestle products) and my response was;

2 litres of whole milk
500g of sugar
a pinch of salt
3 hours of my life I would never get back

She responded by sending me a link to a website that sells these jars of delicious caramel nectar which pretty much says, "Why bother? You can buy the stuff".

Sigh.

I am so misunderstood. I know how that Fanny Craddock felt.

So, I guess you guys won't be that crazy to actually wanna make your own either as you could go to your local Waitrose and buy some, but just in case you periodically indulge in culinary self-flagellation (which is wrong anyway as I think flagellating means it is self inflicted - answers on the comment box please), here is the recipe.

I don't think my caramel went dark enough so next time, when the moon is right, and the wind is blowing the right direction and some lovely violin music is playing and I am mid cycle again, I might try this recipe.

Disclaimer: Any clever dick who asks if I will indeed be using Splenda will be subjected to my Malay fried, salted, caramelised ground fish. You have been warned.

If you insist on using cans of condensed milk, then this is the recipe for you. *I personally think she is too pretty and too blond for my liking and I am forever dubious of slim bakers. A bit like hairdressers with no hair.

*You do know I am joshing you, yeah?

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I Am Joy

2009-08-24T08:08:00.000-07:00

Well, that isn't quite the truth considering the palaver we are having with moving at the moment. I won't bore you with details but suffice to say that progress is being held up by one member of the extended family and he ain't moving at any other pace but of a snail's.

A week or so ago, there was a week long mini festival called I Am Joy which showcased a range of arts related workshops throughout the week facilitated by local artists. Slaveboy and the Prodigal Step Son were hired to be in charge of productions and thankfully, (aside from the one incident where a bouncer annoyed the hell out of him with his thuggishness, so much so PSS had to be talked out of going for the bouncer with a claw hammer), the Prodigal Step Son came out of this not having harmed anyone physically. Slaveboy's nerves were shod a bit and even more so my friend's who did the talking him out of it bit, and I really shouldn't laugh but frankly, it's beginning to be such a regular occurence, I feel like I am living in my own soap opera.

Anyhoo, back to I Am Joy. I didn't get to go to many of the weeklong events. I did manage to peer into their Art Gallery down South Street where they had turfed the floor of the premises for the festival. That looke absolutely fabulous and I wish I had actually gone there when it was open so I could have kicked off my shoes and just feel the grass beneath my feet, but instead I only managed to peer through the front window sometime during the night when I was out watching Slaveboy's band do a gig.
I did however make it to the Saturday finale in the local park where there was a definite Glastonbury's Green Fields feel to it. A few friends turned up too, one couple came with their French listening dog. They disappeared off for lunch at some point and left their dog in the care of my 11 year old daughter. It was a bit funny as the dog only understood French and was completely ignoring my daughter pretty much most of the time.

Isn't she cute? She was pretty thirsty and my daughter kept having to go back to the hous to get her more water, but then this park is supposed to be dog free but by the end of the day, there were about four dogs in park - all behaving and getting along apart from the few incidents where we had to retrieve the French dog's stick from a poodle with a colourful hairband on. I know. That was surreal.
There was also this performance by the local Youth Theatre group which captivated the audience and had me cracking up with laughter. They were dressed up as Beefeaters and ended up dancing to Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. I managed to get some photos of then in action.

The children had a grand time. They had some blueberry ice cream and also some homemade vegetarian sausage rolls and cinnamon rolls too. It was also the week when our littlest madam decided to come out of her nappies so we were all on toilet alert. She did pretty well. I think she had a couple of minor mishaps but nothing too serious.

Eeeekkk!!

2009-08-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

I know. I know. I have been slacking. I am so itching to get some stuff down on here but have been busy with all matters. It's been a crazy few weeks and I seem to be kitchen bound all the time and despite having done a LOT of baking, I simply haven't been taking many pictures on account that the natural light quality in my place being so poor and my camera being a little bit of a disappointment. I am going to come back on here tomorrow and post some photos and also share with you what I have been up to.

Oh, and we are also moving house. Oh joy. Second move of the year.

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New shiny, shiny....

2009-08-09T03:26:00.000-07:00

Ooooh, these arrived yesterday and I thought I would share a picture of them with you. I can't wait to use them for something exciting. Still working on some ideas on how to make full use of how pretty they are.

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I really have been busy.. honest.

