Thursday, 27 June 2013

Victoria Sponge Cake



Classic and original has, I think, only one true representative in the world of cakes. Victoria Sponge Cake. It is possibly the most popular named cake in England and is made by beginners, enthusiasts and professionals all over the country. Whether you're a Brit yourself, or you settle further afield, this recipe can lead to you 100% success every time if you just follow the simple method and ingredients. Get baking, and as your beautiful sandwiches rise gloriously under the glaring heat of the oven, sit back and dream of the spongey layers sandwiched together with jewelled raspberry or strawberry jam along with a generous spread of seriously sweet and buttery butter icing. What could go all that wrong? 
Recipe: (cakes)
6oz butter
6oz caster sugar 
6oz self raising flour 
3 eggs
1tsp baking powder (heaped) 

Recipe: (filling)
2oz butter
5tbsp icing sugar 
3tbsp strawberry/raspberry jam 


Method:
All in one, of course. Simply put all of your ingredients in a large mixing bowl before using an electric whisk to combine them all into a thick, smooth cake batter. If you feel that your batter is slightly too thick then feel free to add a tbsp of milk to loosen it up a bit.
Divide your mixture evenly into two equally sized cake tins and bake for 20mins or until they start to come away from the sides. Your cakes should feel springy to the touch. 
Once the cakes are cooled, mix together 2oz of butter and 5tbsp of icing sugar before lathering onto one of the sandwiches. 
Spread the ruby jam over the other sandwich and stick the two together forming a brilliant marriage of two elegant yet simple layers of spongey, airy cake. Dust with icing sugar and serve for afternoon tea, dessert, or just a cheeky snack for midday when all else seems lost.

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Afternoon Tea


Before playing host to this majestic sounding event with my Mam, I couldn't help myself imagining the occasion being very elegant and swell. I envisioned china plates piled high with golden, airy scones and silver mouthfuls of sweet, rich goodness. I saw the foods as precious gems and the tea and coffee as liquid gold. Everything was fit for the queen in my pre-hosting head. I was ready to throw a ball. As me and my mam formed a list of foods and bakes we would serve, ideas danced across my forehead and with every pulse of excited blood that flowed through my body, a pulse of royalty would be sent with it.
Now after a full morning of being in my element, or in other words, in the kitchen, it was finally time for guests to be arriving at the house for tea, cakes and all manner of bakes. As the afternoon grew, I realised that my imagination of physicality wasn't quite as I had hoped and dreamed; the tea and coffee were as brown and steaming as ever, the scones were a pale brown and all the little treats were decorated in their own expected appearance. However, I was not completely wrong. The appearance of the bakes were, admittedly, not gold and silver and outstanding in their richness, but their tastes were. You would pick up what you thought to be a scone, and swallow a mouthful of gold. You would take a sip of the deeply brown stained liquid, and only the finest liquid gold slid down your throat, warming your insides like a light from within you. So I was not disappointed, if anything I was thrilled to have served up only some of the finest ingredients to my beautiful family and friends. Chocolate cake, Victoria sponge cake, millionaire shortbread, chocolate buns...need I say more?

Tuesday, 18 June 2013

The simplicity of a scone


As I sat in blue boredom, wondering what I could possibly do to get myself through a few hours of nothingness, I was hit with the completely and utterly obvious idea of whipping up a glorious batch of something...but what? What could I make that would be easy, quick and enjoyable? Cakes...possibly. But no. I always make cakes. Pastry...possibly. But no. That's too much trouble and effort to go through. What could I make that is different to what I usually do? I needed to drag myself away from the standard, decorative, typically impressive bakes. I needed something rustic, something English. I needed scones!
Beautiful, risen buns of treasure encased in a shell of gold. Light and airy on the inside, gold and crunchy on the outside. Possible to be made, baked and ready for serving within a matter of only 40 minutes, if that.
Scones originate well back into British history and made it through times of scarce ingredients and equipment. It is this that proves their quick and easy nature of which delivers beautifully rich results. Scones are rich from poor, gold from wood, wine from water. The ingredients of this particular scone that I have made are easily found in the cupboards and fridges of most kitchens, but if not, they are widely available all over the world in supermarkets and shops. Not only are ingredients easy to find, but the simplicity of a scone also comes from its amazingly quick and easy recipe. Take a look at the recipe I used and try it out for yourself:
Ingredients
225g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
25g caster sugar
50g unsalted butter
140ml milk
1 egg beaten (for glazing)

