Raspberry stress meets banana stress - and has a happy ending

I made this cake about a week after the huge all you can pick raspberry trip, and I don't mind admitting that they were beginning to weigh on my mind a bit. I even found myself thinking about what to do with raspberries when I woke up in the night, and over-exposure was even slowing my rate of snacking off them straight from the fridge. To make matters worse, there was a whole bunch of bananas beginning to go over-ripe in the fruit bowl. To avoid a complete head explosion, I searched for some recipes which could use both, and which could then be stashed out of sight in the freezer. This was the only one I photographed but the other one may yet get a feature when I can next face a raspberry muffin.


I found the recipe on, of all places, a mums forum, which isn't somewhere I usually hang out. I made a few tweaks to cut down on the refined sugar - subbing fruit sugar instead, and using coconut oil instead of butter. I also upped the ante with the berries - this was no time to start getting stingy. The original recipe was for muffins, but I made it as a loaf and it worked out really well. The banana flavour was nice and strong, and the berries nice and tart. It also defrosted well when I took it out a few days later for a visit from Kiwi Sis (and a lovely visit it was too :) ). After my double baking session I crammed all of the rest of the berries into the freezer on various cookie trays and then bagged them up (they stay separate rather than form a huge clump that way). I'm glad they won't be wasted, and this way I can get my berry mojo back and appreciate them properly again. In a few months time, maybe.

Banana and raspberry loaf (adapted from askamum)
120g plain white flour
80g plain wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
5 Tbsp fruit sugar
150g raspberries
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
30g melted coconut oil
100ml soya milk
1 ripe banana, mashed

Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Line and grease a loaf tin.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar and raspberries.

Beat together the egg, vanilla, coconut oil and milk. Stir into the dry ingredients with the mashed banana, and stir briefly, to combine. THe mixture will be quite lumpy, but there shouldn't be any unmixed flour. Spoon into the tin.

Bake for about 40 minutes, covering after 25 if the top is starting to darken too much. It should be risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Trev's requests - cherry choc chip cookies and a new carrot cake

The Scientist went gaming again this weekend, so it was time for me to get baking. I had a special set of requests this time though, as one of the other gamers, Trev, was celebrating getting through a very long period of pretty nasty health-related stuff. The Scientist asked what his top picks would be and he came straight back with carrot cake, and cherry choc chip cookies. Time to go recipe-hunting.


I've made a few carrot cakes for the gamers in the past, variously featuring banana, pineapple and (inadvertently) semi-raw dough. This time I looked up whether Nigel Slater had a take on carrot cake as I've just been reading his Eating for England which I'd really enjoyed. He does indeed, right here, and it's a pretty traditional one - no extras except walnuts, which I left out because of the usual nut allergy. Everything went fine with the baking, and as you can see, it was sandwiched together with some gloriously unctuous cream cheese icing. The Scientist took some more with him and iced the top when he arrived. The cake was enjoyed by all, but it was the icing which was the real hit. Definitely a keeper basic carrot cake recipe though - Nigel won true again.


For the cookies I decided to go extra decadent and make this red wine and cherry choc chip cookie I'd seen on Cookie Madness. It made an absolute pile of cookies, and while the batter was on the sticky side, it baked exactly as directed. I even made some with no cherries in them to accommodate the no-dried-fruit gamer. I was so pleased with myself - until I found out that Trev really really hates red wine! He did try them and thought they were quite nice, but I know he appreciated the thought. And the others absolutely loved them - the whole pile got scarfed in no time and they've been promoted to the top of the double choc chip cookie list.


Nigel Slater's carrot cake recipe here

Cookie Madness' post on the red wine cherry choc chip cookies (with link to the original recipe) here

Jaffa drizzle cake

I've wanted to make this cake for ages - it was from a supplement to the Good Food magazine ages ago, but it's taken until now to find an opportunity. In the meantime Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes had blogged about how good it was, so its credentials had been raised even further. As usual, the opportunity was The Scientist going gaming, and it didn't take long to convince him it was a good bet (approximately as long as it took to say the word 'jaffa' and 'cake' in fact).



Frankly, this cake has everything going for it. It's about the easiest cake you could imagine - bung everything in a bowl, beat and bake. It's orangey. It has orange syrup on the top. AND it has dark chocolate on the top of the orange syrup. The recipe said it would keep for up to a week but I can't imagine any circumstances where it would need to. I asked The Scientist when he got back if it counted as a 'Gamers' Favourite' and he said a definite yes. Mind you, I haven't found a cake which hasn't been a Gamers' Favourite since I started that label. I love baking for these people!


I'm also featuring the other goodies I made for them: chocolate digestives. I loved the taste of the dough for these biscuits - they tasted exactly like the real thing. I baked them for slightly too long by mistake as I didn't hear the oven timer going off from upstairs, but covered in chocolate they were perfectly passable. And yes, they were Gamers' Favourites too :) BUT - I can't remember where I got the recipe from!! I'm rather upset about this as they were so nice, but if I turn it up again I will definitely blog it.


Jaffa drizzle lof (from BBC Good Food Magazine supplement): recipe here

Cricket teas are here again

I posted last year about taking our turn on the tea rota for The Scientist's cricket club. This year we were picked for an early slot - in fact the first home match of the season (I think that the committee has noticed that I like baking :) ). I was really chuffed that an Australian lady left me a lovely comment saying how helpful my posts about making the teas had been last year, so I thought I'd do a quick update.


The Scientist was in charge of sandwiches again, following his production-line success last time. Luckily we read over my post again to remember what quantities of things we needed as we had completely forgotten that I'd noted that we'd only really needed three loaves of bread instead of four. Three turned out to be pretty much perfect. As far as the cakery went, we stuck with the scones, tray bake, cake formula. The Nigella scones I made last time are now are absolute stalwarts in our house, so I didn't hesitate to make a double quantity of those again. It made about 26 or 27 smallish but tall scones, and while there were some leftover when I left after tea, I'm sure they got snaffled after the match. We also did jam and whipped cream with them. Obviously. This is cricket after all.


The tray bake I did last time was a chocolate biscuit cake, and I actually didn't deviate too far from that either. I happened to have seen a souped-up malteser version on Ruth's kitchen experiments just a week or two ago, and liked the idea of the whole maltesers so much that I went for that. The chocolate melts off the maltesers so you're left with the crunchy middle bit, which looks rather good when cut, I think. The topping was white chocolate which I did find a bit sweet (also it went a bit gnarly as I melted it - I don't have a bowl suitable for a double-boiler, so I had to melt it in a pan). It did look good in cross-section and The Scientist gave it a thumbs up, but I think I'd probably just add maltesers to my regular recipe in future. Still, it was fun to try an alternative.