2009-08-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

Today has been a manic day. All I seemed to have done today was mop the floor, sort the laundry, do lots of baking and the endless washing up. In between these tasks, I seemed to have had around 15 visitors come through my door (and our house is TITCHY!). I have been doing some very nonchalant baking lately. Trying out variations of cupcake recipes and not necessarily sticking to any particular recipe. There were the lemon cupcakes with the lemon glaze. The chocolate ones with some lovely chocolate buttercream on top. Went manic and ended up doing a tray of Belgian buns a few nights ago, waking up slaveboy at 2 am to feed it to him with a glass of milk*. That was a crazy recipe too, it said to use 35g of yeast for what would have been for a recipe of 15 Belgian buns. I paid no attention to that and just used 7g and it turned out ok. I dread to think what 35g of yeast would have done to the dough. I also did two loaves of olive bread using some leftover goat's milk (sorry, Spiker, I dare to tarnish my body with it) for dinner yesterday as we were running a bit low on foodstuff in the house (let's just put it this way - I am actually out of plain flour - shocking, I tell you).

I had a friend turning up today with her teenage daughter who is 36 weeks pregnant. She had been going on about the brownies I once made her so I made her a batch today so she have some and take some home too. I couldn't have deprived a woman with child, could I? Oh, and I also made some intensely chocolatey brownie cookies. Spiker actually enjoyed those when she popped in today. I also had a go at another new recipe which was Salted Butter Caramel Tart. Next time I do this, I really do promise myself that I will not have a go at it whilst cooking tortellini and baking brownies. Too many details!! Too few hands and brain cells to cope!!!!

It actually turned out beautifully. I served it to slaveboy and he said he now forgives me for losing the butterscotch tart recipe. We also served the children some, and also my sister-in-law. Oh, and also my late mother-in-law's long time best friend, Auntie Joyce who lives round the corner. How random is that?? Apparently, she ate her slice in THREE mouthfuls!

Anyway, I did mean to take pictures of the process, and I promise I will next time but my camera ran out of charge and I was having to make do with my camera phone and really it would have been a bit tricky to take pictures and also stir hot bubbling caramel. I did take a couple of pictures later on though.

*Disclaimer: I realise that this makes me sound like I am a feeder. I am not. I merely woke him up and handed him the plate and glass of milk. He ate and drank on his own volition.

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It would be vegan-friendly had I given it a bit more thought

2009-08-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

I had promised Katy, a lovely friend of mine that I would make her something for the charity fundraising she is holding at our local park. They are planning on selling cakes to raise money. As I was making another cake for something else, I decided to use the same buttercream for the cupcakes I plan to make for the fundraising.
So the recipe is a hodgepotch. Between this one and a buttercream recipe which I will outline below. I am only using the actual cupcake recipe from the former recipe and adding chopped white chocolate to the mix. I am omitting the cream cheese center (which would make these cupcakes on their own vegan friendly), and only icing it with the buttercream recipe once the cupcakes are cool enough.

: Oil, vinegar, water & vanilla extract

Take the above and add to the dry mix below.

: Flour, bicarbonate soda, salt, cocoa powder and some finely chopped white chocolate

It should really look like this when you pour the liquid mix in.

Fill them into muffin tins lined with cases. Take it to around 1cm from the rim and you will end up with about 15 cupcakes. Silly number of cupcakes, I know but I don't mind as that means I have three that I can use as tasters. :P
Somewhere here should have been some pictures of the cupcakes before I decorated them but I forgot to take the pictures. Damn.
BUTTERCREAM RECIPE from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

4 large eggs, at room temperature
200g caster sugar
110g dark chocolate, finely chopped
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature

Method:
1.Prepare a double-boiler: quarter-fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to a boil.
2.Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with the sugar until pale and thickened, about five minutes. You can use a balloon whisk or electric hand mixer for this.
3.Fit bowl over the boiling water in the saucepan (water should not touch bowl) and lower the heat to a brisk simmer. Cook the egg mixture, whisking constantly, for 2-3 minutes until you see it starting to thicken a bit. Whisk in the finely chopped chocolate and cook, stirring, for a further 2-3 minutes.
4.Scrape the chocolate mixture into a medium bowl and leave to cool to room temperature. It should be quite thick and sticky in consistency.
5.When cool, beat in the soft butter, a small piece (about 2 tablespoons/30g) at a time. An electric hand mixer is great here, but it is possible to beat the butter in with a spatula if it is soft enough.
So here is what they look like. Tis my first attempt at piping buttercream icing so be gentle, guys.

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Money shot...

2009-08-05T04:35:00.000-07:00

I am not gonna write about this just now as I am so tired from my 7 year's birthday party, but I just thought this photo might whet your appetite. Oh yes, Spiker, are you ready for fame?
After the success of our first attempt at making cakepops,

: Globules of Sprinkles!!!

