Clandestine Cake Club - Bury St Edmunds - 13th September 2014

This month's event was held at location we had visited last year, The Cadogan Arms in Ingham, just outside Bury St Edmunds. As before they were very welcoming and helpful and it proved once again to be a great venue for us.

The theme this month was "Anything Goes" which was as simple as it sounds - members were free to bring any cake they liked. We had a lovely selection of cakes to choose from although by chance most of us had chosen cakes with some sort of cream cheese icing. Nevertheless they were all delicious, even though several of us had experienced some sort of technical hitch in the process of making them!

Here's what we had to choose from...

Trish's Carrot Cake

Amelia's Chocolate Guiness Cake

My Cocoa Courgette Cake

Rene's Lemon Cake

Hannah's Red Velvet Cake

Ian's Chocolate Fudge Cake

Charlotte's Courgette & Lime Cake

Thanks again to The Cadogan for letting us hold our meeting there. For more information about the Clandestine Cake Club and details of our next event have a look at the website here.

A 3rd Birthday Cake & Cupcakes

Although I said in my last post that I'm a bit sick of cake, that doesn't mean I'm not still making them.  For other people anyway.  Before Christmas I agreed to make a birthday cake for a work colleague of MrHaPoC. I was initially reluctant as while I love making cakes and even stretch to a little decorating for my own children's birthdays, making cakes for other people is a whole different ballgame. The pressure to get it right is multiplied as the thought of messing it up and letting someone down is not a nice thought!

However, after making it clear that I'm by no means a professional cake maker and deciding on a cake design similar to one I'd done before I agreed to take on the task and I thought I'd share a few pictures of the results! Apologies for the less than brilliant picture quality - at the time I was too wrapped up in making the cakes and delivering them to their destination in one piece to consider digging out my dslr.

The main cake is just a basic vanilla sponge (recipe from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess) filled with jam and covered with a vanilla buttercream. After applying the decorated topper, I then used some pink icing and my trusty Tala icing syringe to pipe some stars around the top and the bottom.

I can highly recommend the printed toppers as a great way of adding decoration to a cake without too much trouble.  You can find them on ebay and there are a huge variety of pictures and styles to choose from. As above, you can often get them personalised with names and ages too. They are either made from rice paper or very thin, solid, icing but I find the icing variety look a bit better.

I had also agreed to provide a dozen iced cupcakes. Luckily these didn't cause me too much stress - the cakes all rose nicely and didn't come away from the papers as has happened to me in the past. I haven't quite mastered the perfect icing swirl but I was still fairly happy with the result and once the final decorations had been applied (see below) I think they look pretty good.

Aswell as the topper for the large cake the lady who placed the order had also supplied me with some decorations for the cupcakes, again available in lots of different varieties on ebay. The princesses and the butterflies both come printed on sheets of rice paper which means you need to set aside a bit of time to carefully cut them out. I was pleased with how they turned out though.

I think when everything was put together it looked pretty effective and mostly importantly the recipient was happy!

Apple Amber

Does anyone else feel like they're done with summer? As soon as we got back from our holiday and hit back-to-school mode my thoughts turned to Autumn and beyond and I've spent much of the last week or two looking at winter clothes, planning a trip in December and even, I confess, thinking about Christmas. The arrival of a big pile of logs for the fire and the increasingly dark evenings aren't helping either.

I'm thinking more and more about autumn food aswell. After taking an unexplained sabbatical last year our two apple trees are now producing a bumper crop. I love cooking with apples (although peeling  and coring them is one of my least favourite kitchen tasks) and I'm looking forward to plenty of apple cakes, crumbles and pies.

This recipe is one I've been meaning to make for years but never quite got around to, partly because the recipe includes a few tablespoons of cake crumbs and I rarely have these to hand. This time, however, an unsuccessful batch of cupcakes that got consigned to the freezer provided the missing ingredient and I had everything I needed.

The recipe is very simple, but delicious, and fills the kitchen with that lovely apple/cinnamon smell that will have you thinking about scuffing through autumn leaves and turning the clocks back before you can say "Bonfire Night".

Apple Amber
(adapted from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery)

450g/1 lb cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 tbsp water (I found I needed a couple more tablespoons to stop the apple getting too dry)
25g/1 oz butter
50g/2 oz caster sugar
3 tbsp stale cake crumbs (plain cake is best)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 egg yolks

For the meringue topping
2 egg whites
100g/4oz caster sugar

1) Put the apples, water and butter into a saucepan and cook until soft and pulpy, then beat until smooth.

