A Cherry Good Cake

I'm almost halfway through my baking challenge, which may seem quite odd to those who've been following my various endeavours and writings on this blog, it certainly doesn't seem like this long has passed already! Yet, as expected it is getting exhausting now, keeping up with the daily pace of baking is really taking its toll on me. It's not in the actual baking or even the eating the foods - that is becoming easier as I find more and more people willing to take cake home with them - but it is actually just my enthusiasm for it. 

Of course I love baking, I always have, but right now I have lost most of my desire to keep up with the challenge; I am falling behind. But that certainly doesn't mean I'm  going to stop, I'm not one to give up.I did a bit of maths earlier and discovered that I am almost a week behind on the challenge. It's not because I've not tried (the last few times I've baked it's been two items at least!) but because I have quite an active social life at the moment, home from university means seeing my old school friends I don't really see in term time. And I have a few groups of them! Also my lovely girlfriend is at home and she definitely doesn't want to be my scullery maid - no matter how many times I've asked her - which also reduces opportunities to bake. 

This weekend I went to Glasgow to see my cousins who I spent a great weekend with sampling scotch and seaweed flavoured beer... There wasn't really time to bake a batch of cookies! So I came back and immediately set to baking myself a cake. A Classic Cherry Cake, which has turned out rather well  (except for a few minor errors); it was a normal cake. A simple bit of sponge mixed with cherries, lemon and almonds. My girlfriend has remarked to me that the recipes in this book of mine are very nut heavy, something I'm not particularly bothered by, I love nuts (make the jokes you wish from that!) which made me think, actually she's right - "You sound so surprised!" I hear her shouting at her laptop - so I decided to look into the book and see how many actually do have nuts in.

It turns out that 40 out of the hundred recipes I am working through have nuts in, surprising I suppose because these days I get the impression that nuts aren't really in many baked goods I buy. I can't remember the last time I bought something with hazelnuts or something in, they're almost entirely absent from many people's diets. Maybe it's because nut allergies are quite coming these days or - stoners, prepare for your mind to be blown - it is the other way round and we are allergic to nuts because they're not as common in things any more... Woah, man.

Anyway, back to that cake after a rambling. The cake went very well, I must admit, but it fell down at the final hurdle because - yet again - I didn't fully commit to this challenge by buying the correct equipment ( or account for the fact I had the wrong equipment in the cooking time). I used a nine inch baking tin rather than an eight inch one, not a problem on its own but the spreading out of e mixture meant that I should have adjusted cooking time suitably, and I didn't. A rather more brown cake came out than I'd hoped, it also is a little less moist than you'd like but then again, with a nice brew it goes down perfectly! 

This evening gone I also decided to make pizzas with my own good hands to knock another number off the list without overloading on sugar. I was surprised at just how simple they were up until the cooking stage. You'd think the hard bit would be the dough right? Wrong. It is simple bread dough ( well, simple to someone who's given that a go before) simply rolled flat once you've finished proving it. But once loaded up with toppings (and by god do I love my toppings!) it is an absolute bogger to slide into the oven! It is recommended to use either a proper pizza stone or an upended baking tray - guess which I used! - but unfortunately you really have to scatter a vast amount of semolina on all surfaces before you put the toppings on. It may be easy to move when dough on its own but you soon start distorting your face and worrying when there is the potential for cheese, tomato sauce, pepperonis, veg and chillies to give your kitchen floor a makeover! Semolina underneath the baking tray you cook it on and the plastic board you use to roll it out and as a surface for putting toppings on simply must be well semolinad up!

Still, it came out looking absolutely brilliant! 

The Results:

Mmmmm a lovely "piece a" cake

A lovely Pizza great!

