Looking back, looking ahead

Do you remember when I talked about those three words that cause me all the trouble? "Sure, no problem."

I did it again.

You see, Tom and Abigail's family have been mighty good to me. How could I turn down their mum when she wanted a complicated cake for her eldest? I did the twins' cakes in Jan, I did their Grandma's 60th cake in Feb and today I have done their big brother's 7th birthday cake. In fact, this time last year (when I had never, ever covered a cake in sugarpaste) it was his 6th birthday cake that was my baptism of fire.

Oh god it was awful. It took 2 1/2 hours and I hadn't a CLUE what i was doing. I had gaps and seams all over the place, which I covered with a frilly band of buttercream. The whole thing tasted nice but it looked a amateur to the point of incompetence. Thank heavens I didn't charge much. I was so embarrassed that I offered the family £5 off the next cake as recompense for my ineptitude. Bless them, they said they'd loved it and were pleased.

Are you braced? It's very embarrassing... (Lesley, I give you permission to laugh)

Really braced?

OK, here goes -

Thank your lucky stars you can't see the sides. On the plus side, I can feel proud of how far i;ve come in a year.

This year he wants a dinosaur cake with a volcano. Did I say, "no, don't be daft"? Did I say, "sorry, too busy with Mother's Day baking." Of course I didn't. I said, "sure, no problem." Then I woke at 3 a.m. fretting about how to do a decent job.

I have spent an age on it. As anyone in my Cake Dec class can attest, I am not the speediest or tidiest of people when it comes to icing. The kitchen has 4 bowls of coloured royal icing, 5 balls of coloured sugar paste, a liberal dusting of icing sugar everywhere, nearly every icing implement I own strewn across the counters and I've started eating the rest of the mini eggs as a stress response.

It's finished now. Dan's mum kindly supplied 2 small plastic dinosaurs and I've added one of those firework type candles so the volcano can erupt at the appropriate moment. I would be rather proud of it but I am too cowed by the mess I need to clear up before I can start on tonight's baking for the deli.

Better get on with all that clearing up so I can get back to work. Once more into the breach, dear friends...

Spring forward

The season is on the change, Mother's Day approaches - or is that Mothers' Day? I'm never sure if it is 'the day for your Mother' or 'the day belonging to all Mothers' and I do hate apostrophes in the wrong place. Oops, got off topic a bit.

Easter's not far off either.

The birthday cakes are all flowery and springlike and I've spent an unsuccessful 2 hours trying to make daffodils out of icing.

With the change of seasons comes the change in people's tastes. Unlike summer, a nearly chocolate-free zone, chocolate is still very big in spring. It's all those Easter eggs, I think. Lighter and freshers flavours move up while the spices that saw me through the winter season are much less in demand. Time to change what I'm making.





I've just had my meeting with the deli to decide on the Mother's Day range (I'm sticking to that apostrophe til someone tells me otherwise). It's gone well. I'm doing sugar cookies in the shape of teapots and teacups, lemon cupcakes with sugarpaste icing tops (and flowers and butterflies) and a decorated lemon layer cake.





The sugar cookies worked out really well. I have a regular moan about the stickiness and faffiness of cookie dough for cutting out rather than splodging. Splodge recipes are so much easier. The various cut-out recipes are either bland, too sweet, too sticky or stiff to handle - I'm looking at you, Ms N Lawson - or a little unreliable.





I've decided to go with the Hummingbird recipe, with extra vanilla because I like it and no salt because it doesn't need it. It's quite a sweet sugar cookie (the hint is in the name, really) so it doesn't desperately need to be fully iced, but it's not so sugary as to put your teeth on edge.





Cream together
200g butter

280g caster sugar


add
1tsp vanilla

1 egg and beat well


Sift in
400g plain flour

1/2 tsp cream of tartar


Mix, chill for a bit if you have time, roll out to about 5mm thick and cut with the cutters you like best (or your kids are insisting you use. I find mothers rarely have free choice on these things. for years it was dinosaurs in our house, and when B finds out I have a crown cutter she's going to be ecstatic!)