Spiker and I decided to challenge ourselves a bit further and make roadcone cakepops for my son's 7th birthday party. EASY!, we declared, some orange candy and a little bit of white, and hey presto, off we go. So we got on to making the pops, shaping them by using icing nozzles lined with cling film. THAT was supposed to be the hard part. Until we realised that the orange candy just didn't melt the same way on a double boiler at Spiker's as it did in a microwave oven at mine. Lots of stirring eunsued, working out if we ought to add some lard, err, no, vegetable suet into the mix. But in the end, the orange candy relented and melted to the consistency we desired. H O W E V E R, it just d i d n ' t quite cover the cone-shaped cake as well as it did the first time we made them. And this, boys and girls, is why there ARE pitfalls to having two very optimistic people working together. THEY NEVER BLOODY GIVE UP AND THINK IT WILL WORK OUT IN THE END. So, we persevered. Took ages dipping them and rolling them, witnessed a couple impale itself through the lollystick and we consumed a couple which simply refused to stay put. I have to also share that we abandoned the plan to use candy dipped pink wafers as a base of the roadcone pops because;

by adding such we would not have been able to wrap the roadcone pops
the pink wafers were too small to serve as a base for the roadcone pops
we (read I) ate so many of the damned things, that I doubt we would have had enough left

By the time we were finished, we were so relieved but we thought we were on the home run. Melted some white candy, Spiker took the first roadcone, dipped it into the white to make the first stripe and it looked like this.

: Money Shot

Spiker was by now creasing up laughing and unable to talk and dumbo me, was momentarily sitting there looking ever so perplexed and wondering what was up. It took me about 30 seconds later to realise that given the overall colour of the roadcone pop and the unfortunate way the white candy had set on the top of the cone, it pretty much looked like something that an Oompa Loompa (Johnny Depp version) would have been responsible for.
Realising that our will to live had somewhat upped and left us by then, and that we really couldn't give a flying monkey, it was rather unfortunate that slaveboy turned up and said..........
Wait for it...
You know what's coming next, Spiker.....
He said.....
"Can I suggest something?"
I don't know how Spiker did not stab him with the scissors.
Anyhoo, I left the 'cones in Spiker's safe and capable hands and she restored them in time for the party. They all went, noone said anything and in fact, a few actually referred to them as roadcones.

: Not quite cakewrecks

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Birthday Shenanigans..

2009-08-03T04:37:00.000-07:00

Being she of many many children, birthdays do come round very frequently in our household. I had somewhat promised my children, following my rediscovery of baking, that I would make their birthday cakes. The first one was last December when I made this one for my fourth child.

: Magic mushroom

It was one that I had made once before but I had lost the recipe and had to just wing it and be creative with some parts of the process (like realising that I needed dowel rods after halfway assembling it - doh).
So, somehow when July 31st arrived, it was comical how I was freaking out at the fact that I had a day to bake and decorate Zak's birthday cake for his 7th birthday party planned for the 2nd of August. I had had a wee chat with Zak about what sort of cake he wanted but honestly, by that time he was so over the moon at the idea of having a big party, he was pretty much incomprehensible. It was pretty much left to him and if it had been left to Slaveboy to decide, he would have just insisted that I bought one as I was snowed under with stuff like doing lunches for the summer workshop week at the local home educating organisation my children used to go to. It would have been the wise thing to do as I was coming home dead tired every day and the cake recipe I had chosen to use for his birthday cake was one I had never tested myself. I only had Spiker's version to go by (which was yummy) and she is afterall a witch as she makes things out of holes (a.k.a. knitting).
The actual making of the cake was not tricky at all, but the baking part took a little thinking through (something I am not naturally predisposed to). The cake recipe was for a 30cm (12inch) round cake tin and it required over 2 hours of cooking - 2 hours of which you MUST NOT open the oven door unless you want to have a sunken cake. I had wanted to make an oval shaped cake which meant I was going to bake the mix in two tins, a round one and a square one. The plan being that once baked, I would cut the round one in half and attach them to either end of the square cake. That part was simple enough.
What I hadn't anticipated for was the fact that my wee oven might not be man enough to deal with the two cakes being baked at the same. I hadn't realised this until after I had started the baking process, and whilst reading the comments on the recipe page, I stumbled upon several comments that the cake was prone to rising and/or spilling out of the tin. Now, there was little risk of the mix spilling over as I had double lined the tins to around two inches the height. The concern was that I might have minimal clearance between the top of the cake when it is rising and the ceiling of my oven cavity.
So, I spent a good part of the 2 hours sat on the floor of my kitchen (thankfully my OCD phase had just been and I could have scraped Dettol from off of my kitchen floor) watching the cakes. You should know by now that I prefer to panic whilst remaining stationary. My 3rd daughter intermittently sat with me too, and other times she was falling over me as she scurried around me doing the washing up. She is such a darling.
The cakes baked pretty well. The top one was a little cracked, I think this was because it was so near to the heat source but because the cake is meant to be so moist, it actually didn't suffer from the slight overbaking. Also, I turned both cakes upside down as I wanted a flat surface for the decorating.
And now I have got you reading this far, I just realised that I hadn't told you what the cake was supposed to be. As part of the party entertainment, Mark (my prodigal stepson) had said that he would set up a 6-lane Scalectrics track. The actual set up was massive. Have a look at some of the pictures I have attached below.

