Red Velvet // OutKast

I've long avoided writing this blog to avoid writing something libellous.
The main fault with libel laws is that at the end of the day the publisher is guilty until proven innocent. Or to put it another way; if i was going to call one of London's most successful bakers "morons who know nothing about cooking"
I would be forced by a court of law to prove that this was irrefutably the truth while, until I had done so, I would be expected to cough up the sum of damages to the "moronic" baker's reputation each time the words get published.

Ladies and gentlemen, In the delightful world of the Internet, every day is a new publication. As such the delightfully nick-named and over paid libel lawyers criticised weekly in Private-eye are able to open a new case and compensation claim every day. The one and great defence against the libel lawyers is the fact that you are telling the truth this makes a claim no longer libellous and simply a fact. I concede that probably a successful baking company does in fact know a bit about cooking and as establishers of a working and growing business are probably not moronic.

In conclusion, your honours, I would like to state that the humming-bird bakers are NOT morons who know nothing about cooking. In fact they are shrewd marketers who are bloody good at scamming their customers. So you get hyperbolic online reviews like these:

"incredible cup cakes Red Velvet is incredible if you fancy one BUY 2!!! Trust me on this…" said BigBruv from Cardiff


"This place never fail [sic] to deliver. It’s the best place to hang out with a mate or two on a saturday afternoon, having a slice of cake.
My favorite is the Red Velvet cake. They are delicious!"
comments beequin from London


"I have heard that the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor come to buy cake here and I wouldn't be surprised!
They sell the most amazing cakes and cupcakes. The best are the red velvet cupcakes. This also comes in a full sized cake.
It is a sponge which is red, iced with the most delicious cream cheese icing I have ever tasted."

That's right dw27 from London it is a cake that is red.

Hold on.. what do you say? a cake that is red! ... you mean... NO! you don't say? someone has put red food colouring in a cake.
HOLD THE PHONE GUYS. Call the Times and hold the front page on the Wall Street Journal and while Murdoch's on the blower we'll get this in the Australian Sun.

Someone SOMEWHERE Has had the tenacity to put food colouring into some food!


I first encountered this scam about a year ago. Libby had reason to make some cupcakes to impress and she had heard of these great "Red Velvet" cupcakes.
Everyone said they were the best, "there must be some baking trick" she said. Some kind of secret ingredient..
I countered that this was silly and in fact they can't be that good chocolate cupcakes would be nicer. "But" our lovely lib said, "but everyone on the Internet says they're the best".."they cant just be ordinary cakes"

I gave in, there must be some trick I thought. Because, sometimes reluctantly, I usually trust Libby when it comes to cake.
She scoured one recipe book then purchased a new cupcake recipe book.
It didn't have a red-velvet recipe. She then forked out a bit more for the Humming-Bird Bakery recipe book. This book told her the secret. The trick. The hidden ingredient. The baker's special flick of the wrist that makes red velvet the top cupcake of the day.
It told her to make a cake and to put in to the mix some red food colouring.

I don't know why it's so disappointing but I just feel cheated. We eventually wound up in Portabello and got a black bottomed cupcake and a red-velvet. It was so red! It was like a cupcake had been slaughtered and bled onto another cupcake then covered
with frosting. Aesthetics aside the cupcake was under filled and over topped but that's ok as the cake (once you've had a swig of whisky to help you overcome the shock of it's cakey redness) is pretty dull and wouldn't hold up to close scrutiny if presented on its own. Cupcakes dry out quickly so it was our fault for carrying the cake all the way home from Portobello before tucking in; It was dry, but there should have been some flavour.
The icing is nice but if I want a cheesecake I'll buy a cheesecake thankyouverymuch.


As you may have gathered I have a general contempt of excessive food colouring. It's not big and it's not clever. Colouring foods unnecessarily was in its last throes when Fanny Craddock dyed hard boiled eggs blue in the 70's in an attempt to reinvigorate her image. Are you surprised that it was a total flop?

If you're still taken in by the red-velvet phenomenon, come to my house and I'll cook you a purple roast chicken and I hope you choke.