2) Add the sugar, cake crumbs, cinnamon and egg yolks and beat well. Transfer to a 900ml/1 1/2 pint ovenproof dish.

3) To make the meringue, beat the egg whites in a large bowl until stiff and peaky. Add half the caster sugar and beat until the meringue is shiny and stands in firm peaks. Add the remaining caster sugar and beat until the meringue is very stiff and silky-looking and the texture is fairly close. Cover the apple mixture with the meringue.

4) Bake at 150c/300f/gas mark 2 for 30 minutes or until the meringue is light gold.  Serve with fresh double cream.

Serves 4

Fairy Cakes

Why don't I make fairy cakes more often? And I don't mean enormous cupcakes, or anything involving a piping bag. Just dinky little fairy cakes with a bit of glace icing on the top and scattered with sweets or sprinkles. They are so easy and quick to make and taste fabulous, yet somehow I only end up making them for birthdays and children's parties.

I decided to rectify that today though by making a huge batch to take to work tomorrow. This was inspired in part by the cupcake party my daughter recently had for her birthday (run by The Suffolk Cupcake Company, who did a fab job) as the lovely lady hosting it left me all the unfinished tubs of sprinkles and I've been waiting for an excuse to use them.

Here's the recipe I used...

Fairy Cakes

2 eggs

4 oz self-raising flour

4 oz sugar

4 oz butter or margarine

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

2 tbsps milk

1) Preheat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4. Line a bun tin with cake cases (I use the smaller fairy cake cases for this recipe)

2) Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3) Add the eggs and beat in thoroughly. Don't worry if it curdles a little.

4) Add the flour, vanilla and milk until you have a mixture with a soft, dropping consistency.

5) Spoon into cases and bake for 12-15 minutes until the cakes spring bake when lightly pressed.

Makes about 18 cakes.

For the icing you just need to follow the instructions on the back of the icing sugar packet. Don't hold back on the quantities though - the more the better in my opinion. Then add any colour you like and use any decorations that take your fancy.

Go forth and bake!

Somerset Apple Cake

Mmmm....it's been so long since I last made this cake I had forgotten how great it is. We have apples coming out of our ears at the moment thanks to the two lovely apple trees we have in the garden and this recipe is the perfect way to use a few up. What really makes this cake a bit special is the orange zest - every time I lift the lid on the cake stand I'm greeted with a wonderful waft of citrus and the orangey flavour complements the big chunks of apple so well.

Somerset Apple Cake

(adapted from The Complete Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook produced in association with Yorkshire TV)

3oz/80g butter

6oz/175g caster sugar

Rind of 1 orange, grated

8oz/225g self-raising flour

1lb/450g Bramley Apples, peeled, cored and cubed

2 eggs, beaten

2 tbsp milk

Approx 1 tbsp granulated or demerara sugar

1) Grease and flour a 23cm/9inch cake tin. Preheat the oven to 180c/350f/gas mark 4

2) Cream the butter, sugar and orange zest until pale in colour. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with the apples in a bowl.

3) Add the eggs and milk to the butter and sugar and beat in. Add the remaining flour and apples to the mixture and blend together well. Turn into the tin, sprinkle with the granulated/demerara sugar and bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes.

Whoopie Pies - Classic Chocolate & Buttercream

So then, Whoopie Pies. Apparently these are the new Cupcake. At least they were a few months ago anyway - I may be a little late jumping on this bandwagon. Maybe it's passed me by completely. Who knows! Late or otherwise I finally got around to making some after purchasing a book entirely devoted to Whoopie Pies a few weeks ago. The book, Whoopie Pies by Sarah Billingsley and Amy Treadwell is a very attractive, enticing little book full of pie and filling recipes to mix and match and play around with.

For the uninitiated, Whoopie Pies, or Gobs, originated in the US and are little cakey creations filled with a generous amount of marshmallow or buttercream. Wikipedia and other sources tell me that name arose when Amish women baked these for the local farmers' lunchboxes. On discovering them the farmers would shout "Whoopie"!

I decided to start with the basics by trying out the Classic Chococlate Whoopie recipe filled with a vanilla buttercream. I was hoping to try out the traditional marshmallow filling but this calls for a jar of Marshmallow Fluff which is apparently easy find in the US but much harder to track down over here.