As to the cake, last time I made a big double-layer lemon drizzle. This time I gave The Scientist a shortlist and he picked a coconut lime cake (spot a citrus theme here?!). I was just a bit worried that a single loaf cake wouldn't feed as many as the big lemon one had, so since I had some coconut milk left over from making a curry, I also made a batch of the coconut lime cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The loaf cake (which I actually made in a square pan as my loaf tin is too small) was very good, and really easy to make - it didn't look the greatest but got a lot of good comments about its limeiness and moistness, but the cupcakes also had a good following too (I didn't mention the vegan bit - although I have to admit that the icing was a butter one). One person said they were the dampest cakes he'd ever had, and when I asked if that was good looked at me as though I was crazy. We got a lot of really nice comments about the whole tea, and The Scientist's egg sandwiches were particularly praised too :)

Coconut and lime cake

The whole process actually wasn't quite as fun as last year - we'd had to get up pretty early for a Sunday to get it all started, and since I was making an extra cake I wasn't able to help with the sandwich production line which had been the fun part last time. But it was still nice to try out a couple of new recipes, and I had a lovely cycle ride over to the ground to help out. Due to an unforeseen batting collapse I nearly arrived too late and the scones had to stay uncut - but I still got to hang around for the kudos :)

Coconut and lime cupcake. Apologies to the creators for their lack of style. I had two issues here: firstly the players were coming in for their tea as I iced; and secondly, the icing was very very sturdy and had to be dolloped on to the cake rather than piped nicely. Luckily cricketers are not fazed by these things (too busy eating)

Update on The Scientist's return: a narrow loss, but extra thanks for the tea!
Note to 2011 us: 600g of cheese is WAAAAAAAAY too much!

I don't like to post the recipe for the vegan coconut and lime cupcakes since the recipes from that book are all over the place. But if you google it you'll find it somewhere!

Coconut and lime cake - from Prima magazine
Serves 12
175g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
175g golden caster sugar
50g tenderised sweetened coconut [I used unsweetened dessicated]
3 eggs
150ml natural yogurt [I used low fat Greek]
finely grated zest and juice of two limes
175g butter, melted

To decorate:
1 lime
12g golden icing sugar [I used normal non-golden]
1 Tbsp tenderised sweetened coconut [or dessicated]

Preheat oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease and line a 2 lb loaf tin [I used a larger square one]. Put flour, baking powder, caster sugar and coconut into a processor. Pulse to combine.

Put eggs into a jug with yogurt, zest and juice from limes, and mix with a fork. Pour into dry ingredients with butter and pulse until just combined.

Pour into prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes until golden. Cool for 10 mins

To make icing: finely grate lime zest and peel away white pith [so you're left with a naked lime]. Put lime flesh into a mini processor and whizz till lump free. Add icing sugar. Pour over cake and sprinkle over finely grated lime zest and coconut.

New best carrot cake

I've been in the market for a new carrot cake recipe for a while. I used to have a great standby one from a leaflet I picked up at a supermarket checkout one time, but I haven't made it for a few years, as it turned out a bit gooey a few times on the trot. Personally I quite like gooey, within reason, but The Scientist isn't keen, and I've got to admit that veering that close to uncooked egg doesn't thrill me. I tried a Delia recipe for him to take gaming a year or so ago, but also had problems with cooking it through (as well as a whole manner of other problems I don't wish to revisit any time soon). This time I wanted to try one with pineapple in it too, after The Scientist tried a good one in a cafe. It just so happened that this vague yen coincided with our Vet Friends giving me not one, but two, great cookbooks for my Christmas present. The first was James Martin's dessert cookbook, which does feature a very fancy looking carrot cake, complete with caramelised baby carrots on the top - but no pineapple. The other was Simon Rimmer's new book, which coincidentally DOES have a carrot cake with pineapple.


Simon Rimmer is the chef at Green's restaurant in Didsbury, Manchester, which I've never been to, but have heard very good things about. I don't think it's particularly known for its desserts, but if this cake is anything to go by, it should be. For one thing, it avoided the under-cooking thing. In fact it cooked perfectly in the time it was supposed to. I'm sure the fact that you make two cakes to sandwich together rather than one large one helped, but still, I like a chef whose cakes bake how they're supposed to. It was also moist (I'm sure I use this word to describe all my favourite cakes - see the comment above on gooeyness, I suppose. I just asked The Scientist how he'd describe it, and he said succulent, which sounds much nicer). It was also hefty as a whole, but the cake itself was quite light. Am I making any sense? Just go and make it. And make the icing, too. It's not remotely vegan, but the people I was making it for aren't remotely vegan either, and they loved it. I've started a new label for 'gamers' favourites', so I can find the most requested treats for The Scientist's gaming weekends again easily. This one's definitely up there.

And since I mentioned it, the James Martin book is really good too - lots of tips on how to do cheffy decorating things and some lovely looking recipes. I'm hoping to try some of them very soon :)


Simon Rimmer's does as it says on the baking instructions carrot cake (from The Seasoned Vegetarian)

Feeds 10 (or 8 gamers)

300g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1 tsp salt
175g light muscovado sugar
50g walnuts [I left these out as one of the gamers has a nut allergy]
227g can pineapple, drained and finely chopped
3 eggs
handful of sultanas [I left these out too as one of the other gamers doesn't like dried fruit. Picky lot aren't they?]
2 soft bananas, mashed
175g carrots, grated [this was about two]
175ml corn oil [I used vegetable]

Soft cheese icing
100g butter, softened
200g icing sugar, sifted
100g cream cheese
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
ground cinnamon, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas 3. Prepare two greased and lined 20cm sandwich tins

Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb of soda together into a large bowl, then add the rest of the cake ingredients and mix well. Divide the mixture between the tins.

Bake the cake for 30-35 minutes, or until risen and firm to the touch

Leave to cool for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely before icing

For the cream cheese icing, beat together the butter, sugar and cream cheese, then scrape in the seeds from the vanilla pod. Spread half the icing on top of one cake, then place the other cake on top and spread with the remaining icing. Dust lightly with cinnamon.

