10/07/10 Double chocolate mega cake

This is a double chocolate sponge cake with chocolate buttercream icing that I made for my niece and her friends joint 13th birthday party.
The cake was 8 inches wide and about 5inches high with edible glitter polka dot decorations. I piped 'Daisy - Mae' and 'Megan' on top then added gold glitter.
Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the inside.

17/06/10 Gooseberry, polenta and elderflower cake

I made this cake for my friend Rosannas birthday. I had picked some elderflowers the day before and made some cordial, so I thought I would make a cake based on this. I used left over elderflowers to decorate the cake. It probably wilted by the time it was opended!






Above is the final package of cake and below the cordial.

Happy Birtday - chocolate beetroot bundt

I have had am amazing Bundt tin for a while now and I've been waiting for a reason to use it. This volcano birthday cake for my friend Claire was my excuse. I have had a lot of delicious beetroot from the Fern Verrow the Biodynamic veg stall I work on and Claire loves chocolate so I mashed a couple of recipes together to create this... it's low fat and very good for you, with only a couple of ounces of fat in. It's just a shame I can't spell.

Very hard to blog!

I apologise profusely for my silence over the past few months. I have racked up quite a few things to post. However I am currently taking a sabbatical involving a broken wrist (see picture). This has resulted in a ridiculously large cast and the inability to bake, write and wash my face properly. The pot comes off on the 10th May, so hopefully my limp wrist will start to recover quickly after then! x

13/02/2010 Alternative Press Fair CAKES

I did a food stand at The Alternative Press fair this weekend. It's been a while since I've done a one off event and this one was savoury as well as sweet! Everything I made was vegetarian or vegan. I had the full run of the kitchen at St Aloysius social club near Euston.



The sweet clockwise from top left: Victoria sponge cake, gluten free dark chocolate brownie, vegan apple and mincemeat slices, vegan carrot cake, lemon and almond cake and Welsh cinnamon cake (see below). I made this from a recipe in English Food my Jane Grigson. There are many, many things I want to make from this book as there are so many regional and national deserts that have probably been forgotten by all but a few.



Savoury: Roast butternut squash, chickpea and feta pasties, onion bhaji, raita and mango chutney in a cumin flatbread (all hand made), and (below) vegan roast beetroot and red onion with houmous in a handmade cumin flatbread.

06/02/2010 Gateaux Basque

It was a big birthday for my biggest sister on 03/02/2010 and we all went out for a meal to celebrate. I was unsure what to cake to bake for her, as the last few times I've been home I've been forced to make a lemon and almond cake because everyone loves them so much. But I was determined not to pander to my nephew and niece too much! I have been on holiday for 4 summers now with The Jones' and my sister Claire and 3 of those have been in France. The first year we went Claire and I camped outside The Jones' static caravan. It rained a lot, we played lots of 'bullshit' and we ate lots. One time Claire and I came back with a 'Gateaux Basque'. We had no idea what we had bought, but it looked delicious and as we were in Basque country it seemed very fitting. After tea, we got it out on our little camp table and Chris said he wouldn't like it because it had cherries in. Sally, Claire and I are not the fussiest people when it comes to cake but WOW. It was a dense large crumbed cake with cherries and custard sandwiched in between. Chris had some, decided it 'wasn't that bad' and we pro ceded to eat a lot if not all of the cake. Needless to say I was very excited when I came across a recipe in Floyd on France.



The recipe I found had no fruit in but if there had been some rhubarb in my mums garden then I would have put some in. Above is the gateaux in its naked state.



I thought icing sugar on top would be good so I made an 'S' stencil and coated the top. I then used this template to put the candles in. I also made some meringue with the left over egg whites.

27/01/2010 Health buns

I am always trying to ruduce the amount of things in my baking drawer, but it never seems to go down. These muffins were an attempt to use up the odds and ends of packets, plus I was going to Sanctuary Spa with my sister Claire and I said I would make us a packed lunch. I used a recipe from a BBC cakes and bakes book that my other sister Sally had bought for me. It was very low fat, using only 2oz butter and no sugar (honey instead). It was supposed to have loads of berries in, but I still have a massive tub of mincemeat that needs using up, so I put that in for fruit, plus a few brandy soaked raisins. Delicious.