Peanut Butter Lazy Time

Have you ever had one of those lazy days where you have literally sat around the entire time doing nothing but still somehow feel exhausted? Well I just had two of them, admittedly I am still feeling a little bit ill from the other day ( I'm pretty confident that in one of my coughing fits my lung is bound to fly out of my mouth!) but that hardly gives me an excuse to literally lie down ALL DAY. Today I haven't spent more than a few minutes away from some form of television other than trips to the toilet ( which, now I have an iPad, might actually start including tv!), don't get me wrong television is great if you just want to sit back and not engage with life in any sort of way for a while; everyone needs down time. With the exception of some forms of tv - news, documentaries, tv dramas etc - it is, for the large part, simply brain melting. 

Even shows which I really enjoy ( I'm a sucker for American sitcoms) eventually wear me down so much that I can barely string a cohesive sentence together in conversation. I've heard of people doing challenges in which they decide not to watch tv for a week or month, but honestly I think I'd find the opposite more difficult. Just picture sitting there on a sofa for 12 hours of your day, every day, for an entire month. It's what I would call hell. Especially day time tv. Assuming we're avoiding the slightly higher brow bbc breakfast, it starts with gmtv, then this morning then loose women and Jeremy Kyle and then come dine with me (ok come dine with me is not bad at all) and then it descends into quiz shows and sitcoms before night time tv gives into an actual variation in programming day by day. Does that sound in any way appealing to anyone?! 30 days of that? Because I think I'd prefer to run head first into the tv non stop for thirty days than actually soak that drivel in to my brain!

So after my lazy day I finally decided to get off my Harry shaped dip in the bed to do some baking. It's amazing how good it actually felt to do something (even if it is something I've done every day for almost fifty days now!). Mixing butter and peanut butter gave off a heavenly smell and mixing in the oats and flour just made it look so delicious.

These have certainly been some of the better cookies I've done. Admittedly not as good as my gingersnaps but still exceptional, I've never had peanut butter cookies before but by god are they good! 

Now I've finished, what should I do for this evening... I'll see what's on tv I guess... 

The Result: 

Mmmm Peanut Butter Cookies

Aww Jeez(cake) Part Two

Two days ago I promised you the second half of my gargantuan New York Cheesecake challenge,min which I would reveal whether my hardest challenge yet was a success or a failure. However, before I could finish it, I became quite ill with a horrible sickness/sore throat type bug thing my dad has been spreading round the house with his quite charming lack of mouth covering. So here I am tucked in bed  after a night attempting to clear my throat of whatever the hell is going on in there hoping to enlighten you on this second part of the cheesecake challenge.

I must be honest that writing a blog when feeling distinctly under the weather was never something I intended to do whilst completing this challenge. For one thing I genuinely never thought I'd get sick - the last time I was properly ill was almost a year ago when I was struck down by the dreadful freshers flu, undoubtedly caught from those "studying" media studies (if you can truly call media studies a real subject) my journalism course shares rooms with - but also that I'd haves to be mad to actually bake whilst ill; I seriously doubt the lurgy is a good topping to any cake! 

Yet I suppose today is a easy opportunity to take advantage of, it's not often I'm confined to my room with nothing but my (new and shiny) iPad for company and plenty of time to mull over my baking failures or successes. 

You may recall that i had left you with the potential disaster ridden cheesecake, I had completely forgotten to possibly the most important ingredient for any cake; flour. Yet, with a cheesecake made - unsurprisingly - mostly from cheese and cream I thought I might get away with it. There were only two tablespoons of it in the recipe after all!

After a night sitting at the bottom of the fridge (something my mother was not happy about considering its significant size!) it looked pretty much the same as it did when I put it in there; like a jelly before it sets. Yet, thankfully, when I lifted it out it was clear it was solid. HALLELUJAH! A far as I'm concerned it could taste terrible, at this point it was clear it was at the very least a "cake"! 

The result: 

It tastes very good, I must admit that. Is it perfect, definitely not but it does taste very nice (for a cheese cake anyway, they certainly aren't my favourite) I definitely think that whenever orange zest is asked for in recipes that I would always go for satsuma peel instead, it is far sweeter and so much tastier!