Anyway, the rational thing to do was to make him a racetrack cake really. I distinctly remember having that sinking feeling Friday night, when I was in bed that I had forgottento buy the fondant icing. Even worse, I really had NO idea how much fondant icing I needed and what exactly the design was going to be like. I didn't really spend that long worrying about it because before I knew it, it was 7.30 in the morning, and it was time to get up. The cake decoration lady found me waiting outside the shop at around nine-ish and let me in early because I had that manic look of a mother who had stupidly decided to take on a task far too big for her baking abilities. I think I bought them out of fondant icing (I bought most their white ones as I had this blind faith that I could dye it with my liquid concentrated food dye).
Having had NO time to slice and and ice the cakes with buttercream, I abandoned the plan to take the cakes to Spiker's so we can decorate it together (which would have been a better idea) and decided to just go over there so we can make these roadcone shaped cakepops. You might want to read about it here, AFTER you have made fully sure that you are a paid-up member of the I-do-my-pelvic-floor-exercise-daily society.
So, the cake decorating took place the eve of Zak's birthday party, in between making mini New York style cheesecakes and raspberry & white chocolate muffins. I have to say, the cake is quite forgiving and tolerated a fair amount of handling as I sliced them up and lined them up so that they looked as oval shaped as possible. The buttercream was a dream to make and I really do enjoy the icing sugar clouds that appear whenever I make buttercream icing in the quantity that cakes such as this one require.
For the fondant icing, I dropped a few drops of green concentrated liquid food dye onto the white fondant icing and kneaded it until the colour became consistent and to the shade I wanted. I discovered that I had to ice it in stages as I simply couldn't roll out a piece big enough to cover the cake without causing it to break or tear when I am trying to move it. So, I rolled out a strip long enough to go round the side (I wanted to say sides but his cake hasn't got sides) and then rolled out an oval shaped one to cover the top. I then smoothened the seams with my fingers and a bit of water.

And this is what the end product looks like. Zak was really thrilled with it - we kept being told by him that it was the best birthday party ever and he is still very stoked about it today. It is now the day after the party and we have about 4 slices-worth left.

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My peppers are wonky cos' you sabotaged them...

2009-08-03T04:32:00.000-07:00

I am fucking tired. Needless to say that Spiker is too. Spiker is being a real trooper and undertaking ALL of the cooking for tomorrow's lunch at the private educational establishment we are working at for this week. This is so I can take my son to Brighton to his comic book workshop, and at the same time giving me the opportunity to pick up some essential from the Oriental shop Yum Yums.
It's not particularly the cooking lunches bit that is knackering, I think it is more to so with the fact that I am not used to waking up AND getting up at 7a.m. In the Hersponge household, we sort of wake up around 8, roll out of bed at 9 and shuffle for breakfast half an hour later. Things just simple don't happen earlier than 11. It is also Hersponge sproglet number 5's birthday party on the 2nd and I suspect that I have invited 50 people. I am not quite sure how I managed that. Nevertheless, these people will need feeding (can you detect that desperate tone of traditional Malay mother who always has to make sure that she has overfed her guests?). So, I have been baking at night when I get back. Despite all this I am still falling behind. This could be because I insisted that I made a strawberry and whipped cream meringue for my nephew's fiance who had just given birth to their beautiful baby boy less than two days ago. An hour before that (before making the meringue, not before the baby was born), I was making my third attempt at pineapple=upside-down-cake. And you know what, it might as well have stayed upside down. I am gonna give up on that cake. The only time I managed to make it half decent was when I used real pineapples and caramelised it myself.
I have also received some piccies from Spiker of the Tea Party. I am quite pleased with the pictures but really do think that we need more practise at this. I might do that at Sproglet number 5's party this Sunday. I thought I might share some pictures with you.

: Globules of Sprinkles!!!

: When Spiker's OH saw these muffins, I think I grossed him out by asking him if he thought the golden edible flecks looked like fish food.

Anyway, I have lots of random pictures that I might put into one post later on. Night all.

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Fluffy clouds

2009-07-31T04:34:00.000-07:00

Yawn. I am tired but I am still baking. Only pictures today of the strawberry meringue I made my for my nephew and his fiance following the birth of their first baby.