Polenta plum cake

I like to play a game if I'm in a cafe or at a farmers' market - which cake would I have if I were going to have a piece of cake? I get all of the pleasure of selecting without the worry of it not living up to its looks. If The Scientist is with me I like to play which cake would he pick if he were going to have a piece of cake too. This is risky as he's more likely to actually buy some cake, which can on the one hand make me feel all happy that I know him so well if he goes for my guess - but then on the other leave me feeling bewildered, disorientated and wondering what's happened to my carrot cake and apple tart loving boyfriend when he occasionally veers off trend and pick something completely unexpected. There's a risky world of cafes and relationships out there.


Of course for me it's not usually so much which cake would I buy, as which cake would I like to go home and make myself. There's a stall at our farmers' market which often has golden, fruity little polenta cakes in fancy wrappers which always catch my eye. I've searched for recipes which look similar - sometimes they're polenta cakes, and sometimes yogurty cakes, sometimes with ground almonds and sometimes not. I now have so many possibilities bookmarked that I've never actually tried any of them, but last week I happened to have bought some more polenta; I happened to have acquired some plums; and I happened to have stumbled on a promising-looking recipe for grape polenta cake on Lucillian Delights.


The plums were from the tree in Munchkin Gramps' garden (the same one which gifted me the fruit for a plum tart last year). They've had another good year but I only had very limited carrying capacity when I was up there last week and a shopping trip with Kiwi Sis to nurse them through (I LOVE it that Kiwi Family are now characters on this blog instead of the intended audience, btw). I brought home more than enough to top a small cake though, and I only had a small cake in mind, to bring out as a lunch dessert for Scientist Sister and her husband when they popped in last weekend.


The cake was unlike anything I've made before. The polenta is steeped with warm flavoured milk and then mixed with eggs - that's it. The fruit goes on the top and the whole thing is baked. I made it as a little break from a work task on Friday, but it was so simple that steeping apart it was all over in the time I could have made a cup of tea. I baked through nicely and looked very promising.

When we came to eat it, I have to admit that I was disappointed. It was quite dry, and not very sweet at all. I thought it was disturbingly like a savoury baked polenta with fruit on the top and really needed either some sweetener in the batter, or a nice fruity sauce. The Scientist drizzled some maple syrup on his which he said improved it, and everyone else did seem to like it more than me - or they said they did anyway :) So I have yet to find my polenta cake nirvana. I think that next time I will try one with some ground almond or other flour to lighten up the polenta. In the meantime I will go back to playing my dangerous cake games in the local cafe.

Thank you to Munchkin Gramps and Grandma S for the plums, and Kiwi Sis for a lovely afternoon of sisterly bonding, and for spending more money than me on our shopping trip :)

Plum polenta cake (based on a half sized version of the grape polenta cake at Lucillian Delights)
125 ml milk
125g polenta
1 1/2 - 2 Tbsp sugar (or more - see above)
1-1 1/2 Tbsp butter
the peel of half a lemon
dash of salt
2 eggs
plums for the topping

Bring the milk to the boil with the butter and the lemon peel. Mix the polenta with the sugar and salt, and then pour on the hot milk. Mix well and leave for at least 30 minutes at room temperature. Preheat the oven to 200C.

Remove the lemon peel, add the eggs and mix well. Pour mixture into a cake tin (I used a small one - perhaps 5 inches across). Place sliced plums on the top and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

I'd recommend serving this with some fruity sauce or syrup, and dusting with icing sugar.

Sometimes you just need a chocolate muffin

Long week. Hard work. Guests for dinner. Needed chocolate-based dessert


That much was clear on Friday night, and the need was enough to make me cut to the chase. For once I didn't look through a million recipes and change my mind six times. Instead I searched for 'chocolate' in my geek-tastic document entitled 'Baking', where I paste all the delicious looking recipes I find on blogs and websites, and stopped when I got to Dan Lepard's Chocolate custard muffins. I don't mind admitting that it was the word 'custard' that got me in particular. Such a comforting word - the stuff of childhood and blissful ignorance of the world of deadlines and grant proposals (don't get me started). No matter that I don't remember eating custard even once as a child (angel delight was our dessert of choice); it has still entered my cultural memory and occupies a hallowed place there.


The recipe was unlike any other muffin I've made. I had imagined that it would be a chocolate cake with custard in the middle, but in fact the whole batter is a custard - starting with a cornflour/water/cocoa/sugar combo in a saucepan, and adding butter, flour, oil, eggs, etc, once it's melted and thick. I used arrowroot powder instead of cornflour, because I hadn't been able to find cornflour last time I was in the supermarket, and it was fine. Cornflour is, of course, NOT cornmeal, but a thickener. I did all the stirring and melting as I prepared dinner, and had the mixture waiting in its pan so that I could add the final ingredients, put it in the cupcake liners and in the oven as The Scientist came back from picking up our weekend guests (Eco Sis and Eco Bro, here to attend the Warwick Folk Festival with us and Munchkin Gramps et al). Dinner was a somewhat eclectic - one could even say random - stir fry with tofu on rice noodles, with shop-bought spring rolls - and potato croquettes, which had apparently leaped into The Scientist's basket with no sense of decorum or grace. They are part of his set of childhood foodie memories; to me they represent Rag Week at croquette-eating competitions at college, which does still show how popular they are amongst children and students alike. Luckily the Ecos are very open to the mix-and-match approach to cookery. We initially deferred the dessert but then got seduced by the baking smell, and tried them straight away. They were very chocolatey, so the main aim was achieved, and while we got distracted by artfully arranging them for their photo and so didn't discuss their custardyness, we did agree that they were nice and moist. I would definitely make them again, and would perhaps save some of the chocolate chips to stir in at the end so that they stayed whole. In fact I had meant to stir in some raspberries, but forgot (naturally). They could probably take all sorts of additions - banana would be very nice, I should think.

Eco Bro's elegant styling in rather poor light - I won't even mention how my efforts came out!

PS to Grandma S or Junior S if you're reading this: sorry I forgot to offer you any the next morning when you came round! I will make them again next time :)


Chocolate custard muffins, from Dan Lepard's Guardian column

50g cornflour [or arrowroot powder]
3 level Tbsp cocoa powder
100g dark soft brown sugar
225ml cold water
75g unsalted butter, broken small [I used vegan margarine]
75ml sunflower oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
125g caster sugar
125g plain flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder

First make the custard: put the cornflour, brown sugar and water into a saucepan and whisk together over a medium heat until boiling, very thick and smooth [this takes several minutes but you'll know when it happens - it suddenly goes *very* thick]. Remove from the heat, beat in the butter and chocolate until melted and absorbed, then add the oil, vanilla and one of the eggs and beat again until combined. Add the remaining egg and caster sugar, and beat again until smooth and thick.