I'm kind of in two minds about the finished product. I think I was expecting something lighter, maybe more biscuity, but they actually turned out to be quite dense, heavy and cakey. The buttercream was also very sweet, although the cocoa in the cakes provided a bit of a counterbalance. At the end of the day though I did like them and they seemed to go down pretty well when I took some into work. One thing's for sure, I'll definitely be making them again and trying out some different flavours and combinations.

Note - As this in an American book the ingredients are all measured in cups or, in the case of butter, sticks or tablespoons. I have therefore added my conversions to metric and imperial for those of you who don't have any measuring cups.

Classic Chocolate Whoopie

(adapted from Whoopie Pies by Sarah Billingsley and Amy Treadwell)

1 2/3 cup/230g/8 1/2oz cups all-purpose (plain) flour

2/3 cup/90g/3 1/4oz unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons/50g/2oz unsalted butter, at room temperature

4 tablespoons/50g/2oz vegetable shortening

1 cup (packed)/170g/6oz dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup milk

1) Preheat the oven to 375f/190c/gas 5. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

2) Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into a bowl. In a large bowl beat the butter, shortening and brown sugar on a low speed until just combined. Increase the speed to medium and beat until fluffy and smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and beat for another two minutes.

3) Add half the flour mixture and half the milk to the batter and beat on low until just incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining flour and milk and beat until completely combined.

4) Using a spoon, drop about 1 tablespoon of batter onto one of the prepared baking sheets and repeat, spacing them at least 2 inches apart.

5) Bake one sheet at a time in the centre of the oven for about 10 minutes each, or until the pies spring back when pressed gently. Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool on the sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.

Makes about 48 two-inch cakes.

Classic Buttercream

3 cups/420g/15oz confectioners (icing) sugar

1/2 cup/1 stick/110g/4oz unsalted butter, at room temperature

3 to 4 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1) Beat the sugar and butter together until the mixture is crumbly, about 1 minute.

2) Add the cream, vanilla and salt and beat on high speed until smooth, about 3 minutes.

3) Pipe or spoon the buttercream onto the pies and sandwich them together.

The Science of Cake

Apart from the obvious joy of eating, I've always put my love of cooking down to two things - my fascination with science and my interest in art. Food, of course, is a magical combination of the two. You need the science to combine flavours, help yeast do it's thing or make your cake rise. But then the end result is often as much of a joy to the eye as to the stomach (have a look at the picture at the top of the article - a thing of beauty, no?).

Cake is the ultimate example of this combination. I've always been fascinated by the wonderful process by which your tin of golden goo is miraculously transformed into a light springy sponge (ok, well most of the time anyway)...so I was particularly interested when I came across the article below on The Guardian's Science Blog. This isn't the usual sort of thing I post on my blog but I thought it was worth sharing. It's a fascinating insight into what goes on behind your oven door. I defy you to read it and not want to bake something immediately...

The Science of Cake

Happy Birthday Dear Blog

Amazingly, yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my little blog - goodness knows where the time has gone!

And what better way to celebrate than with a cake or two.

After much deliberating I finally purchased The Hummingbird Bakery cookbook recently (it was only £5 from the Book People mind - it would have been rude not to). I loved their Portobello Road shop when I visited it last year, however their book has had mixed reviews, due to a number of people experiencing recipe failures. Nevertheless I thought I'd give it a chance (incidently, if you do have the book it's worth checking out their Baking Tips page, which includes corrections to a couple of the recipes).

My first selection, Hazelnut and Chocolate cupcakes, turned out very nicely - very rich and chocolatey, just as I'd hoped. I have to say the method for making the cakes was quite unusual - mixing the butter with all of the dry ingredients before adding the egg and milk - but they turned out fine. My only real criticism is that the recipe stated that it would make 12 cupcakes. 12??? Not a chance! I just about stretched it to 8 but really should have kept to 6 as a couple of the cakes weren't big enough. As I had fewer cakes I also scaled back the frosting quantities by two thirds and this gave me just the right amount. You end up with very thickly iced cakes but that's how you'll find them at the HB Bakery.

Here's to the next year!

Hazelnut and Chocolate Cupcakes

(adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)

100g/3 1/2 oz plain flour

20g/3/4 oz cocoa powder

140g/5 1/4 oz caster sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

a pinch of salt

40g/1 1/2 oz butter, at room temperature

120ml whole milk

1 egg

120g hazelnut and chocolate spread (such as Nutella)

Frosting

250g/9 oz icing sugar

80g/3 oz unsalted butter at room temperature

25ml whole milk

80g/3 oz hazelnut and chocolate spread

1) Preheat the oven to 170c/325f/gas mark 3

2) Put the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl/free-standing mixer and beat on a slow speed until you get a sandy consistency and everything is combined.

