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Thursday 25 February 2010

The Shoop Shoop Song // Cher

I'm in the middle of doing my first batch for the big seven five.
I doubled the amount of the recipe. The mix looked a lot thicker and my genius stroke of putting it in a jug to pour into cases failed massively when it was too thick to pour and just blobbed everywhere and made a mess.
Anyway. They look like they're rising so I can't complain.
I'm all weighed out for the next batch, and I'm massively content. But that could be down more to Cher than baking.

23 down, 52 to go.

Monday 22 February 2010

Comfort Eagle // Cake

A second lot of cupcake practice for the big batch. It's this weekend! Eep! I'm starting to think I must be mental for agreeing to make 75 cupcakes.

This practice went well. I didn't overfill the cases and they rose beautifully. This time we were organised enough to remember to put vanilla in the frosting.
Jonny doesn't really get my frosting style. But I don't like to put loads on and I don't like it to look like we've slathered it on with a hot knife. Even though we have.
I can't explain why. I just prefer them to look a little rustic.

Enjoy the following cupcake porn!



Friday 19 February 2010

Out of the Frying Pan (And into the Fire) // Meat Loaf

It's be quite an amazing, important week for me.

Firstly, it's pancake season. I think that there should be a law passed that means everyone must have at least one pancake on shrove tuesday.
I am very passionate about pancakes. My Mum's are the best. I am passionate about what a pancake should be. Thin. Batter made with egg. None of this vegan malarky.
I've got into quite a few debates about pancakes, and always run out of arguments, I guess it's just my snobbishness in the end.
Jonny decided to put my passion to the test and cooked me 4 pancakes for a blind tasting.
They were to be one animal-product-tastic-homemade batter;


one vegan homemade batter (soya milk and flour AKA wallpaper paste), one made from Shake-to-Make Betty Crocker pancake mix and a mystery one...
I tested each one with lemon and sugar. I thought it would be easy to work out which was which.
I was massively wrong. I guessed the mystery one, it was foul. Disgusting. Bleeurghh. This was a week ago and it still makes me feel a bit ill to think of it.
It was a ready made pancake from tesco. Need I say more.
My favourite turned out to be the Betty Crocker, which is massively shameful, but I will say that hours of product development went into making sure that mixture turns out the perfect pancake everytime.


I also thought the vegan one was the non-vegan. I'm humiliated. But heh now I know that I will eat either.

Betty Crocker:

Delia:

Tesco:

Vegan:

On the actual day I had lunch at Jonny's which involved my first savoury pancake - bacon and maple syrup. Wow. I'll have that again. And then for pudding we had nutella filled ones.
Then I went home to my Mum and she cooked me 4 - all of which were lemon and sugar.
This took my pancake total up to 11.
Then on Wedenesday we invited a load of friends over for a pancake evening


I couldn't even begin to guess how many pancakes were cooked. We made the batter using 10 eggs and got through a block of butter frying them. We'd asked people to bring toppings. Lots of fresh fruit, lemon, nuttella and maple syrup. Plus some dodgy icecream sauces courtesy of Will.

Oh and I know that marmite filled pancakes were consumed.
I ate 9 more that night. So I have had 20 pancakes in a week. I'm proud. Nothing will stop me being proud. Oh bugger my ipod has picked this fantastic moment to play fat bottomed girls.

Secondly it's been an important week for me as my lovely boss left and I've stepped into her shoes and taken on the role of officey manager sort of thing. Which is very exciting. To be honest it doesn't change my job that much, but I am allowed to hit people if they don't recycle properly.

Thirdly (last one, promise) it's been an important week as I came off my medication this week. On Tuesday infact. I was only ill for 6 months and it sometimes seems like a very long time with the changes I went through with my career and then sometimes it seems like a massively short time. I was very ill when I was at my lowest, and now I'm back on form and properly happy. When it started it felt like it would be a lot longer.
So a gushing thank you to all my amazing friends and my brothers who kept me going, especially Becci who I'm sure would have done anything I asked during that time.
And mostly to Jonny who got the worst of it but was there for me every single time I needed him. I don't think I will ever be able to do anything for him on that scale.