Measure the flour and baking powder into a bowl, stir together, then sift directly on to the custard and beat through until combined. Spoon into a dozen paper muffin cases sitting in the pockets of a muffin tray [I got 14], and bake in a preheated oven to 180C [that's 250F if you're making these, Norse Goddess!]/Gas 4, and bake for 25 minutes. Briefly try to resist chocolatey baking smell, and then eat, happily.

Cocktail cupcakes

I'm starting to think that this blog really should be called 'Munchkin Messups'. I rarely seem to report on something without going into a digression about how I forgot this or failed to do that, or had to battle with an insubordinate oven. Well this time is no different, and on this occasion the problem was our drinks cabinet. Or, more precisely, the fact that our drinks cabinet is a small and extremely random collection of bottles which live on a wooden box in the living room, and which doesn't include tequila. You know how everyone has a spirit they can't touch because they had an unfortunate incident with it in their late teens? For The Scientist that spirit is tequila, which isn't normally a problem because we are no longer 19, but this weekend it was a problem.


To back up a step, we had been invited to a BBQ party at the house of some very good friends from our university days and I had offered to take some cupcakes. I selected the Mucho Margarita cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, thinking that it would be fun to take a cocktail in cake form. The trouble was that given The Scientist's issues with tequila (the base alcohol for the Margarita cocktail) there was no point investing in a whole bottle, and I just couldn't find a miniature bottle anywhere. Eventually, with no more time for searching, I just used what we had on hand, which in our case, is ALWAYS Tenerifian honey rum, which The Scientist brought back in perhaps unwise quantities after a long research trip out there. I decided that as long as you could taste the alcohol and included a lot of lime, people wouldn't notice the difference. I am sorry to say that I also de-veganised the cupcakes as I was worried that our friends would pick up the distinctive note of soya milk, and so used regular milk and marge [sorry].


The cupcakes were really good - both limey and light, and you could definitely taste that there was alcohol present. The decoration was supposed to be coloured sugar crystals and kosher salt but since I'm trying to get through some of my excessive pantry store of baking goods I used the coloured sprinkles I had on hand, plus the salt. Not quite as authentic, but then I think I threw authenticity out of the window as soon as I opened the rum bottle. I liked the fact that you got the odd tang of salt, although our host did look a little surprised when he got his first salty taste. The cupcakes also travelled well even in a hot car, and just had a brief chill in the fridge when we arrived to firm up the icing again. They disappeared very fast and helped to fuel an exhausting afternoon of sitting on our friends' patio, admiring their vegetable plants (I came home with two more tomato plants so I consider the cupcakes a good investment), laughing at how melty a big black dog can go in the sun, and chatting about all manner of arcane topics.

[Note: In fairness to The Scientist I should probably admit that I couldn't face Baileys for my entire twenties :) ]

Ambiguous Cocktail Cupcakes: based on Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World's Mucho Margarita cupcakes. Cupcake Project's take on the recipe is here. I used a simplified buttercream icing with lime juice.

Dappy Spice's Hasty Fudge Cake

I was catching up on some blog reading yesterday when I came upon Holler's post about an amazing looking chocolate fudge cake. Dense, chocolatey, moist, mmmnnnn - it looked divine. I left her a comment saying that I needed an excuse to make it, and then thought, darn it, it's a Tuesday, that's excuse enough. Besides, we have Eco Bro staying with us this week while he does a course nearby, and brothers-in-law need treats when they're studying hard, don't they?


I went scampering into the kitchen and blithely started weighing out ingredients into a saucepan. Then I realised why some people shouldn't be trusted with either recipes or web space to style themselves as any sort of decent cook at all. I hadn't read the recipe properly and so hadn't realised that it needed chocolate as well as cocoa. And the only chocolate we had was milk which I was worried wouldn't impart the same velvety dark goopy goodness. I added a few tablespoons of cocoa powder and an extra plop of butter to make up for the missing fat in the chocolate and hoped for the best. Then I nearly forgot the caster sugar but luckily remembered just before putting the pan on the ring. I had to laugh as I did it, as the other (equally sumptuous-looking) chocolate cake I had been reading about that evening was Johanna's mapley wattleseed one, where she almost forgot the chocolate chips. I must have imbibed a little of the spirit of both cakes :) I wasn't really sure if my bastardized batter was the right consistency but it tasted ok, so I put it in a heart-shaped tin to make up for the general ineptitude of the baking, and put it in the oven for a nice dessert after dinner. Holler's cake looked perfectly cooked in her picture. Mine decided to play that 'I'm cooked - ha ha, no I'm not, give me MORE oven time' game. I cracked first by which time it was 10 pm and no one really fancied dessert. I swear the cake laughed. Today I put it back in the oven for a while, and eventually we just ate it out of the tin with spoons after a dinner of Veganomicon chickpea burgers and a greens and bulgar pilaf. Not the whole thing, obviously. That would be as crazy as making a cake on a complete whim without having the vital ingredients. It was nice. Luckily.

You may notice that this post is illustrated by an actual bona fide photograph rather than the threatened drawing. Eco Sis has come to the rescue and lent me their old digital camera which I have almost learnt how to use. :) Hmmm, I spy a get-out clause here. Yes, the cake was wonderful in every way and it's just my photography which is dodgy...

I'm not even going to post what I put into my cake. Just go over to Holler's blog and see what it was supposed to be.

How to do a cricket tea - Part 3: The Cake

Ok, I'm completely embarrassed about recycling the same photo three times now so this will be my last post about the cricket tea :) I'm glad we were on the rota last weekend though as it's tipped it down this time round and I would have been sorely disappointed (not to say rolling in lemons).


As I already mentioned, we decided that we were going to go for a sliced no-bake (the chocolate biscuit cake - so ubiquitous as to not need a recipe though v yum and I'll probably post about it another time if I haven't already), the scones, and one large sponge cake. Initially we thought carrot cake or Victoria sponge, but I've had uncooked-in-the-middle horrors with carrot cakes before, and I thought the Victoria sponge would be too like the scones. In the end I plumped for a lemon sandwich, which is another of The Scientist's favourites. I used a recipe from the Cream Teas and Boundaries book I found on amazon for the cake, but I made two and sandwiched them together with lemon buttercream. Rather than putting more icing on the top I used the 'lemon crunch' which the recipe suggested - just a mix of sugar and lemon juice, painted on to the top of the still-warm top layer.