3) Slowly pour the milk into the flour mixture, beating well until all the ingredients are well mixed. Add the egg and beat well.

4) Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases until two-thirds full and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until the sponge bounces back when touched. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning out onto a wire rack.

5) When the cupcakes are cold, hollow out a small section in the centre of each one and fill with a dollop of hazelnut and chocolate spread.

For the Frosting

1) Beat the icing sugar and butter together until the mixture comes together and is well mixed.

2) Continue to beat the mixture slowly and gradually pour in the milk. When it's all incorporated increase the speed of the mixer and continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes.

3) Stir in the Hazelnut and Chocolate spread by hand until evenly mixed into the frosting. When the cupcakes are cold, spread the frosting on top.

Makes 12 (allegedly!)

Snow-Flecked Brownies

The subject of this month's Sweet and Simple Bakes challenge is the much-loved chocolate brownie and the recipe we have used is Nigella Lawson's Snow-Flecked Brownies, as seen in Feast.

The chocolate brownie must be one of my top five all-time favourite cakes. It's a classic and surely epitomises everything the perfect cake should be - simple but indulgent, a rich combination of cakeiness and fudginess that is as at home on a dinner party table as it is served up for afternoon tea.

I've come across a number of brownie recipes in my time, some of which are merely slightly embellished chocolate cake recipes. Don't be fooled - a brownie recipe should contain substantially more eggs and chocolate (dark, 70% of course) than your average cake otherwise you are not going to get that dark squidgy centre.

So does this recipe beat my previous favourite? Nigel Slater's brownie recipe, from his Kitchen Diaries, has been my first choice for some time now and I have to say it stills just wins the day by a small margin. The recipes aren't dissimilar however Nigel cuts back on the proportion of eggs and flour and adds a bit of cocoa so you end up with a more chocolatey brownie. Don't get me wrong though, these brownies more than satisfied my need for something indulgent and I do like the aesthetically pleasing addition of icing sugar, especially at this time of year, when anything even faintly festive rings my bell.

The recipe can be found here. You should note that this makes a LOT of brownies. I halved the quantity and ended up with 14 perfectly sized squares. Oh, and if you want your pieces of white chocolate to maintain their shape and not melt into slushy streaks then you might want to leave the mix to cool a while before mixing it in.

Thanks go to Maria and Rosie for hosting the Sweet and Simple Bakes website and choosing another great recipe for us.

Sweet and Simple Bakes - St Clement's Drizzle Cake

This month's Sweet and Simple Bake is the St Clement's Drizzle Cake - a twist on the classic lemon syrup cake thanks to the addition of orange zest and juice. This was very simple to make, as most loaf cakes tend to be, and as lovely on it's own for afternoon tea as it is teamed up with some vanilla ice cream for an indulgent pudding. The cake itself turned out to be wonderfully light and the orange/lemon syrup topping added loads of citrussy (is that how you spell it?) flavour. The next time I make this (and there will be a next time) I think I'll put more holes in the cake so the syrup soaks in even more.

Many thanks to Rosie and Maria for hosting the Sweet and Simple Bakes website and for choosing this great recipe for us.

The recipe can be found here.

Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake

This month I've decided to switch my monthly baking challenge allegiance over to Sweet and Simple Bakes as the recipe on offer this month looked too good to pass up. It's not a recipe I've come across previously but just the name was enough to tell me I was going to like it.

The chosen recipe this month was for Chocolate Orange Drizzle Loaf Cake and I think the name tells you all you need to know! And what a great recipe this is. The addition of orange zest and the orange syrup to what is basically a plain sponge recipe adds an enormous amount of flavour and, as you would expect, the chocolate is a perfect partner for the orange.

Chocolate Orange Drizzle Loaf Cake

For the cake

175g/6oz softened butter

175g/6oz caster sugar

3 large eggs at room temperature

Finely grated zest of two oranges

175g/6oz self raising flour

2 tbsp milk

For the orange syrup

Juice of 1 orange

100g/4oz granulated sugar (although I just used caster sugar again)

For the topping

50g/2oz dark or milk chocolate (I used dark and was glad I did)

Sprinkles of your choice (optional)

1) Preheat the oven to 180c/350f/gas 4

2) Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat in until fully incorporated. Add the orange zest, flour and milk and fold in gently with a spatula or metal spoon.