Sunday 7 February 2010

Civilised // Pitchshifter

Will decided that it was time for my long-awaited Yumchaa reveiw, and we went for lunch yesterday.

We headed to the new Camden shop which is completely unnoticable unless you know where you're going.
We had a look at the range of teas and tried to order. There was only one woman serving. It was lunch-time. In Camden. It took a while, to say the least. None of the food was labelled, so she had to run off what the sandwiches were, despite there not being much choice. I don't want to dwell on the sandwiches, as thats not really my interest, but they were toasted beyond belief. And took forever. Mine went in first and came out last. I had to swap with Jonny as my teeth wouldn't have coped.
Anyway, we eventually got our tea in nice white pots with accompanying strainers and we found a seat.


The actual shop is beautiful. It's all mismatched furniture and rustic looking cottagey kitchen tables, paisley wallpaper, brick walls and a beautiful light feature with hundreds of different lamps. There are lots of tables but still plenty of space to move around.
It aims for cosy, welcoming tea shop. It fails. It's got no actual atmosphere. It's too quiet. The cakes are displayed on a counter top in cheap baking trays.
It attracts trendy businessy type people, it's more laptop friendly than come and slump for half an hour and enjoy tea. It's more come and look like you care about tea while doing work.
I know that Yumchaa have quite a large student customer base. Well, I assume this as they have deals aimed at getting students in to work, which is very nice.. but.. it makes it feel more like Starbucks.
It's trendy. Aimed at yummy mummies and art students and metrosexual business men.
Which is fine. I have no problem with any of those stereotypes. I lie, clearly.
But anyway, it's just not for me. My ideal tea shop is sofas and books and friendly relaxed service.

Let's move on to the important part of a tea shop, the tea!
The whole business is based on bastardised tea. They have good policies, loose leaf, tea pot, fair trade, good quality, but then they take this fantastic tea and add stuff. Dried fruit, flowers, spices, caramel, nuts and chocolate.
And it's not even stuff that compliments or enhances the natural flavour of the tea. It drowns it out. I think it destroys it.
If you want to drink something that tastes like dried flowers then just take some dried flowers and add boiling water. Please? Don't bring good tea into it.


They do sell the lovely tea unbastardised, I will add. And I will happily drink this. They have the tea leaves in little cups for smelling when you order so you can make an informed decision on what tea to have.
If you're lucky they will make it clear that you don't have to have fruity flowery spicy nutty chocolatey tea, but this varies from shop to shop in my experience.

And now for the cakes. There were about seven varieties to choose from. I picked a brownie (always a good indicator), a slab or rich looking chocolate cake, and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.

The brownie was good, a lovely texture, a bit too nutty, but nowhere near chocolatey enough. Still the best of the three.
The chocolate cake was dry, only saved by the icing. Still, ok I guess. It was edible.
The lemon drizzle cake was stale. Old, dry and (I thought it was) flavourless. Like they'd forgotten to drizzle it and then left it out on the side for four days.

Oh and when I ordered the cakes I was handed them on a tray. I requested forks and was pointed to the table of what I assumed was take-away cutlery. How wrong I was. We had to use wooden forks. Apparently this is sustainable.
But it's not. Metal cutlery is reusable... fair enough wooden for takeaway. Metal for eat in please! I used my teaspoon in protest.
There was also a lack of sugarpots, I had to use a little plastic sachet which automatically ruined the illusion of class and atmosphere of the entire shop by leaving torn up bits of paper left on the table.


My friends think I am overly fussy for not loving yumchaa. And I know that it is mostly my snobbishness that prevents me from liking it. But I can't help that! I have standards and I will not be tricked into believing that I am consuming tea in the epitome of civilisation.
There are better places to go. Sorry.

