Marble Loaf Cake - The Weekly Bake Off

Last weeks bake was Mary's marble loaf cake. I haven't taken part in the weekly bake off for a while mainly due to moving and losing my baking mojo.

However when the football came on the TV on Sunday I decided to spend my time baking instead.

Anyway back to the cake. A fairly easy one to make the mixture is one of those where you just slap bang all the ingredients in the bowl together and whisk it up. Mary Berry's cake in the picture is very elegant and has a particular pattern to it, however she doesn't seem to want to share how to make this pattern.

Once in the oven you're told it will take 50-60 mins and mine pushed the top end of that. My cake tin I fear was a little too small as it rose quite a lot (I had to move a shelf half way through baking) and struggled to get it out when it was finished.

I didn't heat my butter in a pan to melt it as it had been sat in a hot kitchen all day and was very soft so I just gave it a bit of a whisk with a fork and blended the cocoa icing sugar and milk with the fork still in the bowl.

I popped my cake in the fridge for a while and then melted some white chocolate. I used more than recommended as 25g seemed a little stingy and I went for pretty much most of the large bar.

So here is my bake!

Bakewell Slices

I was surprised at how easy this is to make. And subsequently I made them again a week later.

Here are my Bakewells...

They are so good that I have even been eating them for breakfast. I took them to work along with some lemon drizzle cake and chocolate brownies for my last day, and a bit of thank you, and they didn't last until 12pm. It was really nice to take my baking in to work for people to try out as lots of people gave me so many compliments! Real boost of confidence. One person suggested that I stuff the new job and become a professional baker... I don't think I'm quite there yet!

You can find this recipe in Mary Berrys 100 cakes and bakes.

Happy Birthday Mum

It's my mums birthday today and one of her requests for her special birthday was a cake. She doesn't ask for much my mum, so I thought this would be a really good opportunity to spoil her.

I had seen this cake on another bloggers page, Jo Wheatley,  she is also the winner of the Great British Bake Off so you know it's going to be a good cake. This cake grabs you as soon as you set your eyes on it, and as soon as I saw it I knew that was the cake I was going to make for my mum.

There were a few alterations to my own cake mainly in regards to the decoration. My collar was slightly taller, but in the end I preferred this as it looked a little more Art Nouveau and the '50' on Jo's cake was replaced by a '60' for my mums cake.

You can find the original post and recipe here.

Looks impressive right? Looks incredibly hard and complicated to make yes? Well maybe.. but if I can do so can anyone! It just takes a lot of patience and good timing.

So here's how my construction of this epic cake went.

This cake requires four 7 inch sponge layers. I only have two 7 inch sandwich tins, so patience comes in to play already whilst I wait for the first pair to bake and then put the second pair in to the oven. (Lots of tea was consumed in the making of this cake).

I measured out the strawberries on one of the cakes to make sure I had enough to fit around the top before I diced the rest of them for the strawberry cream and strawberry layers.

Then once the cakes were cooled I made the cream and sandwiched them altogether.

Cream-a-licious!

I thought that the cake might actually collapse as I transported it to the fridge but it was, despite it's weight, rather sturdy.

So whilst the cake was chilling in the fridge I set out to make that chocolate collar, the bit I was dreading the most. I melted the chocolate in a pan (for some reason I can't do the chocolate over a pan of boiling water so I just stick it in a pan over a low heat and let it melt, it always works out okay) then attempted to put it in my icing tube... melted chocolate is a lot thinner than icing and so it started squirting out all over the place, managing eventually to get it under control, and covering myself in chocolate I started to drip it over my pre-placed baking parchment. Because of the weight in the bottom of the tubing if you hold it at the top and gently rock it, it moves in a pendulum fashion.

I arranged 4 pieces of parchment on my table, the centre piece of parchment which would hold my collar, and pieces at the bottom and the ends so I could peel these away later and get an absolutely straight edge for the bottom of my cake.

Here timing is essential, you have to judge it just right. Too early and the chocolate will just run down the paper when you lift it, too late and the chocolate wont stick to the cake and the chocolate might crack too.

I had to rearrange the whole of my fridge and take two shelves out to put it in there and let the chocolate cool.

Once cold hard and set I took it out of the fridge and peeled away the paper.

and....

Ta Da!

Here are some more pictures of this very special cake.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!!

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

As a thank you to people for helping out with my move in to my very own flat, or simply donating me furniture or other essential items I have vowed to make everyone cake. My eldest brother so kindly offered to pick me up in his van from Ikea with a lot of flat pack furniture. To say thank you I asked him to name his cake, he chose pineapple upside down cake. I wasn't sure if he was joking at first... but decided what the hell I've never made it before so he's going to get one joking or not.

I found a Nigella recipe for Pineapple upside down cake in my copy of Nigella Express. This recipe is also available online. My quantities varied from Nigellas, so really it's however many pineapple rings and cherries your tin can hold to make this cake!