Bake at 180 got about 10 minutes and ice or not as the spirit moves you.

Ups and downs

It's been a trying couple of days.

In a rash act of over-ambitious parenting a couple of weeks ago, I decided that trying to engage the kids in the Haiti Earthquake appeal would be A Good Thing. It seemed particularly important because at the jaded age of 10, L asked why we should bother sending money. "Shouldn't someone else do it? Like the Americans? They're rich and they're closer."

After delivering a lecture on the importance of everyone doing their bit, the brotherhood of man/sisterhood of women, how if someone needs help and we can give it it's our duty as fellow human beings to do so blah blah blah... I thought a more hands on approach might help.

When L was in Year 1 the Tsunami struck south east Asia. He was less of an old cynic then, and wanted to send his toys to the kids who had lost their homes "cos they probably haven't got stuff to play with." Lovely thought, but we decided raising money for food and medicine might be a bit more crucial. We baked biscuits, invited his class and parents over after school to a juice'n'cookie thing and raised about £65.

Z in particular is dead keen on that sort of thing; he loves a project and he loves to bake. With 2 kids in classes and one at nursery, that would be a lot of potential invitees if we did a repeat performance. We decided instead to do a Cookies for Cash sale after school in the playground. Z and B helped ice some of the 240 cookies I baked, my fabulously supportive pal Rebecca baked another 4 dozen and we set up shop. L took trays around the far end of the playground and was a very good salesman. Z helped man the main stall. I bothered my online friends for sponsorship and raised £40 that way.

A less wonderful bit - YIKES that was a lot of work. I was already rather busy with extra baking for Valentine's Day, Mark was away, I had my college course to fit in. Because the kids wanted to decorate them, I baked the faffy, roll-and-cut-out type for the first 128. That was kind of dumb. They take about 3 times as long as the nice easy dollop-y cookies. Just as i was getting horribly tired and uptight about how many cookies I still needed to bake, I had a thought... The kids were in school. They were not helping with cookies from this point forward so they won't care about icing. Super fast chocolate chip cookies it was! I got 112 done in no time flat. Still very tired, but chuffed.

Then I did all the sensible prep work - got bags of change from the bank, talked the staff of the fruit and veg shop into letting me have some of their brown bags for packaging, printed off signage emailed to me by DEC, packed up trays, tubs for money, aprons (to look the part) and gloves for all of us (it was snowing at times) and off I went.

The sale was a roaring success. We were mobbed and pretty much sold out. All in all it looks like we've raised about £160 for the DEC appeal, which is wonderful.

Then came the horrid bit. Towards the end of the sale a woman came up to me. It was a bit mad, swarms of people and I didn't recognise her at first. She lives diagonally across from me. She was coming to tell me that we'd been burgled.

On the whole, we got off lightly. It is just stuff, after all. They'd kicked the panel of the front door in and stolen the telly. Then got into a waiting taxi. So here we are, missing a telly. Plus the remote for the Sky box, and the PS3 remote, and possibly Z's camera, which isn't where I thought we'd left it. And my wallet. And there's the rub.

I was baking scones and cookies that morning. To stop my rings getting gunked up, I took them off. Because I've baked (and washed up) so much in the last fortnight, the skin on my hands is very dry, cracked and itchy, so I thought I'd take all my rings off to prevent any of them irritating me with dough under the bands.

Usually I put them on the cluttered edge of a shelf, but on Monday when I did that, the sapphire ring fell and I thought I'd lost it. When I found it I decided I needed to put it in a more secure place, so the next time I took the rings off I zipped them in the coin purse section of my wallet.

As I left to go to the sale, I thought having my wallet in my pocket in such a busy, chaotic environment wasn't wise so I took it out of my pocket and put it on the stairs. Clearly it would be safer in my locked, alarmed house in broad daylight.

Apparently not.