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Day Release

2009-07-30T04:33:00.000-07:00

I just wish that if I were destined to wake up as bleary eyed as I seem to often do nowadays, it is because I had had a bloody good time the night before. Alas, no chance of that. Pfffft. Sproglet number 6, aged 3 stumbled in looking like a troll monster with her hair all in a tangle and pointing upwards. This baby has MASSES of hair. Almost down to her wast which dreaded itself a while back. I sorts just went with the flow and just put beads in the dreads but eventually, the density of the dreads were making her really hot and sweaty at nights and she started scratching her scalp to bits. So about a week ago, I started oiling her hair when she was asleep and undoing the dreads. It took about four nights worth of attempts to finally get it to the point where I could condition it and brush it out. The sores on her head are healing well now, it's just that now in the morning, I literally am picking off the loose scabs from out of her hair and unlocking bits of hair which have started dreading themselves over the night.
Anyway, Brighton. Got to the station. Bought ticket. Some British Rail lady mistook me for someone who bought tickets to London yesterday. I'm pretty sure I have a Doppleganger. I've also forgotten my phone and am feeling somewhat chuffed about that. I am quietly hoping that slaveboy remembers me telling him that he cannot switch the oven on unless he takes out the two quiches I have cooling in there.
So plan for Brighton. Some Japanese lunch. A stop at the American candyshop for some teethrot. Some purchases in Yum Yums, namely rolling mats for sushi making and hunt for goat's jizz err, cream in Infinity foods.
Ok, so it's now nearly half past three and Infinity Foods has no goat's cheese. I am suffering from mid afternoon slump and I am sat here waiting for my son to finish with his comic book workshop. We have been to a graphic novels bookshop and I am desperate to spend around £100 on some graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. I just love the guy. Sigh. I'll just have to wait til next time.
I really do enjoy my outings to Brighton. I often feel inspired to do better and be more creative with my life.

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Run, skip and hop

2009-07-27T04:31:00.000-07:00

Contrary to what you might think, i.e. I have abandoned this blog, I am actually about and cooking and baking. I'm just not finding the time to do any blogging.
Spiker and I have agreed to undertake the task of providing lunch for the week long summer workshop at a local home educating establishment, on top of running two cookery workshops for the week and also baking some extra cakes for them. I am amazed that the first day, which was Monday went as well as it did considering how little time we had to prepare for it. Both Spiker and I were busy doing mummy stuff on Saturday, taking the kids tona Wonky Teapot workshop. We were much entertained by the mothers who seemed hellbent to make the items for their child, rather than just letting them get on with it. Nevertheless, our usual 2pm stupor was much relieved by the eye-candy-ness of the potter artist (potter I said, not potty).
The whole of Sunday was spent between figuring out how to diplomatically ask my sister in law to clear he hall for my son's party, to which she had agreed and also the stark realisation that it was not going to happen as news of her son's fiancé going into labor hit my inbox. Much plans about which of my kids should be despatched to adopt the role of boot sargeant and motivate the rest of my sister in law's family to carry on with the abandoned task.
So anyway, Sunday night, and yes, I do mean ALL of the evening was spent baking this rhubarb cake for the Monday. The bloody thing took ages to cook, much longer than I remembered it taking the first time round.
Now there is always a catch with baking cakes for this home ed establishment, for every cake I bake them, I also bake one for my family. The same cake but substituting the goat's products with normal moo cow ones. Which basically means double the amount of work. Funny how they get eaten at half the time though. Funny that fractioning and doubling up lark, isn't it?
So bla bla bla, the day went well. They loved the cakes. I didn't take any pictures but I do have a picture of a rather impressively long sheet of freshly rolled pasta. And it was magenta in colour.
Nothing much more happened. Except my usual of getting shirty with slaveboy for failing to pick me up from Spiker's like he promised because his mobile phone was out of range hence him not receiving the call from me asking him to come pick me up.
Take away the verbal slanging match and the peppering of cuss words, I reckon we got through the day alright. As long as noone gets me started about the comment he made about how what work I did for the day was just 'a little bit of work'. Pffftttt, says the man who doesn't understand housework. I tell you, I read all these baking blogs and there are these women who tell us about these perfect men they are married to - I reckon they are either prison inmates or nuns on bedrest.
Me bitter? Nahhh, I just need a holiday.

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Ho Hum..

