Hallowe'en fever

Crumbs, what a week. And an even busier one looming.

Who'd have thought Hallowe'en was such a big deal here now? I'm all for it; Hallowe'en in Canada was one of my favourite bits growing up. And of course the desire for Hallowe'en cakes is great news for my fledgling business. However, I am a little surprised just how successful it looks like being.

First up - my Hallowe'en cake as part of my course:

I think it's pretty cool. The black glitter on the bat wings doesn't really show up on the photo, but it did look good. The lads were delighted with the web, spider and bat.

Miss B, however, gasped in delight. "It's for me! It's got a B for my name! And the other letter! That's my name on my cake you made for me. I will share it with all of us. It is my beautiful scary cake!"

She did indeed share it - I fed 8 kids their dinner last night with this cake for dessert. A big hit.

I'm really pleased with it. It's covered completely and properly with no cracks, creases or patch jobs. Smoothly covering a cake had giving me almost as much trouble in the past as making piping bags did earlier this month. It feels good to have acquired both skills.

So, I've 4 assorted Hallowe'en cakes to do - one a pumpkin, one a spider, 2 however I feel like making them, all due Friday and Saturday next week. And also a Neopolitan traybake, same time.

The Hallowe'en cupcakes have been really popular too. First interest was in the jack-o-lanterns. Then I did spiders made from M&Ms, and my fickle public (well, my kids and their pals) dropped pumpkins in favour of sweetie creepy crawlies. Not sure i can blame them, although Spider webs are a bit more of a faff to do.

The deli will be stocking them by the dozen from Monday, plus 3 private orders for, inevitably, Saturday.

If anyone fancied doing these themselves, it's pretty straightforward.

Start with a basic recipe by tipping -

125g sugar

125g soft butter

125 g self raising flour

2 eggs

splash of vanilla

into a mixer and whizzing it about until it's a nice smooth batter. A food processor would also be grand, or you could do it 'properly' by creaming the butter and sugar together by hand and adding the eggs and vanilla then flour and beating until smooth. Bake in paper cases in at 190 degrees for about 18 minutes or so. It's important not to overfill the paper cases, because you need to have space at the top of the case to fill with glace icing.

When the cakes are cool, whack off any inconvenient dome bits to give you a level surface. Eat these as you go, stick them in a bag in the freezer and use them in trifles, or sandwich them together with a blob of icing and give them to your incredibly appreciative kids. This is L's favourite part of having a mum who bakes.

Mix up some glace icing by sifting about 200g icing sugar into bowl and adding very small amounts of water or lemon juice and stirring well. Add orange food colouring (or red and yellow, as your primary school will have taught you) if you want to make jack-o-lanterns, but only add a tiny bit at a time. I split it onto 2 bowls and do a white bunch and an orange bunch, but do what suits you.

When the icing is smooth but not runny, spoon enough into each cake case to fill it to the top and leave it to set for as long as you can (makes the next bit easier.)

I'm assuming that you are doing this as a novice (you) or lazy bones (me) really, so I'm not going down the "make your royal icing, make your piping bag" route.

Using ready bought black writing icing pipe triangular faces on the orange topped cakes. On the white ones, pipe 4 curving lines close together and pop an M&M in the centre (with the letter m facing down, of course) and then touch it gently to dot two little eyes on it. You can pipe a web or a pair of spiders or a thread the spider is dangling from, or whatever you imagination suggests.

Pendant bit - yes, I do know spiders have 8 eyes not 2. But they just didn't look as appealing that way. Plus M&Ms are pretty small, so it would be rather crowded. Oh that reminds me, you can use Smarties or Minstrels or whatever if you prefer; I just like the size and shape and colour of M&Ms for this job.

Further Pendant bit - Despite what this spellchecker thinks, Hallowe'en has an apostrophe in it. Well, it did when I was taught to spell by Mrs McGugan in Central Park Primary School, and I see no reason to doubt her. She's been right about most stuff so far. It's because it was Hallow's E'en, short for Even, itself a shortened form of Evening. So there you go.

But if you spell it Halloween I will still love you.

Did I mention we are hosting a party on Saturday? We are. I arranged it with help from L before any cake orders had come in at all. I'm trying not to panic. Actually, I'm trying not to think about it at all. Heigh ho!

The north wind doth blow...

As the weather changes, so do people's tastes. Light and lemony treats give way to warm, dark and rich cakes as it gets cold and dark outside. So, I need to change the cakes I'm making accordingly. One new cake I'm doing is Riet's Dutch Apple Cake.

Back in Canada, my mum met Riet on the maternity ward when they were each having their second kids. She was from Holland, mum was from the UK and they both were relatively recent immigrants keen to make friends.

We knew them throughout my childhood and I have two loves to thank them for. The first is National Geographic, which Riet's husband Jos introduced my dad to and we've all loved ever since. The second is the Dutch apple cake Riet cooked for us every time we visited.

I'm sure it wasn't always on the table if I think about it sensibly; but in my memory I never think of Riet without thinking of the cake too.

It is the easiest of cakes to make, if you have cup measures and a Bundt tin.

Preheat the oven to 190. Butter and flour your Bundt tin, because it is a right pain if the cake sticks.

Melt 250g of butter in a large bowl.
Using a hand mixer, add:

• 1 1/2 cups of caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups of self raising flour

in that order, mixing well after each addition.
Peel and slice :

• 3 medium eating apples

Tip two thirds of the batter into the Bundt tin. Add the apples and a dusting of cinnamon if you like. Cover up with the last third of batter and bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool completely before you try to turn it out.

This cake is one of those that drives home for me yet again that a cake that works perfectly at home isn't always OK for retail. It's just gorgeous, it really is. But the extra surface area of a Bundt cake means that, sitting out on a cafe counter all day, it is likely to dry out. The mix is too wet to do as a tray bake (believe me, I've tried) and ditto a round cake. If the amounts are halved it works as a loaf, but it is a pretty uninspiring sight. Whereas the lovely round Bundt cake looks gorgeous.

I've spent all week faffing with the recipe trying to make it work for a client who wants it. I even tried to distract her with Italian Apple Cake (a tray bake, so easy for her cafe) but to no avail. Riet's cake is just too delicious and anything else doesn't come close.

I'm having similar problems with chocolate gingerbread - this time with icing recipes rather than the cake itself. It's a dense, moist cake with a chocolate glace icing. As the cafe staff move the slices about, the icing cracks and creases as glace icing is wont to do. It tastes delicious but it looks a right mess, and thus it does not sell. Cake not selling does not make my client a happy cafe owner. So, back to the drawing board. I've got a cake I'd divided into quarters so i can try 4 different types of icing and see what works.

Between the two cakes I am driving myself mad as well as spending a fortune on ingredients for cakes I am not selling. So far I'm disposing of the excess cake by taking slices of it to hand out in the schoolyard and to my neighbours' houses.


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