It was a really easy recipe - bung everything in a bowl, mix up thoroughly and stick in a cake tin. It baked nicely (I covered it towards the end as it was beginning to brown) and - more importantly - baked all the way through. Plus you use both the lemon zest and the juice which I prefer. I made it in a big 22 inch round tin so it stood nice and tall when it was sandwiched together. I was rather proud of how it looked, although it was lighter in colour than the photo makes it look - and also looked more impressive before I sliced it into a zillion thin slices. It was popular with the cricketers which was very pleasing. It was nice and light and moist which is what I'd been aiming for, but the slices were small, so the buttercream didn't wipe you out. The Scientist actually forewent it as he was batting shortly after tea, but I'll happily make it for him another time as it was so easy and tasty.

And so endeth the lesson on cricket teas. I am still camera-less, so unless something happens on that front rather pronto, I'm afraid I'm going to be reduced to drawing my dinner. And you really don't want that.

Crunchy Top Lemon Sandwich Cake (based on one in Cream Teas and Boundaries)
For each cake (make 2)
100g soft margarine
175g caster sugar
175g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 medium eggs
4 tbsp milk
finely grated rind of 1 lemon

Crunchy Topping (just make one quantity to top the upper cake)
Juice of 1 lemon
100g granulated sugar (I used caster)

Filling
Lemon buttercream - I didn't write down the quantities but it's just butter, sifted icing sugar and lemon juice

Cakes
Preheat oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3. Base line a deep round sandwich tin with greaseproof paper [I used a spring-release 22-incher so just sprayed it lightly with oil].

Measure all cake ingredients into a large bowl and beat well for about 2 minutes until smooth and well-blended. Turn the mixture into the tin and level the surface. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the cake springs back lightly when pressed, or when a skewer comes out clean [watch out that the top isn't browning too much, and cover if it is]. Let one cake cool and then turn out, and pain the other one with the topping (below) while it's still warm. When both are cool, sandwich together with lemon buttercream (it will go runny if you do it while the cake is still warm)

Topping
Measure lemon and sugar into a bowl and stir until blended. When the top cake comes out of the oven, spread the lemon paste over the top while the cake is still hot. Leave in tin until cold, then turn out.

How to do a cricket tea - Part 1

It's very fashionable to be down on being English at the moment. Our transport system is antiquated and expensive, our weather ranges from rain to weedy sun to - oh, snow at Easter, our politicians are mainly expenses-claiming scumbags, and our social services are being kicked into touch by the Welsh and the Scots (as is our rugby team). And our national dish is an Indian curry which India has politely disowned. But there are some reasons to be proud of being English, and most of them involve endearingly bizarre character traits and habits. And one of those is the pottering amateur.

The English love pottering; they love their sheds; they love tinkering and pursuing random hobbies. Sometimes that produces morris dancing (which I personally love because it's so archaic and jolly) and sometimes it produces the Industrial Revolution. It also promotes a sense of taking part, fair play and derring do, often targeted to sports which we gaily take overseas and then lose at. And one of those is cricket. English weekend cricket is a reason to love living in this country. Drive past any village on a summer weekend and there will be a patch of green with 22 slightly overweight and red-faced gentlemen standing and watching two people heft a wedge of willow at a lethally hard ball. Sometimes they will exclaim and make unfathomable hand gestures. Occasionally one will break into a comedy run, usually thankfully outpaced by the one or two eager fit young bloods on the team. NB The Scientist is one of those young bloods, but he is keen to maintain his ability to run after the ball, and so will hopefully be the country's only sprinting nonagenarian village cricketer one day. Even my sprinting, actually-bothering-to-warm-up, stroke-practising-in-the-kitchen beloved other half, however, has a soft spot for what is the essence of English weekend cricket - the tea.

Our cricket tea (photographed by Paul - thank you!)
From left: be-jammed scones, chocolate biscuit cake (in squares), sliced lemon drizzle sandwich cake, clotted cream (in bowl), sandwiches aplenty, more scone, shameful reconstituted meat products (nothing to do with me), crisps, torso of cricketer eager for his tea.

Cricket teas are legendary. In fact, a search on the Internet revealed that some clubs devote more web space to their teas than they do to their matches. They embody the very niceness of English sporting endeavours (no doubt why we rarely lift a major trophy), what with all their 'no no, after you', cucumber sandwiches, china cups and Battenburg slices. Even the cricket commentators at Lords get cakes sent to them by fans. In essence, cricket would not be cricket without a good tea.

At The Scientist's local club they are very egalitarian about their teas. There is a rota for every home match, and the nominated incumbent of the week goes off and spends their budget on whatever they see fit. Of course, with a keen eye to a baking opportunity I had been eager for The Scientist's number to come up ever since we arrived in Warwickshire, and a couple of weeks ago he came back from nets and casually threw into conversation that he'd been asked to do it a few Sundays hence. I immediately went into planning overdrive. We brainstormed the best cakes he'd come across in all his days of playing village cricket; we compared the overall balance of chocolatey and fruity, slices and individual items, the risk of weighing down the home team as opposed to the visitors depending on who batted first. We made, revised and re-revised the lists.

This is how I like to put it. I think that readers of this blog will already realise that in reality all this meant that I faffed, stressed, read baking books from cover to cover, presented The Scientist with a new set of options on a daily basis, and he said 'whatever you bake will be lovely'. And I mean that in a supportive way.

In the end, we tried to keep it simple. I found some really good tips on quantities in a book I couldn't resist buying from an Amazon seller - Cream Teas and Boundaries: Village Cricket Tea Recipes. We revised these a bit in accordance with The Scientist's own preferences, and so having now executed our tea duties successfully, I thought it might be useful to set out our hints and tips for anyone else asked to provide a cricket tea. After the length of this post, recipes will follow later!

Here is what we made, for two teams and a few associated supporters and scorers:

4 loaves' worth of sliced bread, divided equally into ham, grated cheese and egg mayonnaise sandwiches. Half of the cheese and half of the ham sandwiches had pickle in them. We used two white and two white/wholemeal loaves, and spread them with marge under the fillings. Salad additions are also acceptable, but The Scientist is sick of picking out tomato and cucumber from his sandwiches so we didn't bother. That's the prerogative of the tea-maker :)

One pack of supermarket mini sausage rolls and one of mini cocktail sausages

One large packet of tortilla chips

One large lemon sandwich drizzle cake

One large quantity of chocolate biscuit cake, cut into 24 squares

18 fruit scones, halves and spread with strawberry jam, served with clotted cream

Tea and orange squash.

This quantity worked out fine - we could have got away with only three loaves of bread, but people liked snacking on the leftovers after the match. And another bag of crisps wouldn't have gone amiss. The quantity of cakes worked out perfectly.