3) Pour the mixture into a greased/lined 900g/2lb loaf tin and bake for 35-45 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. When cool make little holes in the cake for pouring the syrup into.

4) Make the syrup by putting the orange juice and syrup into a pan and heating gently until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil for a couple of minutes. Pour the syrup over the top of the cake. The leave the cake to cool completely before removing it from the tin.

5) Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. When melted spread it over the top of the cake. Smooth with a spatula or make patterns with the prongs of a fork. Add sprinkles if required. Leave the chocolate to cool before cutting the cake.

Birthday Cake

Yesterday we had a party for my daughter's 5th birthday and, of course, if there's party then there has to be a cake!  We came to the conclusion that a butterfly cake would be a good option (pink and pretty = happy Emma, not too difficult to make = happy Mummy!).

The basic shape is just a two layer sponge cake (filled with jam) which is cut in half down the middle, turned around and stuck back together to make the wings.  I then covered it with plain butter icing and piped on the decoration with pink butter icing using my trusty Tala icing syringe.  At first I just could not figure out how to recreate the shell pattern I was trying to copy from the picture I had but thankfully my Mum (cake maker extraodinaire) was on hand (via the telephone) to provide me with a bit of a masterclass and I was soon on my way.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned (and so was E which was the main thing) and it tasted good too.  I really recommend using a good raspberry jam when filling a layer cake as the slightly sharper flavour really balances out the sugary icing.

P.S. Please excuse the less-than-great photos.  The light in my kitchen was terrible and I couldn't fit the whole cake into my light box!

Some more pretty cakes

My cupcake experiment continues!

This time, though, I thought I'd try mini cupcakes and use my icing syringe for the piping.  And instead of using double the weight of icing sugar to butter I've used a recipe that uses four times as much sugar compared to butter (plus a splash of milk).  The end result is much stiffer (possibly a little to stiff?) than the one I used previously and is a lot easier to work with.  Not surprisingly though this does make a VERY sweet buttercream.

I also used a slight different recipe for the cake this time - the standard 2 eggs and 4oz of everything else PLUS an extra teaspoon of baking powder.  They came out very well but I still think the 4, 5, 6 recipe (see here for a previous discussion on this subject) is the best if you want a really light sponge.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out but I'd still like improve consistency of my piping skills - it's so hard to make them all look the same!

A cake experiment

While I was visiting family recently I decided, along with my sister, to try a bit of a taste experiment.  Most recipe books give the standard sponge cake recipe of 2 eggs plus 4 oz each of butter, sugar and SR flour.  However, there is an alternative recipe that my mum always uses which calls for 2 eggs plus 4 oz butter, 5 oz sugar and 6 oz SR flour (I'll leave you to work out the metric equivalents if you really want to - I'm afraid I'm an imperial girl at heart).  This recipe comes from a little book that came with my mum's Kenwood Mixer of all places (which dates back to 197something) although I'm sure it has been published elsewhere since then.   Anyway, as we had plenty of willing testers we thought we make a batch of each and compare the results.  Both batches were mixed up with about 1/2 tsp of vanilla and a splash of milk and then baked in muffin cases at 180C for 12-15 minutes.

On taking them out of the oven there was an obvious difference between the two batches - the 4,5,6 batch looked more well-risen than the 4,4,4's, which looked a little flat.

Flavour-wise they were pretty similar.  (Actually, to be honest, the 4,4,4 batch had a bit more flavour but I think that may have been down to me being a little too heavy-handed with the vanilla).  When it came to texture however, the 4,5,6 batch was definitely better as they were much lighter and fluffier.  As a result, we proclaimed the 4,5,6 batch to be the winner.

While we were in cake making mode we tried our hands at a bit of fancy icing.  Upmarket cupcakes seem to be all the rage at the moment with cake stalls at farmers markets and websites popping up all over the places.  I've often thought "How hard can it be?" and that I must give it a go myself (hence the recent purchase of a new piping bag!).  As it turns out, the answer to the above question is "Quite Hard!".  The pictures I've posted don't actually look too bad but the icing was quite hard to work with.  Further research has suggested that I need to use a greater proportion of icing sugar - I will experiment on and report back (it's tough job but someone's got to do it!).

My handywork

My sis's