Birthday Cake Hall of Fame No. 2

The Chocolate Edition! Whoop!


So, without further ado, bah ba da baaaah!


1. The Chocolate Guinness Cake


From Nigella Lawson's Feast - which, incidentally, has a whole chocolate cake Hall of Fame section! Hooray!

2. Chocolatey Squiggle Cake?


Chocolate sponge, chocolate butter icing, truffle and twiglet decoration and white chocolate squiggles on top?

3. Chocolate Raspberry Brownie Cake


My housemate made this one for me for my birthday and it was a chocolate fest in my mouth. Two layers of chocolate brownie sponge sandwiched with Nutella icing and raspberry jam, topped with raspberry pieces, marshmallow and moooore chocolate! MORE CHOCOLATE!

4. Big Shocker (Traditional Chocolate Cake)

Another from Nigella's Chocolate Hall of Fame. I added honey instead of golden syrup to the icing and it gave the whole thing an added dimension. (To the taste. Although now I think of it a 4D cake could be something to think about). Decorated with Malteasers...

When cakes go wrong...

Sometimes everything's just got to go a bit tits up.

It happens.

Rules for a Great (Cup)Cake

Cycling through the centre of London today, I was doing some sneaky scooting between the cars and the pavement to get up to some traffic lights, and I was halted in my tracks by a nice big horse poo. I wasn't best pleased, and definitely wasn't going to be ploughing Jan (my bike) through that, so pulled in front of the posh silver car beside me (he definitely wasn't going to be ploughing through that either). As I sat inhaling the bus fumes and nervously trying to keep as far away from the big shiny Bentley while also avoiding the mess on the road, I thought to myself - How come the police  don't have to clear up after themselves (and it was obviously the police because who else would willingly take their horse out of it's country paddock and ride it through the middle of the City of London on a Monday afternoon)?? I can't quite imagine them jumping down and packing it into an old Tesco bag, but still, don't they know there are rules?!


WELL. 


Admittedly, some rules are more fun to follow than others. And I'm going to put it out there: I'm pretty sure these rules for all-purpose/customizable cake mixture are more fun than clearing up after your pet. 


175g Softened Butter
175g Sugar
3 Eggs
175g Self-Raising Flour
Pinch of Salt
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Tablespoon Milk


Cream the butter and sugar together until it's lighter in colour, and then add the eggs one at a times (add a bit of the flour if it curdles) and then sift in the flour and add the salt and fold them in, making sure you don't beat the air out of the mixture. Then gently mix in the vanilla extract and the milk and then put the mixture in your tin of choice (can be split between two round cake tins or into cupcake moulds, or any other shape reeaally) and bake at 180 degrees for about 20mins - exact timing depends on your oven...


Options for customising this recipe aaaarrreee:


- Leave out the vanilla extract and add the juice and zest of 1 and 1/2 lemons 
- Exchange the vanilla extract for coconut flavouring, the milk for coconut milk and add a sprinkling of dessicated coconut 
- Exchange 40g of the flour for ground almonds, add a little extra baking powder and exchange the vanilla essence for almond essence
- Exchange the vanilla extract for rose or orange blossom extract
- Exchange 30g of the flour for cocoa powder, and add chocolate chips
-Anything that takes your fancy


Here are some variations I've made (and I remembered to take photos of):

Margarita Cupcakes (In honour of my housemate in Chile)
These ones use the lemon variation above for the sponge, and then the icing is just icing sugar mixed with tequila (and water depending on how potent you want them).
Decorate with a slice of lemon and a sprinkling of salt!

Rainbow Cupcakes
For these, I simply split the original recipe into 5 mugs, and added different food dyes to each one. In quite large quantities I might add to get a good colour when they're baked. 
Then just spoon a bit of each colour into the cake tin/cases and bake!

Oreo Cupcakes
Twist the tops off a pack of Oreos, and put the side with the cream on in the bottom of the cupcake cases and add the batter on top (the chocolate one with some Oreos crumbled in).
Decorate with cream cheese icing and the other side of the Oreo.  




And you know what, if this mixture had a horse, and for some reason was riding it through the City of London on a Monday afternoon, it would be down off it's horse and have that mess in an old Tesco bag faster than you can say poo-tastic. 

Domesticity Biscuits

This recipe is from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess. When she says they have the perfect combination of holding their shape and tastiness she ain't fibbin'. Despite not having quite the incredible selection of cookie cutters as Nigella, I've made these a few times for different occasions - namely Halloween and Christmas (as you'll probably be able to tell) - and will, in all likelihood, be making them for a few more... 