2009-07-24T04:30:00.000-07:00

I really don't know what to title this post with. SO much has happened and I am struggling to keep up with stuff. The Tea Party went really well, even taking account the fact that we couldn't have it in the park in the end due to foul weather and that we somehow managed to squeeze around 50 people into my tiny home. The children (mine) ate so much cake that they didn't ask for any dinner and didn't want any when it was offered to them. The next couple of days was spent in some form of sugar stupor and I was struggling to keep motivated.
Anyhoo, after the slight mishap with the udon noodles plan, I went on to have a go at a few things, because I had some ideas floating about. As part of my plans for a future party I have in mind, I wanted to make individual sized lemon meringue pies but couldn't make up my mind as to whether a mini muffin size would be better, or just a normal muffin one. So, I did both. There was a little toying around with the quantities, as really I knew I was going to need more pastry for individual sized ones than if I were to make a big pie. So I doubled up the sweet pastry recipe, which uses no water or fluids for that matter and included a couple of eggs. I have used this pastry recipe before and I have always had good success with it. It has always been light, buttery, crumbly and good tempered. The actual lemon filling was a just a single recipe's worth and I doctored the original meringue recipe to the one that I normally use as I wanted a really, crisp, thin-shelled meringue.
At some point, I am going to convince SOMEONE, or anyone, for that matter, to make me pastry dibbers that fit into normal muffin moulds as I found that was the most time consuming aspect of this process. I had to cut out rounds and then work them into the moulds and somehow make sure that they were all even. The baking process took about 20 minutes, maybe 25 (damn, I really ought to keep accurate records of these things) and they came out pretty well. What I had planned was to freeze a couple to see how well they freeze but then sense hit me and I realised that if I did that, I would be two lemon meringue pies short. So I thought, pah, I will just save two after they are baked to see how well they keep for a couple of days.
The lemon filling was very easy to make, I prefer this recipe more because they actually ask you to measure the lemon juice and I think that goes a long way in making sure that the filling sets, rather than ending up being one huge oozy mess. Also, it also required a small amount of orange juice and I wonder if this is the reason why this recipe never suffers from the occasional sherbet-y flavour lemon fillings take on.
I ended up with one extra egg whites because I made a double recipe of pastry, but funnily have only just realised as I am typing this that I hadn't put in the 'right' amount of sugar because I forgot about the extra egg white. I am such a div. So now I have the conundrum of whether I ought to use the lesser quantity of sugar as it actually worked or do I rectify the next batch I make to my usual amount?????
Anyhow, filling in. Splodge the meringue in the centre, tease it down to the edges of the pies and they went in for about 30 minutes for the mini ones and 40 minutes for the bigger ones (the extra unaccounted for egg white probably explains why it took longer than anticipated for the meringue shell to crisp up).
And this is how they looked like when the came out. The meringue was delicate but not overly fragile and handled quite a fair bit of being move from one plate to another, and another, and another.

: This picture makes me feel sideways

: The jar of flowers in the background contained the flower which my pantalooned cat has been trying to eat for the last few days. Like we don't feed him enough already.

: Aww, I likes-y this piccie

: I've come to the realisation that in the food blogging world, it is not enough to just be able to cook adequately, you gotta be a flipping good photographer. I think I might sign up for a course.

So anyway, at some point in the next couple of days, I will edit this with the recipe included, if anyone is interested.

P.S. I ate the last two I saved when I got home from the pub the very same day I made them. Bad.

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Globalisation is gonna really bite us in the arse...

2009-07-21T04:29:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make udon noodles today. It required plain flour, and also bread flour which I didn't have. So I despatched one of my children (which I have MANY!!) to go into town to buy some. NOWHERE in town can she purchase bread flour, without requiring her to get on a bus and go to the local supermarket. I despair. You guys will just have to entertain yourself today.

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Macaroons, Macarons, honestly, I don't think I care....

2009-07-20T04:28:00.000-07:00

So, I ended up with, like ten eggwhites from making the lapis legit. The plan was really to make some macarons and honestly, I think the family was hoping I'd just get over the fanciful idea of making something prettiful and just make some mixed berries pavlova. But I was a woman on a mission and afterall, I had already been to Lakeland and purchased my very first icing set and also liquid food colour. Now bearing in mind, this occurred literally days before the Tea Party and really I should have been concentrating on the Tea Party instead. But like I said, I was a woman on a mission.
Oh, and you gotta excuse me. I am writing this post Tea Party. I have so much sugar and butter in my system, I am literally oozing sweet dough from my pores. My eyes are bleary, I swore blind to Spiker that it must be my thyroid acting up and she very sensibly suggested that I might have just been snorting too much icing sugar and just having periodic pre-diabetic episodes.
So, anyway, back to these macarons. Mixing it up was easy enough. Drawing the 3cm circles on the baking parchment on the other hand reminded me why I never did get on to that architecture degree program I applied too, despite me thinking I had all the skills necessary because I could actually draw an apple properly during arts class. However, I simply cannot use a protractor. End of. In the end, I gave up and decided that surely, I can gauge what 3cm look like.
Piping the macaroon mix on the other hand was a task and a half. The first battle was to get the actual mix into the piping bag. Once I got there, it was pretty straight forward, if I am to discount the occasional macaron mix farts that disrupted the process. The part that I cannot get over was how messy my hands were getting and I know that with practice, the mess factor would be greatly reduced. But you know what, I have a phobia (along with the honeycombe one I secretly hide up until now). I bloody hate having messy hands and feet*.
So I rushed through this process and really this is how the little dahlings looked like before they went in.