Method
The first step on your way to serving up buns in batches of gold is to turn on the oven to 220 degrees.
Then, in a large mixing bowl, sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and combine. Then add the sugar and butter and quickly rub into the flour mixture using your finger tips and thumb. Once all of the butter is rubbed into the flour it should look like an extremely fine bread crumb consistency.
Using your hands, make a dip (a well) in the middle of the "bread crumb" mixture and slowly add the milk while incorporating the flour into the well to form a soft dough.
Leave the dough to rest for 5 minutes before rolling out quite thick (depending on your desired size) and cut into circles using a cutter of your size choice. When sending the cutter through the dough, send it straight through at once, don't twist or shuffle the cutter, the cut should be clean.
Bake in the oven for 9 minutes or until golden brown on top and sounding hollow when tapped.
Leave to cool slightly and dust with icing sugar for a snowy, fairy-like effect upon the rich treats. Serve warm or cold with whatever you may desire. Me? I keep it English with jam and cream, there's no better way.

Sunday, 16 June 2013

Starbucks Inspired: Mocha Cookie Crumble Cake

As far as baking is concerned, it can often be risky relying on sheer imagination, creativity and motivation...there can be something missing...something from deep within. Inspiration. The success of a baked product is fuelled by inspiration. Without that hint of something special your cakes won't rise to the occasion, they'll fall flat and go stale. So go out and be inspired, look around you, look at the world and everything within it. Explore!
My spark for this cake from a very simple occurrence. A coffee shop, a cup and an icy lava flow of cream and coffee. It could only be one thing. Starbucks Frappuccino; Mocha Cookie Crumble. The bitter, smoky coffee, the milky, creamy chocolate and the crumbly, crunchy cookie were all it took for my mind clogs to turn and make my creative juices flow. I was to make a Mocha Cookie Crumble Cake! It would have a chocolate coffee sponge cake filled and topped with a coffee hinted, sweet cream with cookie crumbles running all the way through it.
Now, after receiving a cook book for my birthday, full of Mary Berry's (my one and only true role model) beautiful cakes and bakes, I came across a recipe for a Cappuccino Cake. This would be the main recipe for my cake of which I would adapt and work around to turn it into my own creation. I feel a hint of guilt for feeling the need to change one of Mary Berry's recipes, but at the same time I feel that if you're going to experiment, do it using a recipe base by someone who you can truly trust to give you outstanding results. If this was to be a success, I wanted it to be down to Mary. Who could you trust more?
This cake is one of the easiest show stoppers you could come across. A simple recipe and simple, easy to find ingredients hide behind it's show stopping name. She appears to be a rich, sophisticated creature, when in fact she's always been good at drama. She's perfect for an afternoon tea event, a celebration party, a sophisticated dessert, a midday snack...her versatility goes on and on. You could look at her and almost see her say 'Try me'. She's up for anything. See what she's made of using this recipe and method:
Recipe (for the cake)
50g cocoa powder
2tbsp granulated instant coffee
6tbsp boiling water
3 eggs
60ml milk
100g unsalted butter
275g caster sugar
175g self-raising flour
6 Oreo cookies (with the cream removed from the inside but kept)
1tsp baking powder