Though it certainly wasn't perfect, for instance the digestive biscuit base decided to stick to the base of the tin....not the cake! Still, you eat a cheesecake for the cheese cake bit not the "buttery biscuit base!" 

So there you have it, one pretty much successful cheesecake, proving that not only do you not have to be a very good baker but you also don't even need to put all the ingredients in to have a successful cake! 

Awww Jeeez(cake)

Today's gargantuan task was to make a New York Cheesecake and though I must admit that it was certainly not the most simple recipe I've ever made, it all seems to have gone rather well so far. But here's the catch, it isn't finished yet. Before I began the baking process I didn't realise this was a whole night job, it requires extensive cooling (both in the slowly cooling oven and in the fridge) for at least twelve hours. So I had to really hurry to try and make sure I had done something for today's eager baking fanatics too.

Unfortunately though today was just one of those days. I had intended to bake in the afternoon so that I wouldn't spoil my lunch by eating numerous cookies (I could spoil my dinner instead!) so wasted my morning doing other miscellaneous activities

- the sort that makes you think you are making good use of your time whilst doing it but then later look back on the day and realise that actually, you could have done infinitely more useful and exciting things -

when actually I should have been preparing for the epic task which was the afternoon's baking extravaganza. I had already arranged for a friend to join me in this particular endeavour mainly to make sure I wasn't quite as lonely as usual but also to take advantage of his wonderful four wheeled contraption (something I am sadly not qualified to operate). On the way he kindly picked up a Kilo of cream cheese (ironic that Philidelphia is used for a New York Cheesecake!) for the Cheesecake; something I'm sure he relished, after all, who doesn't want to be stared at by a judging till lady for eating such vast quantities of cheese.

But having forced the poor fellow to embarass himself because of my lack of preparation I also realised that I neither had enough eggs nor the correct baking tin for the job. So off we went in his (now I think about it) far from wonderful four wheeled contraption, held together by duct tape and with a wobble when the speed exceeds 50mph! To fetch said baking tin from my rather confused girlfriend and some eggs from our nearby shop.

After that it was merely a simple task of slowly adding everything into a food processor in the right order. Sounds easy right? Well not to someone as simple and unfocused as me! Somehow I managed to miss the flour out of the recipe (something I only noticed following 30 minutes of baking!) how could I be so stupid to miss out the flour from a cake!? I can't believe it!

Though whilst I make out that this is such a failure, in reality it may prove less so. There are only two tablespoons of flour in the whole recipe, so I'm hoping that the lack of it will barely make a difference. Only time will tell, tomorrow's blog post will hold the answer...

Because I couldn't disappoint my readers with such a cliffhanger I decided to make some Coconut and Cranberry Cookies as well. And they turned out rather well indeed! Smiles all around!

The Result:

Mmmm Not a cheesecake if you're wondering what went wrong!

Lame-ington Cakes

The last time I wrote a wonderful baking pun filled blog post was almost a week ago now and I feel I have the obligation to share with you the numerous wonders I've created in those days. Admittedly, the fact that I've been very busy means that I have missed out on a couple of day's worth of baking but I'm sure I will catch up in the very near future.

A few days ago my attempt at making English Breakfast muffins went about as well as you could possibly hope for something as uninspiring and boring sounding as breakfast muffins. What I was amazed by is that they are not - as I had assumed - made by baking them in the oven like any other kind of roll (or muffin for that matter). But are instead fried in pan once they have risen to about as much as they can. It does explain why they do sometimes come out with the griddle marks on them, but for some reason this just never clicked in my mind! They are very tasty and the best bit is I get to make myself eggs benedict, a treat I've always been too hungover to manage to get from a Wetherspoons on a weekend out!

The Result:

Mmmm.... Umm Plainy?