I only feel the need to apologise for not liking it as a lot of my friends enjoy this place, and I am massively outnumbered. But meh. It's the truth.

Pictures to follow, J is away on business.

Billy Brown // Mika

Yesterday was the birthday party of one of our best friends, Will.
We managed to keep it a complete surprise from him, and I think it was a total success in the end, well he seemed happy enough.


When I make cakes for people I like to put some thought into them, make them a bit more personal. I had two ideas for Will.. wine and guitars.
We decided against making a replica of his beloved bass, as it's beautiful and a cake would just be a charicature of it, and its imperfections would have probably annoyed him.
The other idea, wine, needed practice and I ran out of time and didn't fancy taking the risk of errecting a cake held up with wine bottles without knowing if it would work or not.
So I had to re-think. Will is one of my only friends who has an interest in proper chocolate, he thinks the darker better.
So I gave myself the challenge of making the chocolatiest cake in the world.

I made the actual cake on Thursday evening, using James Martin's cola cake recipe, the only chocolate cake recipe I trust to work now.
I planned to fill it with a dark ganache and top it with Helm Magical Icing and then put as many chocolates as possible on top, all bought from William Curley.

I'd asked my dad to buy some 70% chocolate for the ganache, as Will would approve but it wouldn't be so dark everyone else would hate it.
So I happily made the ganache but when I tried it.. bleurgh.. it was bitter and unpalatable. We checked the packet and it had been 85% chocolate. It could not have gone in the middle of the cake, and I had to get back to the office.
It was decided we'd take the risk of adding sweetened cream cheese, in an attempt to keep the perfect consistency but make it a bit more edible.
It worked, sort of. It solidified in the cake, so wasn't the gooey filling it should have been, but it was still tasty.

Helm Magical Icing is a mixture of butter, cocoa powder, icing sugar and evaporated milk. It makes a silky smooth covering that you can just pour over the cake, and it gives it a lovely shiny coating.


Then the fun bit of covering the cake in chocolates, cinder toffee and nuts. We were quite pleased with how it looked in the end, and I think everyone at the party liked it, even if they didn't manage to finish the Libby-sized portions I dished out.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Hippy Hippy Shake // The Swinging Blue Jeans

Today was the day for my Friday-Lunch-Time-Treat.
And due to the weather, it needed to be exceptionally filthy and disgusting.

So I went to Shakeaway.
Partly because it's the closest dirty treat to my work, and partly because I love it.
And honestly, honestly I meant to order a regular, but the word 'LAAARGE' just popped out my mouth and I couldn't really change my mind after that.
I was going to try and justify it on here, but a milky way milkshake is dispicable. How on earth can I harp on about Amedei, and then the next day confess to a love of mars chocolate blended with ice cream. I think I'm a hypocrite.

In fact, I know I'm a hypocrite, as I will happily shout at anyone who likes juice with bits in, or will mix something back together that has separated (wrong, wrong, wrong.. just throw it away and never buy it again), but the chewy lumps of nougat are fantastic.

But I'm happy. And while I know I will have a sugar rush and have to eat more once I have the inevitable dip, it's worth it.

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S I Love You) // Chef

I've just been for a brief trip (again) to William Curley, and I was stupid enough to go without having a firm plan of what I wanted.
This meant I ended up having a hot chocolate, a bakewell tart and a milk chocolate rocher. Only so I could have time to ponder what I actually needed, of course.

Anyway, the one thing I can never resist, and christ knows how anyone else manages to resist it, is the sea salted caramel.
I can reel off a list of sea salty products;
A couture chocolate
Sea Salt Caramel Bar
Sea Salt Caramel Tart
Sea Salt Caramel Spread
Sea Salt Caramel Mou (coated in a thick, dark chocolate)
Sea Salt Caramel Mou (Just in a wrapper, so indulgently sticky and fun)
I even got to try a sea salt caramel eclair while working there... divine.

I heard that people put the spread on toast, in cakes, on brioche, in porridge, while I shamefully enjoy sneaky spoonfuls from the jar.

