These Two Imposters

Fortunes up and down at the moment. I've tried new cakes, old cakes, and my first ever tiered cake (the prospect of which scared the pants off me) with both triumphs and disasters. As Kipling instructs us, I need to take both in the same spirit.

Life's been pretty hectic lately. This is no surprise - self-employment from the house, 3 kids, 11 chickens, bits of decorating to do in the house, veg beds to tend in the garden and all the other things that are part of family life mean that if it weren't hectic I'd be surprised. But it's been even more so than usual over the last month while my fabulous Number One Son has a break from formal education and we dabble in a period of Home Education. It's been wonderful but requires time I am struggling to give.

So, as the cake club weekend approached I had not done my usual recipe experimenting to come up with new treats for the subscribers. It'll be fine, I thought. I was wrong.

My rash attempt to tackle the dreaded flapjacks went properly wrong twice. TWICE. I hate my flapjacks, so I don't know which demon moved me to try again. I don't even like the flapjacks of people who make them beautifully all that much, not when I could have cookies or cake. Perhaps I should just admit they are not something I can make. Nah. I will plug away every year or so and one day I'll make flapjacks that I like.

I tried to make a Victoria Sponge following a recipe different to my usual one. Actually, cocky that it would be fine, I made a double batch and popped them in together. Both collapsed; four 20cm sandwich tins full of sunk cake. Great.

Overtired by the time I tackled the meringues, I made a basic error that I could have slapped myself for. The results were just delicious but not the sort of thing I was after. Fantastic; what was I going to do now? Only the Battenburg cake turned out well.

A wonderful thing about baking is that most mistakes can be transformed into something else. Not the flapjacks, unless we fancied unusual roofing tiles, but the others. The meringues suggested Eton mess to me, so the cake clubbers got Eton mess cupcakes. They were utterly scrumptious, they really were.

If you fancy a go, here's how -

12 vanilla cupcakes
100g soft butter
200g icing sugar
splash of vanilla
2 handfuls of berries (I used raspberries, red and black currants and blackberries)

20 small meringues (about the size of a jammy dodger) or equivalent amount of larger ones

Beat the butter until white, beat in the icing sugar and keep going until it's all fluffy and whippy looking. Stir through the vanilla, and if the icing is a bit stiff add a splash of milk.

Bash all but 6 meringues into big chunks. If you're using frozen berries, defrost them and drain any excess juice before folding into the icing with the meringues.

Generously ice the cupcakes with the berry/meringue/buttercream mixture and top each with 1/2 of one of the reserved meringues.

I've made cake pops with mixed success a couple of times before; I certainly wasn't particularly impressed. Having bought a few from different places to sample them, I've found them over-sweet, a claggy texture and pretty disgusting, really. However, I had lots of spare cake thanks to the collapsed Vic Sponges and I do love Bakerella's blog, so I thought I'd have another go.

I aimed at a drier, less sweet mix than I'd had elsewhere and I was far more happy with the result. I dipped them in pink coating with a few pastel coloured sprinkles or glitter on each. The cake clubbers got a pair each, alongside the Battenburg, Eton mess cupcakes and some VERY fragile but rather tasty home made jammy dodgers.

Incidentally, I'll try a different recipe for the dodgers next time; something slightly more robust so they'll be less breakable. Sorry, guys.

Once the cake boxes were delivered I could concentrate on a large order for an 18th birthday. I needed to make 12 vanilla cupcakes, 12 lemon cupcakes, 24 chocolate cupcakes, 60 mini cupcakes, one chocolate malteser cake, one lemon drizzle cake, 24 plain scones, 12 fruit scones, 12 lemon scones and finally a 2 tier cake with hand made butterflies, glittery polkadots and ribbon.

I had been fretting about the cake for days. My very lovely distant cousin in New Zealand had given me the business advice of steering clear of tiers and brides, and I'd generally followed her advice. Lesley, my rather fabulous college tutor, assured me it was a doddle and I'd be fine. And you know what? I was!

I did make mistakes with the cake. I was thinking about the tiers individually, so made them proportionally high, rather than as levels of the same cake, which should have the same height. The top tier needed an extra layer. I'll get that right next time.