I must have sat on the floor watching them for about 15 minutes. Thankfully, my OCD kicked in about two weeks ago and my kitchen floor has been doused with Dettol about twice a day by this time. Anyway, I digress...
This is how they looked like when they came out.

I think they look pretty alright. Not quite as pink as I would like them to be but I was still playing around with the food colouring. Let's not talk about the purple ones that ended up being gun metal grey. I told my son that they were the boy's version of the macarons.

* No feet were involved in the making of these dahlings

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I Blame Spiker

2009-07-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

This all started with Spiker telling me about this cloud biscuit recipe she came across online. It sounded like a real interesting recipe where the biscuit looks cloud-like and you can actually stand it up on its side so that it really does look like, errrr, a cloud. I was beginning to fantasize about making different types of clouds (cumulus, errr, and other named clouds) and thinking how fantastic it would be to incorporate that with a weather topic to cover with the brood for home edding.
Unfortunately, Spiker forgot to save the web address for the recipe. So those rain cloud biscuits will just have to wait. I did however come across this chocolate cloud cake recipe and since I am premenstrual, obviously there was NO other option but to make this cake.
My conscience was clear. I had baked the Genoise cake I needed for the base of the cheesecake I plan to make on Saturday and I had even tidied my bedroom (no doubt Slaveboy will read that as a signal that Le Sex is on the card but oh boy, will he be sorely disappointed).
So here is the recipe that I used. Mine didn't quite create as spectacular a crater I was hoping for and I think I slightly overwhisked the cream. BUT, we (slaveboy and myself) did think it was a good idea not to be in the same room with each othe for half an hour after eating a slice and being the blog amateur that I am, I forgot to take a picture of it until after we had devoured half of the cake. The children did not ask for a second slice and nor did they ask for the tub of sweeties they were given by Jo, a family friend. In fact, all of them are nowhere to be seen in the house (bar two older children who are at the cinema dressed as Bellatrix and Death Eater from Harry Potter).
I was planning to have a chat with slaveboy about how much I wanted open shelves in the kitchen and I know for a fact he hates the idea but then he is a utilitarianistic, anally retentive old fashioned curmudgeon (harsh words I know but this is afterall my blog so I can say whatever I want! ;p). I reckon that conversation should be postponed a while until the effects of the chocolate hit wears off. Afterall, 36 is a bit young to be a widow and I don't fancy changing the lightbulbs myself.
So, would I make this cake again?
DEFINITELY. Not regularly but it does fulfill that terrible craving for chocolae that I get from time to time. At some point, remind me to share with you this other recipe that I have of a very rich chocolate torte that I have. Like this cake, if contains no flour but more dense in texture and doesn't require anh baking (if I recall properly) other than for the base. It does however have a scandalous amount of cream in it.

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It All Started With The Need To Destress....Or renamed 'A chicken-load of eggs'.

2009-07-12T04:24:00.000-07:00

So.
If it isn't stressful enough to be preparing for a big Tea Party in the park where both Spiker and I would be responsible for making the cakes and other forms of sugar rushes, I woke up this morning with a mission. Would this be one where I decide to measure the bottom of the deep tart tin I have so I can cut out 40 round circles of parchment paper? A task that would make my individual vanilla & raspberry cheesecakes making process simpler on Saturday.
NOPE.
Then, maybe, I could make the Genoise cake for the base of the individual vanilla & raspberry cheesecakes in advance so they can be cut to shape and frozen for when I start making said cheesecakes on Saturday?
NOPE.
So what did this muppet decide to do? I despatched my slaveboy to the supermarket to purchase 2 dozen eggs, 18 of which I had eyeballed for a traditional Malay/Indonesian cake recipe I have.
Now, there is a story behind this cake. It is called Lapis Legit. I didn't know it was called this until I found a book with a recipe of it in it. Up until that discovery, I thought only the enlightened be-sarong-ed mak ciks in Malaysia held the secret to this cake. As far as I was concerned, this cinnamon layer cake was as heebie jeebie as making things out of holes, a.k.a. knitting.
Having found this Holy Grail of traditional Malay cakes, I was set on making it. Now bear in mind, I have had this recipe for about 14 years. IT IS OLDER THAN MY ELDEST DAUGHTER! And today, Goddamit, I was going to make it. Nothing was going to stop me. Not the Tea Party, not the parchment paper, not the Genoise cake.
NOT EVEN THE FACT THAT WHEN I WAS PRESENTED WITH THIS CAKE NUMEROUS TIMES AS A CHILD IN MALAYSIA, I COULDN'T SEE WHAT WAS SO SPECIAL ABOUT IT.
Here is a photo of the scrap of recipe.