This makes a huge amount, so depending on the number you're baking for/how hungry they are/how many they can shove in their mouth at one time, you can adjust the quantities - halving it is pretty simple (even more so with a calculator...). The 1950's alternative is to go for the whole caboodle and keep half the dough in the freezer ready to whip out, roll out and pop into the oven at the drop of a bowler hat. Then, sit back (or very upright with your cup, saucer and little finger out) and revel in the ease of the domination of domesticity.   

175g Softened Butter

200g Caster Sugar

2 Eggs

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

400g Plain Flour (Plus Extra for Rolling)

1 Tsp Baking Powder

1/4 Tsp Salt

Cream the butter and sugar together well, until paler in colour, then gradually beat in the eggs and vanilla - add a bit of the flour if it curdles. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt into the butter/sugar/egg mixture and bring it all together to make a dough. Try to handle/knead it as little as possible. Wrap it in cling film let it have a half hour nap in the fridge in a cling-film blanket before waking it up with the back of a rolling pin and the cookie cutters of your choice. Bake for about ten minutes at 180 degrees on a greaseproof paper lined baking sheet (definitely necessary here unless you want to spend a good few hours icing crumbs together) until just turning nicely golden brown. 

Icing: a nice thick water icing (AKA a mixture of icing sugar and a liiiittle bit o' water) does nicely.

 

Variations: This is the basic/original recipe and while it does not really require a variation, sometimes it's nice to mix things up a bit. Add a bit of lemon or orange zest to the dough, or use almond extract or orange water instead of vanilla extract. The icing can be varied too with the use of extracts or juices instead of water and the addition of food colouring. Although I haven't tried these (yet), I also can't see anything wrong with adding nuts, dried fruit or chocolate to the dough... The possibilities may, or may not be, endless. 

Birthday Cake Hall of Fame No. 1

Baking doesn't get more exciting than birthday cakes. Wedding cakes, as great as they look, just don't come round often enough and look more stressful than anything else. And there's also no room for redemption in a years time if you know what I mean. 


In no particular order (and baring in mind there is a large backlog and a few exciting birthdays coming up...):


1. My sister made this many years ago for a pizza loving friend. White and pink coloured icing for the "pizza" base and sauce, sweeties for the toppings, and grated white chocolate for the cheese. And I'm pretty sure it was on a pizza plate as well.  

2. Spending a year (and a birthday) on the other side of the world was exciting, but having this incredible chocolate orange cake, made by my very very good friend Mad-dog Gates, on my 21st birthday made it feel much more like home. I will never forget waking up with a horrific hangover and shoving two massive slices of this down my throat. I can't say it made me feel better, but it definitely made me feel happier. 

3. Later that same year, I made this for my amazing house-mate, Margarita, on her 26th Birthday. It is two layers of almond sponge on either side of a chocolate and chocolate chip sponge layer. The icing is Nutella-Cream cheese butter icing (with varying degrees of Nutella), with an extra layer of pure Nutella between the sponge layers. We started singing happy birthday without the Birthday Girl (half-way through the second attempt she appeared) and all she got to taste of it in the end was the bit she ate when they thrust her face in the cake, after she had blown out her candles (a Chilean tradition). In any case, it disappeared incredibly quickly, which is never a bad sign. 

4. My sister made me this for my 19th birthday, combining two of my favourite things - peanut butter and jam. The icing is peanut butter and it is covered in peanut-butter and jam jewel biscuits from Nigella's Domestic Goddess. It had Jam between the sponge layers too. 

5. To conclude the first Hall of Fame, this has yet to be topped in my opinion. Made by my sister for my 18th Birthday, it is 3 chocolate sponge layers, with peanut butter cream and chocolate peanut butter icing, surrounded by a sheet of milk and white chocolate, and topped with glitter covered peanut butter lindt chocolates and a frosted rose (which I did actually eat). It was GREAT warmed up.

WHOOPIE (I made) PIES

Whoopie Pies have been around for a while but have just never quite managed to live up to the hype... Probably because they're just never going to be quite as pretty as a dainty little cupcake. They're more manly - a little like the concept behind Coke Zero perhaps. But not quite manly enough to become  popular with actual men. 

They're an odd mix between a cake and a macaroon, and while they travel well, it's a bit of a struggle to make them look nice enough to present to someone for a special occasion. Mind you, often the novelty makes up for that. 