I had to buy another new pan for this recipe.. 23cm cake tin, unfortunately I couldn't find a copper one that Nigella recommended but the one I got was a TKMaxx bargain and is grease proof.

Ingredients:

• Butter to grease your tin
• 2 tbsps sugar
• 7 pineapple slices from a 425g tin of pineapple 
• 3 tbsps of the pineapple juice from the tin
• 13 Glace cherries
• 100g flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft butter
• 2 eggs

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees and butter your tin. 
2. Sprinkle the two tablespoons of sugar over the buttered tin, and then arrange your pineapple slices as shown below. 

3. Pop a cherry in each pineapple rings hole, and also in between them around the edge.

4. Mix your flour, baking powder, bicarb, butter, caster sugar and eggs in a bowl with an electric whisk for about 3-4 minutes or how ever long until its nice and smooth. Then pour in your pineapple juice and mix it in to make the batter thinner.

5. Now you need to get this mixture on top of your pineapple and cherries without ruining it completely. So what I did was tablespoon at a time begin to drop the mixture around the tin. When most of it was out of the bowl and into the tin I carefully spread the mixture with the back of the spoon, and tipped (scraped) any remaining mixture on top or into any gaps. The mixture only just covers it.

6. Pop it in the oven for 30 minutes.

7. Once done take it out of the oven and carefully run a spatula along the sides. This is where my grease proof tin came in very handy as it had made the cake quite loose in the tin. Leave it to cool a little while as it will be hot to touch.

8. Once cooled but still warm put a tea towel over the top and flip the cake upside down! Then leave it to cool on a wire rack.

My cake is on a paper plate so apologies for presentation! However my only mode of transporting this cake was to sandwich it between paper plates and wrap with cling film.

The final result is very satisfying as it is such a symmetrical and good looking cake. It's so simple and quick to make too!

I didn't get to try any as I gave it all to my brother for him to take away.

(Please ignore the naughty cat paw prints on my table! I hadn't notice them until I had taken the pictures!)

Lemon Yoghurt Cake - The Weekly Bake Off

It's been a couple of weeks since I took part in the Weekly Bake Off, I have still been baking but I haven't really fancied the bakes, and know they would probably go to waste in my household also.

I made the Lemon Yoghurt Cake quite early in the week this time, rather than leaving it until the weekend as I usually do. This is because I'm going away this weekend.

The only thing I needed to buy to make this cake was Greek yoghurt as I had everything else in. Simple enough and made it relatively cheap to make too! Plus I had a few lemons that really needed using too so that was handy.

This cake calls for 300g of sugar! That's a lot of sugar best brush my teeth after every piece.

This cake takes an hour to bake, I got a little caught up in the TV whilst baking so I forgot to turn it around, and for some reason despite my oven being fairly new and an electric fan heated one it's hotter on one side than the other. So this left me with a bit of a step on my cake. I didn't need to bake it any longer than an hour, the recipe suggests it may take an extra 15 minutes.

This is the first attempt at icing the cake. It all just ran off or soaked in to the cake (the cake was cold like recommended). 

So I decided to try something different and put the cake back in the tin whipped up some more icing (a little thicker this time) and poured it on to the cake and then put the cake back in the fridge.

This seemed to work a lot better it still dribbled down the side but that kind of looks good.

My mum and stepdad, my boss at work and her boyfriend all really like this cake. It was definitely a success. It brought back memories for me of the cake the old ladies used to give me when I was little, they always used to have this cake and marble cake for me to eat (my mum was a residential warden so that meant I grew up around about 100+ old people up to the age of 18).

We ate this with a cup of tea on the train up to Scotland, with the lowland views out of the window it was just perfect.

Swiss Roll - Roly Poly Cake

The Swiss Roll otherwise known in my household as Roly Poly Cake is a baking basic. This was one of the first things I was taught how to bake at high school (not ever I began baking way before the age of 11). It is also one of the things I haven't baked since school, I love Swiss roll so I'm not 100% sure why I haven't baked it for so long. Perhaps it's the temptation of buying it pre-rolled from the supermarket as it is the cheapest cake you can buy from the supermarket, and as a skint student I admit I bought that 12p chocolate Swiss roll from Tesco.

Most Swiss roll recipes are similar, as I hadn't baked it for such a long time I decided to use the recipe in Mary Berry's 100 cakes and bakes, this book is proving great in grasping the basics. Most other books I find want to show you new cakes and bakes or improved cakes and bakes or simply their take on traditional cakes and bakes, this is great but sometimes you just need to go back to basics. Anyway... I'm going off on a tangent.

I did a bit 'research' before I attempted this bake and looked at how other recipes deviate, and also watched some videos of people rolling their cake in order to get the best possible result.