My experiences at college had taught me to make spares of all icing details. This was A Good Thing as several butterflies broke when the lid balances across the top of the cake, erm, stopped being quite so balanced and touched them. Knowing my clumsiness, I'd made HEAPS of spares, so could make repairs, keep spares on hand for any damage transporting the cake, and still had enough to top the cupcakes as well.

I'm still pretty pleased with it, but I could really rather do with rest now!

Learning from my mistakes

I really like Meet The Robinsons. It's one of Disney's less well regarded movies but for several reasons I'm very fond of it. One is that it was the brand new film when we were in Disney World last time and a tiny toddler Miss B was transfixed by the character of Lewis who was meeting kids. Another is because it talks about how you learn from failures. And WOW I've had plenty of learning opportunities lately.

Here are some of the lessons I've learnt:

• Do not bake when overtired. I've messed up 2 chocolate ginger cakes (same batch) and a chocolate malteser cake in the past few days. I had assumed I could bake them with my eyes closed by now but it turns out that when staggeringly tired I forget raising agents or miscalculated when scaling recipes up or down.
• Do the accounts every month, not every 6 months. This ought to be a no-brainer but as work, builders, decorating and general family stuff ate up all available hours I got dreadfully behind. It's a tedious process catching up that much and it's possible I've forgotten some cash purchases so am not accurately reflecting my true earnings. I also hadn't realised I was owed £300! That's been paid now, I believe - I can check on Monday (Nice surprise though!)
• It is not a good idea to experiment with recipes or new techniques when overtired (are you sensing a theme?) To use up one of those wrecked cakes I did some experimenting. The same bleary-eyed hard-of-thinking befuddled state of mind that caused me to mess up a cake in the first place pretty much ensured the experiment was a disaster
• Green and Black's white chocolate does not melt to a thin enough consistency to make a good dipping coating. Adding butter to thin it curdles it, adding a tiny splash of milk makes to go a horrible colour. I think cheaper chocolate might be worth a go.
• It is OK to say no to commissions. If I am overtired (ha!) or over-committed (double ha!) it could be the smart move to turn down some work, whatever Mark says. (Mark is a keen fan of Always Accept Work but as I am the one working myself into something of a stupor, I have decided not to take his advice.)
• If a customer changes the rules at the last minute it is OK to say No to the whole job. I'd accepted a job for a Sunday which, on the Wednesday before, was changed to a "I need to collect it tonight and forgot to tell you." I was already baking 14 batches of cakes and cookies that day and it was demented getting a celebration cake made as well. It was nice to satisfy the customer and she's a lovely woman but I pushed myself to tears of fatigue getting it done. Not smart.
• I need to account for my time when costing things, and do so at a proper wage. Earning £5 a hour when I am an experienced, skilled professional is ridiculous. That's under the minimum wage.
  - as a self employed woman, does that mean I'm exploiting myself? probably!
• It is good practice to ask for some detail about the person for whom a cake is intended if the customer has no design brief other than "make it nice." Having a selection of themes to get me started on a design is a big help.
• I am not a lazy person. I think I am, because I hate exercise and am a messy slattern in some respect. However, my Mum pointed out that I work pretty much non-stop from waking up until 8 o'clock ish most nights, and that is not being lazy.
• It is very important to keep my laptop calendar and my iPhone calendar synched. I nearly missed 2 appointments and did miss a talk at the school because the calendars weren't synched when I assumed they were both up to date.

See? Isn't that a lot of important stuff to have learnt? I think so. But then, I've not managed more than 5 hours sleep for most of the last month, so it's possible my judgement is impaired!

;-)

Steep Learning Curve

I've had for first attempts at mince pies this year. As will all new endeavours, it's a pretty steep learning curve. I can honestly say I'm learning loads of things not to do.

I knew Nigella was being a pain about all that darned putting stuff in the freezer. She says to add enough orange juice to get the dough to start coming together. That took a lot of orange juice. An awful lot. Far more than I thought. But hey, trust the recipe and all that, right? Stick to it the first time and tweak it on subsequent trials.

Nah. It was a disaster. I am convinced the dough didn't come together with the small amount of orange juice expected because the butter in the pastry was frozen. Once it warmed up slightly - i.e. when I came to use it - it was a horrid sticky gloopy mess. It's in the bin.