Hints and tips
If there is more than one of you making the sandwiches, set up a production line. Ideally employ a friendly graduate of the maths or physical sciences persuasion to work out exactly what quantities you need. Fortunately I have one of those on hand for these eventualities. We both buttered the bread and divided it into equal piles. I pickled the ones that needed pickling, and The Scientist took care of the other fillings.

Put the uncut sandwiches back into the plastic bags the bread came in for ease of carrying, and cut them in situ. This prevents the edges from drying out, and doesn't take too long.

If you can, leave buying the sandwich ingredients until the morning of the match (see above comment on possibility of snow at Easter)

Making some of the baked goods the night before will free all parties up for stress-free sandwiching on the day. I only had one cake tin of the right size for the lemon cake, so I made one layer the night before, and the second the morning of the match. We also made the chocolate biscuit cake the night before and stored it in the fridge. That only left one cake, the icing and butter icing, and the scones to make that morning.

Cut and jammify scones at home, and take them sandwiched back together. They just need separating again to be served.

After all my dithering, it was also interesting to see what went first when the weary teams came to claim their tea. I have to admit (to my chagrin) that the sausage rolls and mini sausages were popular, although they were admittedly placed at the front of the table. The lemon cake took a little while to get going, but then disappeared very fast, and the biscuit cake and scones were particularly praised (how I kvelled). I didn't notice any particular preference for sandwich fillings, though the opposing team had a probably unusual number of non meat-eaters. Happily The Scientist is well used to catering for veggies and so this didn't lead to an unedifying scramble for the egg sandwiches even though we hadn't known in advance.

I would make other cakes next time just for variety, but having one large sliced cake and one tray bake was a good division, and I will never cater another cricket tea without those exact same scones again. They were wonderful. And if you've got this far, you will be rewarded with the recipe next time :) As to the result of the match, I'm afraid we must draw a veil to spare the home team's blushes.

Marbled cinnamon cake for a sister who's 30

I didn't feel old when I turned 30, but now I feel old that I have a sister who's 30! I think that age is entirely over-rated - we know lots of people who have really been knocked by moving out of their 20s but it didn't seem to bother us. Easy to say when you're happy with where you are in life, I suppose. Anyway, I think that Kiwi Sis can feel justly pleased with what she's achieved in 30 years - a big handful of academic qualifications, a happy home, lots of intrepid travels, a move half way round the world - and two little munchkins. Not bad at all :)


The cake I made to mark her birthday is called 'The Easiest Cake in the World' by the Guardian, which is where I found it. I don't know if it's literally the easiest ever but it certainly only needed one bowl, one spoon, one mixer and a cake tin and so it was pretty easy to clean up at least. I was inspired to make it by a stupendous cake I made for Vet Dad's birthday before New Year. Vet Mum said it was the best cake I'd ever made for them but all my photos of it were rubbish so I will have to reprise it at a later date. It had sour cream in it and so I went looking for others that used it too in case it was the key magic ingredient for top tasty cake. The recipe had several variations and I went for a cinnamon swirl version for a bit of extra fancy-schmanyness (it's not every day one's sister turns 30 after all, even if one is as liberally endowed with sisters as I am). I also went with the suggestion of using a lemon water icing so that you could still see the marbled patterns. I took the cake with me to an editorial board meeting and so I haven't got any photos of it cut, or indeed drizzled with icing, but the slices were very pleasingly swirled in cinnamon-chocolate and vanilla. I was worried it was a bit undercooked as it looked rather dense, but the other board members liked it very much. I would perhaps leave it to cook for slightly longer next time although it had its full hour and the skewer came out clean. Perhaps it's just what sour cream does to cakes. The lemon icing was a really nice topping and gave a fresh tang to the whole thing. I also made the leftover batter into two little cupcakes so that The Scientist could try it and he gave it the thumbs up with best birthday wishes to Kiwi Sis. After all, you are NEVER too old for cake.


I won't copy out the recipe since I didn't make any changes to it as printed. The Guardian's Easiest Cake in the World, recipe here

Festive bakes: Nigella cakes

December has started and the run-up to the festive season has begun in earnest. I have to admit that I've been doing a little seasonal baking already though: there is a large jar of mince-pie filling in the fridge (I hate calling it 'mince meat' - bleurgh) and a Solstice cake maturing in a tin on top of the kitchen cupboards. These little gems are, however, probably The Scientist's favourite seasonal treat. Well, apart from Christmas pudding. And roast potatoes. And the pigs in blanket travesty I already mentioned. But these are right up there.


These cupcakes are actually just Nigella's Easy-action Christmas cake baked small. She calls the little versions 'jewelled cupcakes' but to us they are 'Nigella cakes', and I generally end up making lots around this time of year and stashing them in the freezer for when a whim for festiveness strikes. They're easy action because all the ingredients are just melted and stirred up together and then baked. They are the reason why I occasionally have chestnut puree around (though thank you so much, Johanna, for reminding me about the chestnut mousse cake I made a while back - I made a delicious improvised version with a lot less butter after reading your post on chestnut puree!). They're one of the easiest recipes for Christmas cake I've seen and, like all others, make the kitchen smell amazing. Plus, since the cakes are small they don't take too long to cook. I left these ones plain so they don't look too enticingly shiny, but Nigella suggests glazing them with some sieved jam and decorating with glace fruits and nuts. I sometimes do that too and it does make them look very jolly :)


This first batch of Nigella cakes of the year have disappeared already - they were for The Scientist's gaming weekend last week (where they were actually upstaged by another batch of the ginger parkin cookies, but that's just a sign of how good the cookies are. I think that The Scientist undersold them so as to leave more for himself :) )

Nigella Cakes (aka jewelled cupcakes, from Feast)
This is the full quantity recipe, but I often halve it to make about 12 fairy-cake-sized cupcakes. The full recipe is for a 20cm cake, or 24 small cupcakes

775g best-quality mixed dried fruit
175g unsalted butter
250g dark muscovado sugar
1 x 250g tin sweetened chestnut puree or spread (I use unsweetened and add sugar - the proportions are given on the tin)
125ml dark rum
juice and zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs, beaten
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

to decorate: 4 tbsp smooth jam, approx 150g assorted glace fruits and blanched nuts

Preheat the oven to Gas 2/150C (though you might hold off doing this until after the fruits etc have been set bubbling). Line the sides and bottom of a deep 20cm round cake tin with a double layer of greaseproof paper, leaving a cuff higher than the sides of the tin. Wrap a double layer of brown paper around the outside of the tin leaving a cuff double the height of the tin, tying with string. This gives some extra insulation to make the cake cook slowly. If making cupcakes try to use the foil liners which are thicker than the regular sort.