The sponge is really simple to make and takes no time to bake. I tipped it on to a baking sheet cover in caster sugar and let it cool a bit. It was lovely and 'spongey' when it came out and I trimmed it down to make a neat rectangle. I then rolled the cake whilst it was still fairly warm using the baking paper as an aid and left it to cool further. Once cooled I carefully unrolled the cake and spread on the jam, once the jam was spread evenly I quickly rolled it back up again and left it for an hour before taking of the baking paper.

Once ready I placed it on my cake plate and sprinkled with more caster sugar.

Et Voila!

The cake was really tasteful with a good bite to it. The raspberry jam I used was a good choice, Marks and Spencers special. The other half wants me to make a chocolate and cream roly poly next.

Not so pink Battenburg

I will start this post by saying that me and marzipan do not get on as well as I hoped we would.

I love battenburg, it's a lovely little treat with a cup of tea on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I have always bought Mr Kipplings Battenburg, often buying the mini ones too. I had high expectations for this bake as both me and the other half love it so much.

I used Mary Berry's recipe from 100 cakes and bakes and also looked to The Great British Bake Off book for handy tips too (something Mary Berry's book often lacks).

I went out and purposely bought some baking parchment so I could utilise it's stiffness in creating a divide in my tin. I bought the roll out Marzipan and some red food dye...

All was going well, I had measured out my mixture using a set of scales to ensure that exactly half was in each side, and started to drop in the red food dye to one half. This is when it first started to go wrong. It didn't seem to be going very red, it definitely said 'red food colouring' on the side of my morrisons own pot, but it just seemed to be going brown fearing that the mixture was becoming too wet I left it and thought maybe the colour will come out once it's baked...

I waited with baited breath and when the timer went I lifted it out of the oven and let it cool.

When it came to tipping it out of the tin I could tell that no way in hell was this going to be pink. Never mind I thought, it doesn't have to pink I shall just continue.

I trimmed down my cake and cut it in to four pieces... not as easy as it sounds, my cake began to break a little here and there as I handled it, the spreading of the jam was not helping either.

Then came the worst part. The marzipan. I have worked very little with marzipan so forgive my ameteurness. I sprinkled some flour down on my surface and started to roll it out. It started to stick to my rolling pin, so I sprinkled some flour on there too. I continued to roll. It began to stretch out and just break still sticking to my rolling pin despite copious amounts of flour been added. I got annoyed, why wont you just roll!?! I smacked it around a bit (later finding out that you need to give it a bit of knead before you start playing with it) and it seemed to get the message, I meant business. After a few tantrums it began to do what I wanted it to.

Now came the tricky part, wrapping it around the cake. This wasn't so bad, but would have been better if my cake sticks weren't breaking in half. I wrapped it up trimmed up the edges a bit and dusted the top.

For some reason after a little rest the cake pieces decided they no longer wanted to sit in a neat little square and started to stray from each other.

Here is my not so pink battenburg, and not so neat either.

I did have a piece or two but found that the mixture was quite bitty and not as Mr Kipling like as I had hoped. It may be a while until I try to make battenburg again, due to my trauma with the marzipan, but when I do I won't be using that food colouring again and I think I may have to source another recipe (Sorry Mary Berry!).

Lemon Drizzle Traybake

I happened to stumble across another baking blogger challenge this week and it happened to tie in to exactly what I wanted to bake. Handy. The challenge is held by two different bloggers each month this month's blog host is The more than occasional blogger. 

This month's letter is 'L' and my chosen bake last weekend was a Lemon Drizzle Traybake.

This is the first time I have ever made a lemon drizzle sponge. It was really easy. I used the recipe from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes, my tray is a little larger than the one recommended in the recipe... but I do seem to struggle to find some of the tins suggested in the book.

You can also find the recipe here... http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/534232

Even before the cake was baked I was lapping it up from the bowl, one of the most delicious cake mixes I've ever tasted.

The 'drizzle' made a little bit of a mess and you need to drizzle it over whilst the cake is still warm, it is incredibly running and sticky! Table cloth needed washing afterwards!

The tasters (family, friends and co-workers) said it was amazing and went down great with a cup of tea or Mocha in one person's case! It was a quick bake and big pleaser so great for events or parties when you need something quick and tasty!

The Magic Faraway Tree Toffee Shock Cake

Originally posted on 22/10/2010 on Breadsticklers.

Last month I discovered a new blog.. awannabefoodie.wordpress.com and I loved what I found.

This is the Magic Faraway Tree Toffee Shock Cake....

I decided after reading @wannabefoodie76's blog that I NEEDED to make this cake.


So I did.

This is how it turned out.



I did accidentally put the cakes in the wrong order but I quite like the zebra affect too.

It's such a big cake I probably put on half a stone from the amount I ate... and I had to give a lot away to some very eager volunteers... and they all loved it too. The sounds coming from people whilst eating it were bordering on pornographic.

Want to make this cake? You really should! Here's the recipe on @wannabefoodie76's original blog post.

FABULOUS!!!!