Best laid plans

I haven't made any mince pies. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that. I got a last minute order for a complicated cake, the deli needed "one of everything" and I spent all Friday baking large and complicated celebration cakes for private customers.

My favourite of these orders was for 13 fancy cupcakes for a Bat Mitzvah. I thoroughly enjoyed making such pretty things and it gave me a chance to use the lovely laser cut wrappers I'd bought.

The actual order had been for 12, incidentally. But they were to go in a twirly cupcake stand and they hold 13 so i baked an extra one. I rang to deli to advise them. 20 minutes later there was a slightly panicky return phone call - "actually, we are loaning them our cupcake stand and we've just had a look at it - it hold 24! Whoops. Can we borrow yours?"

Personally I kind of like that they need 13; a Bat Mitzvah occurs when the girl is 13 years old, so it's a nice bit of symmetry. Shame to have to break into a second pack of those fancy cupcake wrapper, though.

The other 2 jobs on Friday were unusual at best - a joint cake for a 66 year old golf enthusiast and her 8 year old football-mad grandson, and an 80th birthday cake featuring crosswords

and jigsaws. I fretted about the latter particularly. However, the customers were pleased and it's all good practice.

Making little football boots out of icing was quite fun. Piping the letters on the crossword was quite neat too; the long straight lines of black had me scared to breathe while I did them, though.

I think I'd have enjoyed the job more had I not been so pushed for time. It was a lot to do in a day and I had to help out at the school disco in the middle of it all. I didn't sit down until nearly 10 p.m. and I'd started at 8 in the morning.

So, here I am, still got pastry in the fridge and not done a thing with it. "Get on with it woman!" I hear you cry. Well,maybe. But the deli rang with a catering order for 6 loaf cakes. I've not got enough loaf tins to do them all at once so once the first batch are cool I can get on with baking the second. When getting one of the first lot out of the oven I knocked the grill handle above it, which fell into the cake. So I'll need to bake that one again. I tried very hard not to swear.

To complicate matters further, it's Mark's birthday in tomorrow. Cards to get, presents to wrap and theoretically a cake to bake. He has gallantly said he'd like grill-handle-bashed apple cake. Accommodating fella, isn't he.

And today we gave the go-ahead to the loft conversion company. They will be starting in 7 to 10 days and the loft needs clearing by then. We're still finishing off the decorating in the little bedroom. Argh.

All of which begs the question, what am I doing blogging at a time like this?

Excellent question. I'd best get back to work.

Coming over all Keats-like

Here we are in Autumn and I'm feeling very Ode To Autumn- 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' and all that sort of thing. (A-Level Eng Lit lingers in the brain somewhat)

Still worshipping the twin gods of Seasonality and Local Produce, I've been dabbling with more recipes. I can get away with lemon and raspberry cake for another few weeks because my own raspberries are only just coming out. However, the Big News in the garden at the moment is the plethora of plums (what a nice bit of alliteration). I've made 6 jars of plum jam and we still have a good crop on the trees. So, plum cake it is.

I've tested 3 recipes so far. One of them was horrid - claggy and pointless. One was not bad but had no longevity and the taste didn't really wow me. It was essentially a vanilla sponge with halved plums on top. The other - the first one I tried - is lovely. It's full of chopped plums, sultanas and cinnamon and it tastes only just sweet enough. For the moment I can use my own plums too (if Z and I don't eat them all first) so I get the double glow of using things from the garden and being in touch with the tastes of the season.

As always, I get other people's verdicts too. I sliced it up and took it to the playground at school pick-up time. It was enthusiastically received. In fact, my lovely mate Julie only waited until she'd got back to her house before texting me an order for it for the next day. The deli is keen as well. The cake did quite well in on practical issues, too. I wrapped a large slice and put it in a tin, and put another slice in the freezer. The frozen slice was pretty good and the fresh slice kept a decent texture for 3 or 4 days before feeling a bit stale. That makes it a goer - Hurray!

Apples are also coming into season again, which means Riet's apple cake is back on the menu. I've rather missed it. I'll do a dummy run before I start supplying the shop with it but I expect to be selling it within the month.

Share and share alike

I love other people's recipes. Of all the possible hand-me-downs I think they are my favourite. Books are nice, clothes for the kids a real boon, and if I ever have any inherited wealth (which is extremely unlikely) I'm sure it would be lovely; but for reliable honest-to-goodness happiness it's hard to beat a tried and trusted recipe from a friend.

I've blogged Riet's wonderful apple cake before. I've passed on Danielle's Chinese Chews recipe so often that I store it on the desktop, ready to print. FP Bean Stew from my online pal Millie is one of our standard dinners now.

The greatest of them all has to be Grandma Curl's Potato Salad recipe, which Dar and Kir's grandma Pearl Curry taught my mum to make back in the 70s. She taught me and I taught Mark. I can't imagine a summer without it. If you ask very nicely (and you remind me) I will post it at some point.

The next best thing to family recipes are recipes from cookbooks that other people swear by. My lovely and baketastic friend Rachel told me to buy Annie Bell's Gorgeous Cakes and it's been one of my best ever buys. I use it all the time.

My pal Lynne was asking about a chocolate cake that even non-bakers would find easy. My tutor Lesley was after a reliable, delicious chocolate cake that both children and adults love, and the answer to both of them has got to be the Annie Bell traybake. It's dead easy and utterly delicious. It's also very moist and last a fair while. You wouldn't think it had to because it is scrumptious and surely will be gobbled up, but in fact it does matter because the cake is huge.

So, here you go - my favourite chocolate cake recipe for when you have loads to feed:

combine
75g cocoa powder
200ml boiling water
1 tsp bicarb
and set aside for a few minutes.
Whisk together
4 medium (or 3 large) free range eggs
370g light muscovado sugar
180ml vegetable oil
then stir in
200g self raising flour
Add the cocoa mixture, mix thoroughly and pour into a baking tin about 23 x 30 cm (9 x 12 ish inches). Bake in a medium hot oven (180 degrees ish) for about 30 minutes. If your tin is smaller and deeper it might take 40 minutes. Let it cool before icing.

In a bowl over a pan of boiling water, melt together
150g dark chocolate
3 tbs milk
and keep stirring until smooth. Pour it over the cake and scatter M&Ms or other sweets, glitter, 100s and 1000s, silver dragees... just cover it with bright and shiny stuff. It looks lovely and partyish.

I didn't use it today for Z's 8th birthday party because he wanted a Number 8 cake, and 2 round cakes was the smart way to go, but I did bake one anyway this morning for a customer with a family party this weekend. I hope you enjoy it as much as they will.

Now wish me luck, my lovelies, because the over excited birthday boy woke us all up at 5:30 this morning and his party and sleepover is starting in an hour. It's going to be a loooooooooong night.
J x

PS - Lesley also asked which Red Velvet cake recipe I use. I have a bunch, but I think I like the Magnolia one on the Guardian's website best. The quantities make 24 large cupcakes or 2 layer cakes, so most of the time I halve it.

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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