I do believe that I might be mid-cycle.
Anyway, so the process involved some convoluted method of creaming an outrageous amount of butter (funny how Malaysians are not known for having cholesterol problems) with sugar. You then have to take EIGHTEEN egg yolks and beat that with some more sugar. Throw in some token amount of flour and then somehow gently fold in whisked-t0-stiff-peaks 8 egg whites. Don't worry, the whole process is so baffling that you won't even have the brain space to start figuring out what you are going to do with the 10 egg whites you have going spare (Mine will be made into macarons. Have I made macarons before, you might ask? Have I fuck!). Some dividing of the mixtures into two bowls (which would be easy if you hadn't spent your Saturday breaking all but one of your mixing bowls) and then chucking in some spices into one bowl and vanilla extract into another.
Then the theory is, you then pour (ha ha ha, I am laughing already) enough of one mixture into a loose bottomed square tin to a height of 3mm. Uh huh. You then put that under a grill and grill it for about say, 3 minutes, or maybe 5 minutes, hell, it varies! Even the recipe doesn't tell you for how long. Then once the top of it is cooked, you then pour the same amount of the other mixture (which is a different colour) into the tin and repeat the process. Uh huh.
Now boys, and girls, pay attention. It says here in this scrap of recipe I have. A good Lapis Legit will consist of 12-14 layers or more. I was 36 when I started this cake.............
So, then, it sort of got easy and I got complacent. At layer no. 7, I fucked up. I took the tin out from under the grill too soon and when I pour (or more like teased) the next lot of mixture on, it broke the surface of the previous layer and started merging together. I would have liked to put the blame on one of my children for distracting me (Hell, I have enough of them) but alas, it was all due to my complacence.
So, I decided to just carry on, since the only thing that would be affected would be how it looks and not the flavour. About 10 layers later, or maybe 12, I then popped it in the oven for 10 minutes. Helped myself to the Port I use for my game pie (that I actually CAN cook!) and pretend that I can put it down as experience.
I might post a picture of it too. Aren't you all lucky?
P.S. Have fed family the cake. They are still alive and said it tasted yummy.
P.P.S. I am actually quite good at this baking malarkey.
LAPIS LEGIT by Sri Owen
RECIPE (MAKES 1 x 8-9 INCH CAKE)

2lb (450g) unsalted butter
1tsp of vanilla extract
8oz (225g) caster sugar
16-19 egg yolks (size 2)
3tbs top of milk (I used cream)
5oz (150g) plain flour
a pinch of salt
8 egg whites
2tsp ground nutmeg
4tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp ground cloves

Beat the butter and half the sugar until creamy. Beat the yolks with the other half of the sugar in another bowl until creamy and thick. Once you have done this, combine the two mixtures together and add the milk. Add sifted flour and salt into the bowl and carefully fold into the mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold in.
In one bowl, place half of the mixture, to which you add the vanilla extract. In another bowl, the spices should be added to the other half of the mixture. You will end up with one cream coloured mix, and another brown colour.
Butter a square tin with a loose bottom. Heat the grill to its maximum temperature. If your grill is in the oven, then heat the oven to 150c. Turn it off prior to putting the grill on.
Pour cream mixture to about 1/8 inch (3mm) over the bottom. Grill this for a few minutes (I did it for about 180 seconds - anal, moi? Surely not). What you are aiming for is for the mixture to set firm. Once set, take it out, pour on the same thickness of the spiced mixture. You repeat this process til you run out of mixtures and remember girls and boys, a good Lapis Legit will consist of 12-14 layers or more. Clear? Good.
Final step, put the tin into the oven at 150c for 10 minutes. Remove the cake from tin and cool on a wire rack. Cake will keep fresh in a cake tin or in the fridge for a week, wrapped well in foil. You can also freeze it quite effectively.
So, here is a picture of my youngest daughter eating said cake. She is still alive, lucid and being her general pesky self. Damn.

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Do schools kill creativity?

2009-04-23T05:04:00.000-07:00