Rachel Allen suggests putting the pastry between two large pieces and cling film when rolling it out. That worked really well. I never roll pastry out thin enough, I know I don't. This helped me to roll it quite thinly without added more flour and risking the pastry becoming tough.

Rachel's cutter sizes were a bit weird. They didn't work for me at all. The lids were too small, although those covered with a star rather than a lid fared better. The pastry as a tiny bit underdone and was far paler than I'd expect for something given an egg wash. I think the oven was a bit low; perhaps 190? and I think I'll try 210 next time.

The pastry itself was delicious. lovely and light and flaky, so a thumbs up on the taste department. I need to practise more with the amount of mincemeat to go in it. It's a pain when it overflows but I do hate an under-filled mince pie. The home made mincemeat is delicious and I want heaps of it.

I'll keep plugging away at it in between this week's commitments. I want to have a decent mince pie ready for December 1st. Given the number of Christmas cakes I need to do before then and now, it'll be a squeeze but I am confident I'll manage it.

In The Merry Merry Month of May

Sorry it's been a month since I last wittered on at you all. I've been rather busy. May's not been entirely merry*, but it's had its good points.

I did my first wedding order, which was for cupcakes. Don't they look pretty? Perhaps individually placing each silver dragee along the spiral is a little fiddly, but I think it gives a lovely result.

My second wedding order went a bit wrong. The bride has called it off, so I have sent her mum a refund, minus the money I'd already spent on things for the order. It's a shame, as I was quite excited about doing it but heck, I'm not the one having the big emotional crisis.

I got that contract with a new outlet, and I started supplying them this weekend. I did the planned tasting session for both partners in the business and it went very well. But heck, why wouldn't it? What's not to like about someone offering you several different cakes and cookies with a nice cup or coffee and tea on a busy morning. We settled on what they'd start with and I gave them some advice about storage of the cakes to prolong shelf life and manage their stock. The longer the cakes and cookies keep fresh and look good, the better. Stale cake is somehow more depressing than no cake at all.

I'm not quite sure how much work it will mean - like my work with the deli, there will no doubt be a settling in period. However, I set my terms out clearly with regards to collection versus delivery and the notice I require. It feels good to have agreed this stuff up front.

I had my lovely weekend away in early May. It was fab to see my very lovely pals Laura and Alison again and the Gifted Children's May Ball gig was absolutely ace. Almost all of my science crushes were there, and most of my comedian crushes too so it was pretty much perfect. I really wish my pal Rach could have joined us, though; she would have loved it. Marcus Brigstock and Tim Minchin in one evening... on second thoughts it might have been too much for her and she'd have swooned. I wasn't wearing shoes suitable for carrying swooning mates.

I had some baking related adventures too. I took a cake to Absolute Radio for Dave Gorman. He does a bit in his stand up routine about never eating carrot cake again. I'd talked to him after the gig and he said "convince me I'm wrong, send me a cake." It was a lot more eccentric a thing to do when I was carrying a cake through London and knocking on the radio station door than it seemed in my kitchen, but what the hell. His producer and production assistant came to meet me and were really lovely. I saw Frank Skinner. He said Hi! Coo.

And the next day Dave and his co presenters Danielle and Martin mentioned it in the podcast (May 8th, at 33 minutes ish on the podcast, not that I'm obsessed or anything). They said it was "amazing cake, genuinely moist and delicious and lovely." I am all chuffed.

On the Saturday night I went to see Wicked, the musical, which was great fun. I met a Canadian woman there who wanted to learn to bake. We had a good chat and exchanged email addresses, and I am now helping her get started by email. It's fun. I get to be a mentor; how neat is that!

Then it was home again and back to work. As I've mentioned before, tastes change with the seasons. I've stopped offering chocolate gingerbread loaf until the autumn and needed to replace it with something more spring-like.

I've faffed about with a recipe and come up with a very nice elderflower cake that is currently selling well in the deli. I want to find an affordable berry cake recipe too, for summer. Some are just too expensive to be viable commercially, but I am confident I'll find something. I like the faffing.

Whoopie pies are selling well, too. They are as trendy as trendy can be right now, and although a bit of a faff to make are really delicious. I took some to the deli at the beginning of the month and they've been selling steadily ever since. I also got more positive comments from their inclusion May cake boxes than I've had for anything else ever. Evin the non-cake-eating deli owner loves them.