Recipe (for the cream)
300ml double cream
1tsp granulated instant coffee
2tsp hot water
4tbsp icing sugar
Dusting of cocoa powder
4 Oreo cookies (with the cream removed from the inside but kept)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease and line two 20cm round cake tins using butter and non stick baking paper.
Begin making the cake mixture by dissolving the cocoa powder and coffee in the boiling water to make a paste consistency. Simply add all of the other ingredients other than the flour and Oreos. Using an electric mixer combine the ingredients to make a very wet batter. Don't panic!
In another bowl add the flour and crushed Oreos with the cream filling removed. Make sure the Oreos are crushed so that there are still some large bits among the smaller bits and fine sand-like bits. Using a wooden spoon stir these until every bit of Oreo is covered in flour. This helps them stay suspended in the mixture and prevents them from falling to the bottom of the cake when baking.
Add the flour and Oreos to the mixture and fold in. It may be easier for you to add the flour in thirds so that you can fold it in much more easily. Once all of the flour is fully combined and the Oreo pieces are evenly distributed spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tins and bake for 20-25minutes or until fully cooked and coming away from the side of the tins.
Leave the cakes to cool out of their tins on a cooing rack while you make the cream filling and topping. Simply whip the double cream using and electric mixer until it just holds it's shape before quickly whipping in the coffee dissolved in the hot water. Then fold in the icing sugar until fully combined.
Once the cakes are cooled, spoon one third of the cream mixture onto the cake that is to be your bottom half of the sandwich-like structure and spread almost to the edges using a pallet knife. You should have kept the cream filling of the Oreos that you used earlier and the Oreos that will be used to decorate the top of the cake. Use these to create a layer on top of the cream before placing the second cake on top. Spoon the remainder of the cream on top of the cake and use the pallet knife to spread out evenly. Lightly dust with icing sugar and then pile some larger pieces of cookie crumble in the middle before dropping the occasional large piece around further towards the edge and sprinkling some of the fine Oreo dustings over the cream (idea given by Ciaran Day). And with that, you are finished. One Mocha Cookie Crumble Cake ready to be enjoyed by anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Eat up!



Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Elmo Cake


During the summer term of last year I was asked by a close family friend to create a birthday cake for her turning-two year old son. After changing his mind of what cake he wanted from a monster cake to a space cake to an animal cake, he finally decided that he wanted an Elmo cake. You're probably thinking what on earth caused a 2 year old boy to want an Elmo birthday cake, am I right? Well, near to where I live there are two stores, one in the Metro Centre and one in Eldon Square, called Johnny's Cupcakes. They are small stores situated all over the country that make and sell wonderful cupcake creations as well as giant cupcakes too. Now, my family friend's little boy was passing one of these stores when a giant cupcake in the form if Elmo's head caught his attention and so his Mam said that he could have that for his birthday cake. Obviously looking for the cheaper option, I was asked to make the exact same cake...well...as well as I could.
Luckily, for my previous birthday I had been given a giant cupcake mould from my best friend as a present and saw the situation as a great opportunity to use the mould. To make the giant cupcake itself I simply whipped up a normal cake mixture but doubled the ingredients as the moulds were much bigger than normal cake tins. However, the cake itself was the least of my worries, it was decoration that really got butterflies fluttering in my stomach and brain cells dancing frantically at the prospect of creating such a masterpiece with such little practice of experience. I can remember having a lot of trouble with the actual baking of the cake mixture because the moulds were so big meaning there was a lot of mixture, making baking time much longer than I expected it to be. Finally I managed to bake the cake the whole way through and cool it ready to decorate. Before I could do anything else though, I had to cut out Elmo's mouth, however murderous that might sound. I used a knife to cut away at the cake to make a hole in the shape of his mouth, in which I went on to line with black sugar paste to exaggerate the dark hole.
I have no idea how much buttercream I must have made that afternoon but I remember it being rather a lot. To create the 'fur' if you like I piped hundreds of buttercream stars, using a large star shaped nozzle, all over the top of the cake, then for the bottom half I simply used a pallet knife to spread the buttercream around the base. It was then time to make and stick on the eyes of Elmo. To do this I simply rolled two balls of white sugar paste and stuck two small black circles on the front of them to act as the pupils. I then stuck two cocktail sticks in the cake where I was to put the eyes, before then sliding on the eyes onto the end of the sticks. The sticks and the buttercream did a tremendous job of holding the eyes in place and disallowed any disasters of eyes loss or damage.
At this the Elmo cake was practically finished and I was ready to reveal my masterpiece. I somehow did all of this on a Friday night after school in the space of about 4 hours. After a hard school week and welcoming bed upstairs I was extremely relieved to finished after the tears, stress and complications. But I did it, and I won. As much as I love baking and the kitchen, it doesn't half put up a fight when it wants to. Victorious.
Happy belated birthday Joe, though I'm sure I wished it at the time!