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. 

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.

A Messy Beginning

Birthdays are always a good place to start. This is the cake we made my friend Lucy for her 17th birthday maaany years ago. We're pretty sure this is what made her stop eating sugar for the next few years...

It's layers of vanilla sponge of varying colours, with layers of sliced vanilla and jam swiss roll, chocolate swiss roll and jammy dodgers. We then smothered the whole thing in coloured lemon icing, sweets and silver balls. Getting this in the car and getting to her house (not far) was veeeery interesting. But it was a good party. And the proof is that the cake ended up like this:

Demolished.