My sapphire ring and my double diamond ring are gone, and that's a damned shame. But so is my wedding ring, which was my grandmother's before me. I haven't slept all night for going over and over the stupid, unlikely, unusual chain of events that caused my wedding ring to be in my wallet on the day we were robbed.

Our friends and family have been ace. Rebecca took the kids and fed them, Mum and Fad drove over from Wales so I didn't have to be alone. The divine SJ and Rich turned up with comfort, chocolate and a telly for us to borrow. My bro rang, Sarah C popped over to check I was OK, Sarah F rang and offered help several times, and I've had lovely texts and emails offering help from our lovely pals. I was reminding the kids that although 2 blokes did something rotten to us, many people have done kind, thoughtful and decent. The world has lots of good stuff in it, even when we are feeling down and got at.

However upbeat I'm being, though, I suspect it's a tough day ahead. I have lots of baking to do, I am utterly exhausted, I've got a very distressed 10 year old to soothe and there's loads of stupid admin type crapola to deal with because of the burglary. Wish me luck, guys, because I think I'm going to need it.

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.

Birthday boy

It's Z's birthday on Friday.

You probably already know this if you live within 150 miles of us, because Z has told EVERYONE. His entire school. The postman. The staff in Tesco. The woman from Freecycle who came to collect a car seat. Absolutely everyone.

Anyway, he's having a birthday party at home, with a sleepover for some of the kids afterwards. He wants to watch a movie with popcorn and eat a party tea of macaroni and cheese, pizza and scotch eggs and possibly melon. Bizarre, but there you go. He also wants a chocolate cake, traffic light jelly, whoopie pies, cookies, cupcakes and "just whatever else you want to make, Mummy."

Aw, thanks, chick.

Oh, and could I please bake cookies for his class of 31, possibly M&M ones and maybe little ones saying Zach Is 8 or something?

erm...

I think we'll just go with M&M cookies, myself. I'm all for simplicity, it's my new plan.

Last year I let myself get talked into tiny cupcakes with the initial of each child in the class piped on. That was a nightmare; it took us a good hour to remember the names of everyone in the class and I was all uptight that we'd have forgotten someone who would then be all upset. (We didn't) Anyway, I don't need that kind of palaver and with a college course, work cakes to do and a large number of party cakes requested all to be done Thurs/Fri, I think 31 M&M cookies is more than enough work.

My preferred recipe is from the lovely Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Family Cookbook. It's a super book, so do go and buy it if you haven't got it already. It explains the history and science of food as well as how to cook stuff. It's ace.

So, M&M cookies mostly like Hugh's recipe except he used chunks of chocolate -

125g melted butter
100g sugar (granulated or caster, whatever you've got to hand)
75g soft brown sugar
mix the butter and sugars together until well combined.
add
1 free range egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
and beat until smooth.
sift
150g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
into the batter and then stir in
100g of M&Ms (or chocolate chunks or smarties or whatever you like)

This is a very sloppy liquid mixture. Splodge tablespoons of it on lined baking trays and bake for 8 to 10 minutes in a medium hot oven (around 190 degrees - nearly everything is cooked at that sort of temp) Do leave plenty of space between the cookies because they will spread.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes or so before you move them to cooling racks.
Makes about gooey 18 cookies.

By the way, as there is no creaming of butter and sugar needed and the batter is very liquid, it is a great recipe for kids to do. It's dead easy and really good.

Cake Tourism

This weekend was my escape to London for the marvel that is Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. It was sublime, as always, and I laughed heaps and wept buckets as is only right and proper at such an event.

While I was in London, I thought I ought to take the opportunity to do some research. I visited Jane Asher's shop for a few bits and pieces, I spent a wonderful hour in Pages catering supply shop indulging in dreams of expansion and equipment. But mostly, I went to bakeries and cupcake shops, took photos and ate cake. Lots of cake. So much cake that I threw most of it out after I'd tried a bite.

My good friend Rebecca asked her good friend Beth, who lives in London, to recommend cake places to visit. Her recommendations were super, for which I am very grateful. Thanks, Beth!