The next baking misadventure which crossed my path in the week was the weird and wonderful world of cookies and biscuits. Last time I tried making biscuits I ended up with the most beautiful gingernut biscuits I've ever had, and I mean PERFECT (See for yourself here), they looked shop bought and tasted far better than shop bought ones so it was a wonderful evening for all! Yet, here only a few days later I tried Chunky Apricot and Nut Cookies and the results were, let's say, not as successful.

On the one hand, they were very tasty and were well cooked and the rest of it. On the other hand they look like devil's spawn. I seriously do not understand just how cookie companies can get cookies to look the way they do so regularly, I mean just look at these abominations! They are misshapen, malformed, malposed misfits... even though they do taste rather marvelous. I would say it is luck but it clearly isn't if manufacturers are managing it just right every time, what on earth is their secret to the perfect art of cookie making!? Perhaps only relentless and daily baking will solve this problem... How fortunate for me!

The Second result:

Mmmmalformed

Which is brings us to this fine summers Sunday afternoon (which just so happens to be father's day) on which I suddenly realised that I ha barely baked at all for the last few days. Yes, I had traveled from here to there for a few days of drinking & debauchery and returned in time to squeeze into a suit for a wedding but there should always be time for baking and so I simply had to get cooking as soon as my increasingly unwilling body was ready to take another dose of sugar, eggs and butter. 

- It is with extreme sorrow that I say that my once willing body is now not only lacking the desire to eat such large quantities of baked goods but it is also scarily addicted to them. I literally cannot manage a day without a daily (and usually large!) dose of some form of unhealthy food. My once healthy body has become a chugging, lumbering, butter fueled behemoth. I'm not even halfway through this challenge God help me! -

So I decided to try out Lamington Cakes. These are essentially a form of sponge cake (though it is certainly not one I've ever encountered before!) which is made from furiously whisking a few eggs with sugar whilst gently heating them over hot water. When I say furious I mean that this whisking session was brutal. Not only was it a lengthy and painful whisking but it also barely made the product I was aiming for ("something pale a fluffy but which had some body to it"... No, I have no idea to make something fluffy and have body to it!).

Finally having almost permanently paralysed my right arm whisking I went straight to sieving the plain flour into it (another recipe misnomer; why not self raising?) which promptly made my "fluffy" egg and sugar mix sink into its original form. So basically, thoday hasn't gone well!

Yet, after half an hour or so in the oven it came out looking pretty solid (suspiciously so I would say...) so I wasn't too fussed. Dipping them in chocolate icing and then rolling them about in dessicated coconut was also a difficult process and certainly nowhere near as enjoyable as it sounds. Essentially I got chocolate icing everywhere; on my fingers, arms, face, trousers, elbow, hair, work surface, fridge. Yet I ended up with some rather pretty looking Lamington Cakes!

The Result:

Mmmm, Coconutty

They may have been way too hard in the middle (I can only attribute this to either my lack of arm muscles in the whisking process or -less likely - that it should have been self raising flour not plain for the recipe), they cerainly weren't the spongey morsel I'd hoped. However,the icing on the cake (pun intended of course) was the delicious layer of chocolate and coconut on the outside something which worked tremendously!

You smell like a monkey and you bake like one too!

What's worse than having to bake your own birthday cake? A birthday cake is, I suppose, the most basic form of birthday present you can get - other than a card perhaps - so it is a little bit (which here means 'very') sad to spend your time on your birthday baking your own cake. Yet I knew that this would end up happening when I set out to do this challenge so I can hardly grumble.
Today, just like any other day, has seen me occupying my time by baking; it also just so happens to be my birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!