I truly hate their name, though. Whoopie pies. They are not pies. They do not fart when you sit on them. Still, what's in a name, as Juliet so naively asked. (Quite a lot, Julie my poppet, and if you'd picked a bloke with a different surname it would have been a longer play.)

I had another baking session with Z's Year 3 class this month as well. It was a bit, erm, interesting but that was the fault of the rubbish recipe and the teacher rather than the kids. The recipe was for chocolate chip muffins. The taste was bland, some parts of the recipe were pointless and messy and the flashes, bangs and burning smell coming from the staff room microwave was enough to give me nightmares. I won't bother typing of the recipe for you all because I promise you it was rubbish. 50g of melted chocolate and no cocoa between 12 muffins doesn't make a batter chocolatey, it makes it beige. Buying cheap nasty Asda Value bars of chocolate and asking the kids to bash it into chips rather than buying chocolate chips is also a mistake. A frustrating and messy one. Not one group managed to follow the recipe correctly, the teacher did not provide the correct implements and does not understand the difference between millilitres and grams, and I had a lot of rescuing to do to make sure all the kids got their 2 muffins.

Still, the muffins did rise impressively and the kids liked them. And that is the main thing.

The difficult parts of this month have been overwork, managing a poorly child, and being overtired. That the dishwasher packed in this weekend was pretty much the final straw, and Saturday found me sobbing like a toddler. I even regretted starting the business at all. However, a bit of sleep and a morning of doing nothing constructive whatsoever restored me to normality. Well, mostly, but enough to get by.

If I am going to continue making a go of this I do need to think carefully about how much work I take on, how to juggle family and work life and possibly stop doing other external stuff like volunteering. So obviously I'm doing another book swap party fundraiser this year and have offered some help to Cubs. And the school summer fair. Argh. However, I've partially opted out of my book groups until I've got a little more time and I'm looking at ways of managing the household more effectively. And I'm thinking about turning down a cake request that i think will be a pain to do and will mess up part of next weekend for insufficient financial reward. Just because I can do something doesn't mean I have to. That's the joy of self employment.

*That's a Stephen Foster song, by the way - In The Merry Merry Month of May. He wrote that in 1862. Why my head is cluttered with such stuff I do not know, but there you are.

Baking for beginners part 2

Last week I had my fourth baking class with Year 3. I was lucky enough to get to pick the project (and as a consequence provide them with all the stuff, hey ho) which gave me a little freedom. The previous time I had been very frustrated when an economising gesture ruined the biscuits the kids made because a cheaper, substituted ingredient caused them to collapse.

I thought it would be fun to do bread and butter; this is mostly because I think it is fun to make things the kids tend to assume you can only buy ready-made.

Because of time constraints I went for soda bread. Soda bread is dead easy. As I did the previous 3 times, I tested the process with Z and B on the weekend. I think if a 4 year old can manage it with supervision, 8 year olds should be able to manage it with minimum intervention. B was delighted. She had 'her' bread with the chilli we had for dinner that night, enjoyed a toasted slice with 'her' butter for breakfast, and showed off about it to her pals at Nursery. Quite rightly, too.

Our trial run established that double cream needs to be definitely at room temperature to make the butter and that soda bread takes less time than we usually spend. Oh, and that the oven needs as much time to heat up to the required 230 degrees as the bread takes to make, so it's best to turn it on before starting.

The kids were rather incredulous when i told them what we'd be making. As before, some had made bread before while some wouldn't know a rolling pin if it fell on their heads. I was pleased to see they all remembered how to wash their hands properly. They all did a super job.

DIY Butter -
200ml of double cream at room temperature. This is very important.
a jar with a tight fitting lid
Shake, shake, shake and shake. Remove the butter from the jar, press all the liquid out. If you are going to keep it for any length of time, rinse it over and over again to make sure you get every last bit of buttermilk out. Salt it if you like. If divvying up between loads of kids, put a heaped spoonful in mini cupcake cases and pop in the fridge for a bit.