Out of the 3 I've tried making from the Hummingbird Cake Days book, probably the nicest are the Red Velvet ones, but like all things Red Velvet they're an effort. These chocolate ones are a bit less of a faff, but still taste wunderbar. The vanilla and cardamom ones were pretty ace too - nice and chic for fancy occasions. 

The sponge is surprisingly not very sweet. But the riciculously sweet innards make up for that... The icing uses Marshmallow Fluff, which, being in the UK, isn't the easiest to find. I just found some in Selfridges and got quite excited - I have used melted marshmallows in the past though and as long as theyre quite cool (add a teeny bit of water to stop them solidifying again) when you add them to the icing sugar and butter mixture it works quite well. Make sure you give it a good while in the fridge before you ice them too. 

Sponge:

1 Egg

150g Caster Sugar

125g Natural Yoghurt

25ml Milk

1/4 Tsp Vanilla Essence

75g Butter, Melted

200g Plain Flour

80g Cocoa Powder

3/4 Tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

1/4 Tsp Baking Powder

Icing:

170g Butter

280g Icing Sugar

220g Marshmallow Fluff

Beat the egg and sugar until pale and fluffy, then mix the milk, yoghurt and vanilla together and chuck that in with the egg and sugar. Stir in the melted butter. Sift together the rest of the dry ingredients and add that in two batches, making sure its all mixed in. Leave to set for half an hour in the fridge. 

Heat the oven to 170 degrees C, and blob the mixture onto a baking sheet covered in greaseproof paper (which is definitely necessary). Make the blobs any size you want, the only important thing is to keep them all the same size and shape so they fit together when they're cooked - I like them quite small. Tiny bite-size ones would be great for a party - the less effort to get them in your gob (without getting crumbs all down your gown) the better I say. 

Cook until they're springy on top (10-15 minutes). 

For the icing, mix the icing sugar and butter until well combined then stir in the Marshmallow fluff. If you've got a machine (or someone you can use as a machine) this is good as it is much easier said than done. Marshmallow fluff is shockingly stiff. Who knew sugar could be so unforgiving. If you don't have a machine to hand, it is possible to do this by hand, and if done on a regular basis works nicely towards that Rafael Nadal look (check out his arms if you don't know what I mean...).

The icing will probably now be stiff enough to prop up the majority of your kitchen cutlery - if it isn't, pop it in the fridge for a bit. 

Then all that is left is to sandwich two chocolate blobs together with some of the icing. Don't be shy with the icing - there is a LOT here. I also like to spread some jam on one side too to liven them up a bit. 

Happy Whoopie.

Party In Your Mouth (AKA Doughnut Muffins)

Doughnut. Good. Muffin. Good. 

Made these a couple of times recently and they've gone down a treat. Not as guilty making or as much effort as a proper donut, more exciting than a boring plain muffin,  and they travel WAY better than their cupcake sisters - can cram more in a box yanoo. That's if you want to give them away... Even those who don't like actual doughnuts (i.e. crazy people) love these bad boys. 

The recipe is from Nigella's domestic goddess. She says to use strawberry jam, but any good strong jam will do. I like raspberry. Good way to use up old jam too (I like making up ridiculous excuses to do a bit of baking. Too much sugar in the house? Baaaake)

Makes 12 (just)

Batter:

125ml Milk

85ml Corn/Vegetable Oil

1 Egg

1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

200g Self-raising Flour

100g Caster Sugar

12 Tsps Jam

Coating:

100g Butter

150g Granulated Sugar

Two bowls: one with the dry ingredients mixed together and one with the wet ingredients beaten together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix until just combined. Don't overbeat - people like tough cookies but not tough muffins. Lumps are good. 

Fill the really well greased muffin cups to a half full. (Don't use paper cases) Dollop a little bit of jam in each one - Nigella says the size of a fat broad bean - and then cover with a bit more mix so the muffin cups are just over 3/4 full. Bake at 190 degrees C for about 20 mins until the tops are turning golden brown and are "springy and resistant".  

As they're cooking melt the butter and put the granulated sugar on a plate or shallow bowl.

As soon as the muffins are out of the oven, carefully take them out of the muffin tins and roll each one in the butter then the sugar. Don't worry if the bottom of the muffin splits a bit and the jam pops out a bit - just pop it back in. There's nothing a good bath in butter and sugar can't solve. 

Daa Daaaaaaaaaaaa.