Smaller and Smaller // Faith No More

A little bit of news to start - Jonny has graduated! I think. I don't really know what process he has to go through to make him graduated (yay grammer) but I know that he's finished uni and his mark has been confirmed and he had his exhibition. Which was great fun, and I was very drunk.

Anyway to celebrate his Mum hosted a little do. She asked me and my Mum to do the sweets.


This was an exciting offer as I'd just bought a new book from Books for Cooks. If you are ever in the Portabello Road area I would say you should do to Books for Cooks more than you should go to the Hummingbird Bakery.

Anyway my new book is called Petit Fours and is just beautiful. I bought it for inspiration for not only food photography and styling, but interior inspiration too (that there is my guilty little indulgence that doesn't involve The Doctor).

The recipes in this book are brilliant. Definately aimed at the dinner party hosting crowd. The recipes are for bacthes of around 8-10. We made the lime meringue pies and the raspberry mousse brownies.


And I did some cute piping, which I was quite pleased with. The lime meringue pies were lovely and I plan to make lots more. The raspberry brownies were a bit trickier. As ever I couldn't tell when the brownie was done, so it was much dryer than it should have been. Mum made the mousse, and it was weird. Weird. Sort of grainy. I should read the recipe, that would probably explain why.


They all went down very well, and everyone said how nice they were. The main point of this post will be LOOK AT THE PIPING!!

Overnight Sensation // Raspberries

My brother - Glass Candle Grenades - is leaving to work in America. Anyone would think he's off forever the way my Mother is acting. He's having a last supper of roast beef followed by trifle. It seems the trifle is down to me. He's only off for about four to five months, I think, to work at Camp America.


I hate trifle. Cream is never really something I can get excited about. Nor is custard. If there is pie on offer, I'd much prefer to have pie with nothing else. My Father will put cream and custard on everything, and Oliver will just take the custard. All of it. Straight out of the tub.
But for me the combination of cream and custard and jelly and sponge is just ick. No. Why do it?


So I wasn't very excited about this dessert until Jonny gave me the challenge of not using a recipe. So I have planned a raspberry and almond trifle. And because the recipe is mine: I can post it. I will also defend my use of shop bought custard as it's Oliver's absolute favourite, and any custard I make would never be good enough.
 It's made up of five elements and takes two days to make so if you're about to embark on "libby's awesome raspberry and almond trifle" make sure you give yourself time to plan...


Libby's Awesome Raspberry and Almond Trifle

Genoise Sponge
115g caster sugar
4 eggs
60g plain flour
55g ground almonds
55g butter – melted and cold

Heat the oven to gas mark five and prepare an eight inch tin.
Combine sugar and eggs – put on a bain-marie until the egg mixture reaches roughly 40 degrees. Take off the bain-marie and whisk until cold and ribboning. The mix should look creamier than when you started, and should be thick enough to leave a pattern when you drizzle some back into the mix; you should be able to complete a figure of eight before it starts to sink back in. It will take about 10 minutes by hand and a little less with an electric whisk.
Fold in the flour and ground almonds and then add the melted butter.
Put in the tin and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Amaretto Syrup

50g Water
50g Sugar
25g Amaretto

Boil the sugar and water for 30 seconds. Put in a metal bowl to cool.
Allow to cool completely and then add the Amaretto.
Keep in a sealed container

Raspberry Jelly

250g Raspberry pureé (I used frozen raspberries blended with a bit of water)
250 Stock Syrup (half sugar, half water)
12.5 g gelatine
A few whole raspberries

Soak gelatine in cold water until nice and floppy. Remove from the water and set aside.Boil up the syrup, then add to raspberry pureé, then whisk in the gelatine until it is fully dissolved. Add some whole raspberries if desired.

1 tub of shop bought fresh custard
A couple of tubs of Whipping Cream
Flaked Almonds for decoration
Fresh raspberries for decoration


Assembly:

Day 1
Make Amaretto syrup. Bake genoise sponge. Remove from tin and soak with Amaretto syrup. When cool slice up and layer in the bottom of trifle bowl. You may have some left over.
Make the jelly and pour over the sponge pieces. Leave outside for a while until nearly cool, then cover and move to fridge to set overnight.