Butter was the big hit. I talked them through the phases they could expect but the kids still pulled on my apron every 30 seconds to ask "is it butter now?" First the butter sloshes about a bit, then it barely seems to move as it becomes thick whipped cream. That lasts a while. Next is the slightly grainy phase when it looks a bit rubbish really. Then, suddenly there is a big SLOSH as the fat comes together to make butter and splashes about in the remaining buttermilk. Opening the jars to see their dollops of butter was so exciting. The kids all shouted to have a go squeezing the buttermilk and they were so keen to taste it.



Soda Bread
Sift 250g plain flour with
1 tsp salt and
1 tsp bicarb
Add 2 tsp brown sugar
Stir in 225ml plain yoghurt or buttermilk
Knead for a minute or two. Form into as high-domed a ball as you can. Slash the top with a deep X (or, if making it for a table of 6 kids, a star) and bake at 230 degrees for 12 minutes. Turn the oven temperature down to 200 degrees and bake for a further 15 minutes.

When the loaves had all been baked - in the same oven at the same time - the result was amazing. The loaves were each an accurate reflection of how the groups did. I've never seen such a blatant physical manifestation of cooperating and erm, not.

Two tables worked together very well. One of them in particular got a little enthusiastic about the kneading part and made the most beautiful loaf of soda bread I've ever seen. I was so impressed. Z's gang was one of those who did well, which is nice to know but not really surprising. They are a lovely group of kids.

Two tables pulled it together in the end after a rocky start, and produced prefectly edible bread, if not entirely appetising. One table (yes, the same one) did nothing but argue. They took twice as long as the others, clearly forgot to add the bicarb, didn't knead because none of them would get their hands sticky, probably added the salt three or four times over (based on the finished result) and produced an utter disaster of a loaf. It looked like home made salt dough we do for playdough, but baked to have a stiff crust around it. It would have been disappointing to take home and probably woulod have made them sick if they'd actually tried to eat it.

I went home and baked a replacement for them, although I did send their effort into the class as well. I felt a bit grumpy about it when I was dashing back to the school in the pouring rain, but it wasn't really much bother.

I had a very proud parenting moment when L told me I shouldn't have baked them a new one. "It is the natural consequence of their actions, Mummy. How else will they learn not to fight and to follow instructions?" Ah, the sweet pleasure of having your dearly held parenting beliefs repeated earnestly to you by your 10 year old...

He is of course entirely correct. However, on the off chance the 5 kids concerned did try and eat their grim slab of crusted dough, I didn't want to be responsible for making them sick. Plus it's nice to have something to show your parents, even if you did need a bit of a nudge (OK, a blatant replacement). I'm crossing my fingers for a better go next time.

When I saw the class in the playground the next day, they were all dying to tell me how they'd shared the bread and butter with their families and how their mums/dads/grans had pinched the biggest bits. It was lovely to see them so proud of themselves.

The bread was suffiently successful that several parents asked me for the recipe later. I feel pretty good about that -a nice result for my first attempt at a classroom activity.

As ever, I recommend getting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's wonderful Family Cookbook, which is where I got the recipes. It really is a super book.

Recipe Testing

Recipe testing is a bumpy business.

I love it because I like to try new recipes, I enjoy a change from the things I bake most days, and it's exciting when it all works beautifully. I hate it when I'm on version 9 of a slightly tweaked recipe and it's still not quite right, or becomes too expensive to be commercially viable, and my kitchen is a mess and I've run out of time and energy and I still have work to do.

Also, there's the question of what to do with all those test cakes. If we ate them all we'd be sick. I often make up plates of assorted test batches and take them to my neighbours. Well, my nice neighbours. I bypass any grumpy ones. My pal Lisa, who lives around the corner, is a BIG fan of this habit because she gets a lot of cake this way.

I also take some up to the staff at the deli. Partly it gives me some feedback on the success or otherwise of the cakes, but mostly it's just nice to do because they are so chuffed.

It would be nice to sell some of them - maybe half a cake per batch - to recoup some of the ingredients cost. I bet if I scheduled a test week and told people I'd have boxes of mixed cakes and cookies for sale that week, I'd get some takers. My pal Rebecca always says she'd buy any "spare" cake (can you believe I live in a world that has spare cake? Me neither!) but I feel a little funny putting her on the spot. (My inability to ask for money is a right pain when it comes to being self employed, I can tell you.)