While it originally sounds like an odd and wrong thing, salt in something sweet, it's not. It's a match made in heaven. I have no idea whoever thought of it, but they are a genius. The salt brings out the flavour of the caramel, and cuts through the sweetness of the sugar.
And it's addictive. Don't say I didn't warn you.


Pictured is the sea salt caramel bar, an easy grab and go fix, for when picking out individual chocolates sometimes brings on feelings of guilt about how much money you could be spending, this bar gives you the option of not thinking.
A thick layer of beautifully dark Amedei chocolate to crunch through, and then you're at the liquid centre.

Go on, it's really not something to be missed.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Cups and Cakes // Spinal Tap part two

Libb is napping on the sofa, she just told me to stop distracting her from the nap. I blame her day of sugar and cake for this afternoon nap. Up to now she has eaten:
  • Weetos
  • Hazelnut Hot Chocolate
  • Blueberry Muffin (skinny)
  • Carrot Cake
  • Cheese and Pickle sandwiches
  • Cupcake trimmings
  • Frosting
  • Carrot Cake
  • Marmite Rice Cake
  • Coffee Cake
  • Cupcake (with frosting)
She also had two apples which apparently makes it all ok. Thats just under 50% of all things eaten today containing the word "cake". I'm surprised she's not eaten any cups if I'm honest.

Anyhow this extensive cake eating is half due to lots of birthdays at work and also training for her 75-cup cakeathon thats coming up at the end of Feb. She brought round 6 of the trial cupcakes at lunch and we set to work making the frosting; butter, loads of icing sugar and a spot of milk, unfortunately libb had got "goseberry" food colouring but thought that gooseberries were yellow not green so we ended up with a pastel green icing instead of the pale yellow she'd planned for.

The frosting was lovely, firm but still mouldable for easy decorating. We were working against the clock as Lib only has a 45 minute lunch-break, and quickly discovered that you need a big bowl to make this icing as most of the sugar ended up on the floor when first combining it with the butter.

We popped the icing on top of the cakes and shaped it with a hot knife but I found it very tricky to get a rustic heap of icing, Lib says I smooth it all too much, anyway this was just a trial run right?

Anyway with the base of yellow (oops I mean green) frosting on we added the finishing decoration. Blue, pink and white sugar balls where accompanied by sugar dolphins, Hearts and stars respectively so we ended up with two blue, two pink and two yellow (the stars were white & yellow). It was immediately apparent that the green didn't really go. A pale cream/yellow base would have allowed the decoration colours to stand out much more clearly but at least this time there's a next time and I think there's some powder yellow in Libbs' cake toolbox so I'll remind her of that when I bring her a wake up cup of tea.

Monday 1 February 2010

Cups and Cakes // Spinal Tap

Part One.

I have begun the grand cupcake rehearsal. I'm full of fear and excitement as I've put myself up to make 75 cupcakes for a big district guiding event at the end of February.
Which is probably crackers, as I've never attempted a cupcake in my life, and have always been a bit anti-cupcake, more of a fairy cake girl, and then I was a bit snobbish for this trend which is seemingly tailored for yummy mummies.

Anyway, the challenge was too tempting. So.

Practice run one;
Vanilla Cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Book.

I used to enjoy a wander along Portabello Road to the Hummingbird Bakery. Made a hard day at work and long journey almost worth it. And they are one of the most highly regarded cupcake bakers in London.
So I put myself in their hands and currently have some buns in the oven.

I only got 7 cakes, not the 12 I should have. I assume this is because they realise most people would pop to the supermarket for bun cases, which is standard size, whereas I've used larger ones.
The mix was like pancake batter. It seems to be mostly milk. I have no faith in the professionals and I doubt that they will rise.

Watch this space...



One Hour later...
I think I must have over-filled the cases, but they taste gorgeous! I'll have another go soon and put less mix in. Tomorrow I'll have a bash at carving these ones down and icing them..