Day 2
In the morning pour the custard over the jelly – leave uncovered in fridge.
When it's time to serve, whip up the cream until just stiff and heap on top of the custard. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and fresh raspberries. Serve immediately.

Brown Eyed Girl // Van Morrison

Jonny and I went to Portabello Road yesterday. I wanted a suitcase and a tea cup, Jonny wanted a flannel shirt. You tell me. Anyway. We both failed in our objectives. You'd be hard pushed to find a suitcase under two hundred pounds, and all the crockery was manky.
Jonny's ideal flannel shirt he'd already seen on a friend, so seeing as it had already been sold I think finding it for sale would be a challenge.

As soon as we got off the tube at Notting Hill Gate it was manic. Oh the crowds. And we were early! We walked from Notting Hill to Westbourne Park and it took forever. It was nicely broken up with stall browsing and a mandatory visit to the Hummingbird Bakery. They were queueing out the door when we arrived, but I was determined.

The service was remarkably brilliant, fast and polite. Though the people behind me obviously had no concept of personal space and kept crowding. Chill out people! There is enough cake for everyone! You will get your turn.

At first I ordered a slab of frosted brownie, a black bottomed cupcake and a carrot cupcake. But then a fresh tray of Red Velvet appeared so I changed my mind on the carrot. Jonny has requested to review the Red Velvet, so I'll leave that to him.


We sat outside on the curb to eat the brownie. God it was good. So close to the brownie perfection we seem to be on a never-ending mission for.
Jonny said 'The most important thing about a brownie that has been cooked wll is it makes you wonder ''has this been cooked?' '' which I suppose sums up his tastes. For me it's winning for it's use of whole hazelnuts and crisp top and gooey middle.

I'd bought a black bottomed cupcake to see what cake/cheesecake ratio it had, as I'm never sure if I've put too much or too little on when I bake them. I don't know if it was just this individual cupcake, but it was greatly lacking in cheesecake. The cream cheese frosting made up for it a little, but the cake was dry. And when I bake them I don't frost them, so this seemed really over-sweet.


I think I am arrogant enough to say that I much prefer the ones I make to the one I bought. Wow. I bake a Hummingbird cupcake better than they can.

All in all I feel like it was a little bit of a wasted trip. I had a great time mooching with Jonny. It was perfect in that respect. But I do wish we'd headed to Pimlico to try out the newly opened dessert bar at William Curley.
Soon though. Soon.

China in Your Hand // T'Pau

I can't remember if I said before, but I've been asked to do some cakes for a friends wedding. Jonny has been asked to do the photography too. I always said that I wanted to steer well clear of weddings and angry brides. But this is entirely different. I can't imagine them stressing out too much about their wedding.

At some point in last week we took six flavours of cakes for them to taste. They said that they looked how they imagine they should, and the sprinkles went down well. Much to my happiness. Jonny had earlier disagreed on the sprinkle front.


We gave them 6 flavours. Chocolate, lemon, vanilla, sea salt caramel, carrot and orange and coffee. The flavours they chose (and probably the ones I would too) were chocolate and lemon, and another to be confirmed, which will either be carrot or vanilla. They're having a meal with 3 courses (including dessert) so the cakes can't be too sickly or heavy.

It was really nerve-wracking putting my cakes up for judgement like that, but they were very polite, and I think that if they hated them they wouldn't want them at the wedding and they'd tell me. I hope. They''ve asked for 150 anyway, so I best get planning.

I have a couple of obsessions, the first being obviously sugar and everything to do with it. The second is stationary. I can spend hours in paperchase touching notebooks and paper. I'm a bit weird. But these two obsession happily collided when Paperchase introduced a whole cakey range!! I bought as much as I could, including a completely useless minature tea set. And then I had to buy a new cake tin from lakeland so I could bake mini things to go on it. The results follow.