Anyway, this week it's all about Christmassy things. I'm trialling spiced cupcakes, Christmas cakes, mincemeat, Christmassy cookies and all things Yuletide. I've been humming Christmas sons to myself while chopping stem ginger and grating nutmeg. I LOVE nutmeg.

I am on a steep learning curve with the fruit cakes - they just behave so darned differently to normal cake - but I am learning something new at each go. Also, Mark and I are rather enjoying scoffing the results that are a little to rough'n'ready to give away. I'd better get good fast, as I've some orders already. Ah well, fortune favours the bold.

The cupcakes show promise, although getting them to a good commercial price is a little tricky. I'm having fun with the icing - I think a cream cheese icing made with the ginger syrup and cinnamon is the right way to go. Sweet but with a lovely spice flavour. Mark finds it a bit too sweet for him but I think it's delicious. I am still trialling a bunch of recipes for the cupcakes themselves - I'm confident I can crack it this week, if everyone one is well and I've no further delays.

It must be said that is a BIG if.

Edited to add -

Woo hoo! I think I've cracked it. I've found a gorgeous spice cake recipe. Nice as cupcakes and extremely lovely indeed as a layer cake. The accompanying icing wasn't up to much, but my cream cheese icing (above) is gorgeous with it.

I must be on a roll - the packaging for the mini cupcakes looks a treat, too. If only the costs of decent packaging weren't so darned high. Ah well, the tiny cakes look lovely anyway.

The One With SJ, or Cheesecake Misadventures

My very fab Best Woman, SJ, came over with her partner Rich for dinner on the weekend. This is almost as ace for the kids as it is for us, as my three love SJ and Rich to bits. Rightly so.

We ate a lot, we drank a lot, we lit sky lanterns with the kids before bedtime and we chatted until very late.

At one point we were talking about Dave Gorman's blog, which SJ does not read. (This is obviously an oversight on her part, as Dave is a total poppet and so spectacularly good natured and positive that I always feel happy after reading his blog.) I mentioned I had a blog too, and SJ wanted to know "am I on it?"

"erm, not yet... I've only just got started really."

So now she is. Hi SJ!

SJ loves cheesecake. She loves cheesecake. So, when she's coming to dinner, obviously I bake cheesecake for dessert.

On the whole, when baking for family and friends I prefer to bake cakes other than those I make for the deli. It's just more fun. Up until a couple of weeks ago I was baking 3 or 4 lemon cheesecakes a week for the deli, so I knew I didn't fancy making that one. I'd not done the caramel cheesecake in months; surely the ideal choice.

Except I had changed the recipe quite substantially from Annie Bell's original California Cheesecake and I'd never written the changes down. Baking something several times a week makes me lazy - the recipes are second nature and I think I'll never forget them. This is patently not the case. Oops.

I sort of remembered it. I knew I'd removed the sour cream from the cheesecake layer and did it as a top layer, like the lemon cheesecake. (This helps with the problem of the cheesecake cracking.) I remembered the sour cream was left to set like my mum's vanilla cheesecake, rather than baked like the lemon one. Not exactly precise, is it? As soon as I tasted the finished cheesecake I knew exactly what I'd forgotten and where I'd got it wrong.

The result was certainly edible, and quite nice just not lovely. I hate it when that happens.

So, here is the ACTUAL recipe for caramel cheesecake, as I make it when doing it properly:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
Mix together
150g digestive biscuit crumbs
60g melted butter
and press firmly into the base of a springform pan (about 23cm, but a 20cm will do if you increase the baking time by about 5 mins)
in a large bowl or mixer, beat
500g cream cheese
150g caster sugar
until smooth. Add
1 heaped teaspoon of treacle
3 large eggs
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
and beat until fully combined. Pour it very gently onto the biscuit base
Bake for 40 to 50 minutes until almost set but still a little quivery in the middle.
mix together
300ml sour cream
2tbs vanilla sugar or caster sugar plus a dash of vanilla extract
and pour it over the top of the cheesecake. Leave to cool then refrigerate overnight (or for at least 4 hours). Remove the springform sides and dust with
cocoa powder.

There you have it. And I owe SJ a proper one to make up for poor quality control.