Lola's is a cupcake concession in Selfridges and Harrods. They are very pretty, do loads of flavours and have LOVELY packaging. I am envious. The sponge itself is very white, which puts me off a bit because in my experience butter and free range eggs mean a yellower cake. I am a firm believer in butter and free range eggs.
Lola's cupcakes have icing very nearly as deep as the cake, and they are covered in all sorts of nice things. Luke tried one and was very keen.

They also do big cakes. I liked this one, with mini cupcakes on top of an iced layer cake - cake studded cakes amuse me.

Selfridges food hall also sells loads of other nice cakes. I loved the tiny celebration cakes, edged in ribbon rather than dratted piped shell borders.
Hummingbird cakes remain very, very sweet, with loads of icing but looking really cute. They do Chocolate malt cupcakes now - clearly inspired by my success with chocolate malteser cakes. As if. Still, I get to feel smug about being there first.

I also went to the Primrose bakery - gorgeous 50s diner styling, a nice cup of coffee and pretty cakes, although the one I bought was rather stale. The loaf cakes were rather strangely sunken in the middle - the sort of thing that would have made me think my cake had gone wrong, if I'd done it. However, the pretty curling ribbon used to tie up the boxes, the blowsy, old fashioned roses in a pitcher on the table and the pale yellow colour scheme were all lovely and made it a nice place to spend half an hour.

I had a look at the stuff from Patisserie Valerie, a new cupcake place called Ella's (nice enough, uses loads of edible glitter) and a good browse around the cake stalls of Borough Market too.

Things I learnt - red velvet is still a very popular cake and I was right to try and push it. The mini cupcakes I do are also very big down south. Lots of celebration cakes I saw were finished with a border of ribbon rather than the piped icing, and cakes on a black and white motif were popular.
Flavours I saw this time that I hadn't seen before are chocolate beetroot, rocky road cupcakes and earl grey cake. I got a lot of ideas for cake decorations too.

All in all it was a pretty constructive trip.

say cheese!

The lappy and the cameras are communicating - for now, at least - so I have some photos of cakes I've done in the last couple of weeks. For reasons about which I am not totally clear, they have appeared in reverse order and I can't shift them about, so they start with today's cake and move back.

Here are the two cakes i did for our friends Tom and Abigail, who are twins. Tom wanted Dinosaurs, and i obliged as best I could. Abigail wanted a fairy. I bought a little figurine, which my eldest regarded as cheating. Ah well - I am very pleased with the result anyway. Most importantly, the kids were delighted.

The Divine Miss B had her 4th birthday party on Friday. She had a chocolate malteser cake, iced in a pale yellow buttercream with sugar paste butterflies (made by my own fair hand and dried for a few days to get the wings to stick up) and a letter B cookie. She was very, very chuffed.Below is a view of some of the stuff I baked for her party. The bright, low winter sunshine made getting photos a little tricky, and the pictures of some of the other stuff didn't come out as I'd like. However, I love the Happy Birthday banner made of iced sugar cookies so I've posted this one anyway.
At the back on the left is a cake stand that was my grandmother's, I think. The top layer contains mini cupcakes in the same lilac, pink and lemon colours as the cookies. The bottom layer has star sugar cookies in lemon. Then there's The Cake (all hail the cake!) followed by cupcakes iced in pale pink buttercream with silver glitter and Dora the Explorer wafers on. They are in Dora paper cases, too, but you can't see that from here. The jelly has B's name written across it (I ordered the personalised mould from Letterbox, and it's very cool.)

I also did lemon Viennese cookies, banana loaf and a chocolate cake with pinks smarties, silver hearts and silver glitter as well. Despite 10 party goers, 8 adults, two families visiting later and my own band of cake scavengers, we are still totally inundated with baked goods. Perhaps I overdid it a bit...

The photo below: This was the Christmas cake I did for college. Aren't the trees cute? It is really, really delicious. Pop over and I might share a bit with you.

Remember how worried I was about the anniversary party cake? Looks pretty good, doesn't it.

That's all for now. Enjoy the snow,

x