Put the dried fruit, butter, sugar, chestnut puree/spread, rum and orange juice and zests into a large wide saucepan and bring to the boil gently, stirring as the butter melts. Simmer the mixture for 10 minutes and then take it off the heat and leave to stand for 30 minutes, by which time the fruits will have been soused and the mixture cooled slightly. Now, add the beaten eggs, flour, baking powder and spices and stir to combine.

Pour the fruit cake mixture very carefully into the cake tin/s. Place in the oven and bake for 1 3/4 - 2 hours for the cake, or 35-40 minutes for the cupcakes.. The top of the cake/s should be firm and dry and will have cracked a little. A cake tester will still be sticky.

Put the cake on a cooling rack and take off the brown paper from around the outside of the tin. It will hold its heat and take a long while to cool, but once it has cooled completely unmould it from the tin and wrap in a layer of greaseproof paper and then foil until you want to decorate it. I just store the little cakes in a tin, or freeze them once they're cooled.

To decorate: warm the jam in a pan with 1 tbsp water. Cool. Paint the top of the cake/s with the cooled jam and then decorate with the fruits and nuts. Paint another layer of jam over the top to give a glossy finish.

Chocolate spice gingerbread - or, my ongoing obsession with the word treacle

I really seem to be unable to resist the idea of ginger and treacle in baked goods at the moment. I think I've said before that gingerbread didn't particularly play a part in our childhood traditions - we liked a bit of Jamaican ginger cake all right, but we didn't have it often. So I really can't explain where this yearning comes from - but if it gives me an excuse to say 'treacle' more often then I'm not going to try to fight it. This particular cake won me over by combining treacle and ginger with chocolate - and fairtrade Green and Black's chocolate at that. The recipe was from a Green and Black's book I bought second-hand after flicking through it in a shop and lusting after all the photos (it was the picture of the pear and chocolate spread which particularly won me over though I haven't made that yet). I came back to this recipe as I wanted to take a cake to the Ecos for dinner on Friday night (thank you for a lovely evening, and especially that amazing Moroccan soup, which, I have just realised, I dreamt about last night!). Eco Sis likes gingerbread too, and this one was advertised as being 'wonderfully moist'. The moistness must particularly come from adding chopped prunes, I think. I wonder if chestnut puree might have a similar effect though it might change the flavour of the cake. It also has buttermilk in it, and since I rarely buy buttermilk I used milk with added vinegar which seemed to work fine (please note that this is an accepted way to make buttermilk, Eco Sis - I didn't just randomly take liberties with your cake!).

Yummy cake; poor lighting :(

I will make this cake again. It contains fair trade orangey chocolate, it contains treacle and ginger, it contains prunes (which I love), it is dense and moist and dark brown in colour, it wrapped and travelled well, it got a rapturous response from Eco Sis: what's not to like? Interestingly, Eco Sis didn't pick up on the ginger immediately but it was because she was intrigued to guess what the moist little flecks she could see were (the prunes). Once I told her what it was she said she could definitely taste both ginger and chocolate. It was harder for me to assess fairly since I knew what was in it but I thought the combination of ginger and chocolate worked really well, especially with the added richness of the prunes.

Clearly not chocolate ginger cake, but so cute as to be almost edible, and sort of chocolatey coloured. She's wedged herself in a very small space between me and The Scientist on the sofa, and is lying on one of our legs each!

Although this wasn't previously a family favourite this cake went down so well with the Ecos that I am sending to Not Quite Nigella for her Ultimate Chocolate Cake Challenge.

Chocolate Spice Gingerbread (from the Green and Black's Chocolate Recipes cookbook)
125 g unsalted butter
50g Maya Gold or other good-quality dark orange chocolate, broken into pieces
50g dark chocolate, minimum 60% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
75g dark muscovado sugar
4 tbsp treacle
150ml buttermilk
125g ready-to-eat prunes
175g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 level tsp ground ginger
1 level tsp cinnamon
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3. Line an 18cm square cake tin (I used a standard loaf pan) with greaseproof paper or baking parchment

Cut the butter into cubes and place in a heavy saucepan along with the chocolate, sugar, treacle and buttermilk. Heat gently until the ingredients have melted, then set aside to cool.

Snip the prunes into small pieces with the kitchen scissors. Sift the flour into a large bowl along with the bicarb of soda and spices. Pour the chocolate mixture into the bowl and beat thoroughly with a wooden spoon, then add the beaten egg and beat again. Fold in the prunes.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level off the surface using a palette knife. Bake for about 50 mins. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for about 10 mins. Turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely. Wrap in greaseproof paper and store in an airtight container.

The cake will keep for a week in an airtight container. It is best eaten the day after it is made.

Gamers' golden date slice

The Scientist went off on one of his gaming jaunts last weekend, accompanied by baked goodies as usual. He and his friends are delighted to receive any baked stuff I care to provide, which makes for a very enjoyable relationship all round. I strongly suspect that I am 'the mad baking girlfriend' but I think that's a role I can live with :)


This time there had been a special request for a recipe which one of the gamers had passed on from his mum. It's a date and carrot cake, and is always known in our house as (in hallowed tones) 'Gaming Steve's Mum's Cake'. I think she called it a Golden date slice. It's one of those heavy, moist, gingerbread-type cakes and if I'm being a little vague about how it tastes it's because I'm not sure if I've ever actually had any myself (it seems a little rude to send a cake with a nibble taken out of it!). I can, however, say that the batter is truly magnificent, and it is very very popular with The Scientist and his buddies. Hell, The Scientist starts drooling when I get the golden syrup out of the cupboard!


I asked them to take a photo of a slice of it when they ate it, and Steve himself very sweetly set up a whole photography platform to showcase it. He used the camera on his phone which seems to be a better quality one than my actual camera. As you might expect given my profession, I am not the most up-to-date when it comes to tech!

Gaming Steve's Mum's Cake (aka Golden Date Slice)
With thanks to Steve's mum!

6oz Stoneless Dates

6oz Margarine

6oz Demerara Sugar

3 oz (Approx 6 Level Tablespoons) Golden Syrup

10oz Self Raising Flour

½ Level Teaspoon Salt

2 Level Teaspoons Cinnamon

8oz Finely Grated Carrots

3 Eggs Medium to Large

2 Tablespoons Demerara Sugar


1. Heat oven to 325f/160c/gas mark3.

2. Grease a square 8" cake tin & line with grease proof paper.

3. Roughly chop dates.

4. Place margarine, demerara sugar & syrup into a large saucepan over a low heat until the margarine has melted, then remove from the heat.