- I suppose that baking your own birthday cake is pretty sad but wishing yourself happy birthday is really taking the biscuit... If only I'd sent myself a card just to trump myself on the sadness scale. -

Yet, in answer to the almost rhetorical question I opened this post with, I can tell you for definite what is worse than baking your own birthday cake... That is definitely breaking it in half during the cooking process.
Yep, that's right, the last few days' baking have been largely successful and often outstanding... But my birthday cake just had to go wrong or it just wouldn't be right. So I set out to make my Chocolate Mint Sponge Cake (Mint Chocolate is my favourite) with hopes rather high, it wasn't an overly complicated recipe, just a normal sponge cake with a few bits of Matchmakers chocolate scattered in the mix and to decorate.

However, I made two crucial and devastating mistakes. One: I used cake tins without the handy removable bottom (it's just so much easier to separate it from the tin) and Two: I probably didn't grease the tins as well as I should have. One plus Two makes three... three pieces to a two piece cake. I was distraught.

I literally whined like a baby when the cake split. I may have turned twenty today but believe me, the sound which escaped my lips would be about the same as if you stole a lollipop from a three year old girl. I almost didn't know what to do, frustration could have kicked in - which would almost definitely have resulted in no cake at all and a large pile of crumbs with a rolling pin sitting in the middle - but I remained calm.

The solution was simple, I just used the icing I was about to put in the middle of the cake to glue the parts back together and then decorated it as normal. Honestly I don't think you'd be able to guess if you hadn't heard your dogs barking and cats meowing because they could hear my ultra-sonic high pitch cry of despair... or read my post!

The Result: 

Mmmm Broken

Mmmm Disguisey...

This has gateaux work well...

Today is my dad's birthday. So today's cake had to be something pretty special in order to set it apart from all the cakes and biscuits I've been practically force feeding the family for the last few weeks. That therefore means it had to be something significantly more complicated and potentially disaster ridden. The pressure to make a perfect cake today was actually a very real and tangible, I could feel it hanging over me as I mixed the ingredients and waited the almost never ending 45 minutes whilst it slowly changed from that gloopy mix to that solid looking cake. This time though, there were so many different phases in which it could go wrong...

The first phase was making the filling. Essentially the filling was cream with white chocolate blasted into it. It needed to be heated up until almost boiling so there was the first potential disaster, it has been many a time when my version of "heated til boiling" turns into simply burning... Though this time, the first hurdle was crossed. The filling then had to go into the fridge for a frustratingly long time period (it suggested two hours, I went with an hour in the fridge and 15 mins in the freezer which worked fine!)

The second hurdle (once the cake itself was cooked) was the cutting of it. In a gateaux you cook one enormous cake and then slice it horizontally into three pieces (rather than cooking separate cakes and sandwiching them together) before spreading the middle with the desired filling. Naturally, this didn't go quite to plan... My idea of a third of a cake was obviously closer to something like a sixth... which meant I had the thinnest layer of cake between sauces I think any baker has ever done in the history of the universe. Yet, with utmost care this fragile morsel of cake remained solid throughout the boisterous spreading of a nearly frozen creamy filling - perhaps the freezer wasn't the best method of cooling after all - onto the slices and when sandwiched together it all worked out fine!

The final potential disaster was the making of the icing. It required not one chocolate bar, not two but three whole chocolate bars (and another half on top of that!) melted to make 350 grams of rich chocolatey heaven. Plus extra cream and butter just to ensure that there was enough fat to cover your "Guideline Daily Allowance" in one fell swoop. This part went well though I must say there was a significant amount too much icing (which I will reserve for my next cake tomorrow) and didn't solidify as quickly as I'd hoped - this naturally caused an untold amount of mess, I still have chocolate icing on my arm to prove it was homemade - yet in the end it worked well after a little cooling and made the end product shining with deliciousness.

The Result:

Mmmm Candle-ey

Mmmm, Layer-ey

So there you have it, a successful cake for a very happy birthday boy (well not quite a boy now in his 50s!). It tasted beautiful and to my surprise the dark chocolate icing didn't make it too bitter by any stretch of the mark, obviously the hundreds of grams of sugar in the middle of the cake balanced it out quite nicely! 

Tomorrow I shall be making another for another special birthday boy...