5. Sift flour, salt & cinnamon into the pan, mix well with a wooden spoon.

6. Beat eggs, add to pan & mix thoroughly.

7. Stir in dates and carrots.

8. Pour into the prepared tin, level if needed.

9. Sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of demerara sugar over the top of the mixture.

10. Bake cake in the centre of the oven for 1 hour 30 minutes to 1 hour 50 minutes, the cake is cooked when it springs back when pressed and the sides have begun to shrink back from the tin.

11. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin. Once cooled, turn out and remove paper, wrap cake in foil and leave for two days (if you can wait that long) for it to develop its flavour.


It keeps for approximately 2 weeks if wrapped in foil and stored in a container (ha! Like it ever gets the chance!)

Kiwi Sis Baker

Here's the magnificent and very cute cake that Kiwi Sis made for the Munchkin for his birthday last weekend. There is a very cute picture of him actually rubbing his hands in glee with it in front of him. Ah, to be two again (mind you, I think a lot of us can empathise with the simple joys of anticipating a tasty cake made just for us, can't we?). When I was two Munchkin Granny made me a caterpillar cake composed of cupcakes. The one representing the head had a face and two candles for antennae. I was going to make one like it for the Munchkin but the opportunity to have my three-year old friend help me decorate was just too much! I like the way it looks as though there is a pair of discarded baby socks in the top left corner of this picture - evidence of the Munchkinette perhaps?

Double birthday cake

It's my birthday today. More excitingly, however, since I like to keep my birthday quite quiet, it's my little Birthday Buddy in California's birthday too! One day I hope to celebrate a birthday with him in person, but in the meantime, I made this cake for us to share in spirit (I realise that BB may take issue with the fact that only I actually get to eat it, but I'm sure that his parents will be organising him a cake of his own).

My ideal birthday is a nice quiet day and a romantic and tasty meal out for the two of us. I have a work deadline coming up soon so I couldn't take the day off, but I did skip out for a few hours for a potter in town, and to make myself and BB a little cake. I had been drawn to red velvet cakes when I was choosing what to make for the last round of my cooking challenge with Lisa, which had featured birthday cakes. I decided against it because the recipes all used so much red food colouring, but then I found one which used beetroot instead. I think we may have established by now that I am strangely drawn to unusual ingredients in baked goods, and this one lurked in my mind. Lurking turned to downright jumping up and down with a flag that said 'bake me!' when I found a low-fat version from Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious that didn't use any artificial colour at all on Not Quite Nigella. I wasn't sure how The Scientist would feel about it, but it's my birthday cake and if I want odd vegetables in it, then that's my prerogative, I believe. It's his birthday in a month and he can have all the lemon meringue pie he wants then with nary a beetroot, courgette or sneaky squash in sight.

That's not the crest of my old college hiding on the edge of the plate, oh no
I forgot to say the first time round: the clock is pointing to 3 o'clock because that's how old BB is today!

As seems to be my wont, I halved the recipe since it was just for two of us, and baked it in a brand new 6 inch round tin (thank you Vet Dad's parents - The Scientist's surrogate second family since childhood :)). I just used one egg rather than halving a full egg and two egg whites, and I did the milk and vinegar trick instead of buttermilk as I never have that regularly on hand. I followed the oil rather than butter option and it didn't get at all creamy, but it seemed to work fine, and the batter was gratifyingly crimson. The baked cake smelt absolutely gorgeous, too (and no repeat failing to bake problems this time).


The decoration of this cake was also fated long ago. Several months ago now I was chatting to a colleague about the cakes she used to make for her children when they were at school. One of their favourites was a Hickory Dickory Dock cake from an old Reader's Digest book. I had a look on ebay for it so I could surprise her with a replica, but to no avail. Then, however, Johanna wrote about her magnificent green giraffe cake, which was based on a pattern in an Australian Women's Weekly cake book (not sure if that link is actually to the right edition - the picture's too small to tell!). Someone left a comment for her linking to a facebook group devoted to childhood cakes from this book, and in an idle moment I went and looked it at (I'm not commenting on what this implies about either my work rate or my character). To my great amazement, one of the other cakes in the book was a hickory dickory dock one. I found it on ebay and it was mine. I've been saving it all this time, and it seems like an appropriate cake to share with my young birthday buddy in California.


I'm not very experienced with decorating cakes and have so far shown no original talent on that front at all. I was hoping this one would be easy, what with a picture to follow and all. I will let the photos stand as testament to my success or otherwise. I used cream cheese frosting as that's traditional on a red velvet cake apparently, although I didn't flavour it with cocoa as the cake recipe suggested as I wanted a white clock face. The decorations are sweets, and the mouse, rather endearingly, is made out of a prune, which isn't something I would have thought of for a children's cake. I have to admit, I was rather proud of it. It also tasted very good indeed. You couldn't taste the beetroot, and I was a little disappointed that it wasn't pinker - Not Quite Nigella's was much more colourful. The beets lent it moistness though, and the icing set it off beautifully. I enticed The Scientist into trying a bit and he liked it too, and was relieved about the lack of beetroot flavour. He was full of chocolate biscuit cake though, which was the product of an idle twenty minutes before my potter into town to use up some biscuits, so he probably wasn't the most discerning taster.


I've had a very happy birthday, not least because of the lovely gift I opened first thing this morning from a certain family in New Zealand - a framed picture of the Munchkin and Munchkinette relaxing on the quilt I sent them. The Munchkin looks like a proper little boy, not the baby who left here 8 months ago, and he's looking so sweetly at his sister, who is holding his hand. That was a very nice start to the day, and we've just ended it with a lovely meal at an Arabic restaurant in Coventry called Habibi. It was recommended to me before we moved here and it was a really good experience. We sat at low tables in an outdoor (heated) tent, and ate babaganoush and fatoush salad with pitta, a veggie tagine for me, and a mixed grill for The Scientist. The staff were really friendly, and they even do belly dancing classes for ladies during the week! It's also five years to the day since I met the little mewling scraps of fluff who became our cats, so they have had some tuna as their treat (I picked out the piggle cat that day - Scooty was a bonus extra when we went to pick her up a month or so later, but a most welcome bonus :)). And it's 32 years since Munchkin Granny and Munchkin Gramps became parents, which I think is the biggest thing of all :)