25/01/2010 Burns night

I have had a vegetarian haggis in the freezer for a few months after it was reduced at my local organic food shop. Last year we did burns night at my old house and I got no haggis, this year one was waiting! This meal was much less authentic than the one last year, and much more sloppy.


Clockwise from the top: vegatarian haggis, red cabbage with apple and balsamic vinegar, mustard mash with kale, roast parsnipsand onion gravy with peas in all over the top. The gouls below made me do it!

11/01/2010 My birthday! No.2

I always complain that no one makes me a birthday cake. I am so ungrateful! But this year my friend Claire (we used to do the Columbia Road cake stall together) made me this rat inspired bejeweled heart shaped masterpiece. It was delicious Victoria sponge with jam and buttercream. Why rat? Below is a photo of the rat mother-with-rat-babies that Claire made me for my present. Nuf said.

05/01/2010 My birthday!

This is the spread I put on for my party. The food was savoury and sweet. I made some cumin flatbread with 4 dips; houmous, beetroot, yoghurt and mustard, roast garlic, onion & yoghurt and black bean).



For the sweet stuff I made last chance mince pies. The above picture was the vegan plate which included gingernuts and below is the buttery plate where I made mincemeat and almond rolls as well as pies.



Below are some ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) biscuits. I made these for the first time a couple of months before my birthday to use up some ingredients in my too full baking drawer and thought they were so delicious that I should share them with my friends. I put walnuts in the first batch I made but these are the more traditional type.



This stolen was the triumph of the evening. I used Dan Lepards recipe with my left over home made marzipan. I had wanted to make it in time for Christmas but was too tired and lazy! So made it for the party instead. I haven't made it before, but it was well worth it and I think it should become a regular part of my Christmas baked goods package that I give my family.

Lemon meringue pie 12/10/09

Where to begin? I wanted to make lemon curd, so I did. Then I thought I would make meringue pie for the stall, so I decided to go all out and make the meringue from the Baker and Spice book where you melt the sugar slightly. I disregarded their warnings about needing an electric whisk, and hand whisked it. But to no avail (or light, white fluffiness). So I had no pie for the stall and was left with the base of the pie.
My friends Jill and Daniel were coming over for dinner and I made this...



Needless to say i made the meringue the way my mum had taught me (the normal way!) and it was delicious.

Chocolate Guinness Cake 21/11/09

This is the cake I made for my brother in laws 40th birthday.
I used to make it a lot for the cake stall at Columbia Road. It is the Nigella recipe from feast and is really easy because you can do it all in a saucepan!
When I worked at Cafe Oto I amended the recipe and make it with Pitfield Porter instead - so any stout would work wonderfully. I might try it with Newcastle brown...



My friend Jo recently asked me to make the cake for one of her friends as a birthday present and I remembered how amazing it looked with loads of white candles on top.

15/11/09 Chestnut, celeriac and potato pie

Some friends were coming around for dinner and I had been wanting to do two things; make rough puff pasty and use the chestnuts that I'd bought. So I decided to do a pie.
Lots of the cooking and baking that I do for other people is rooted in selfishness. I want to try out a new technique, or have some things that need using up and nine times out of ten these things turn up as presents.
Here is the shiny, pasty loveliness before I baked it.



Bang! B-E-A-utiful out of the oven. I was very pleased with myself.



I sliced the potato and celeriac and crumbled the chestnuts in between the layers. I had some left over French onion soup and I made a bechamel and added the soup. This was the sauce in the pie. This is how it turned out on the inside.



To accompany the pie I cooked red cabbage and apple with balsamic vinegar and made a puy lentil salad with mustard vinegrette. All plates were emptied!

05/01/2005 The root of baking

This is the cake my mum made me for my 22nd birthday. She taught me all I know and encouraged me to bake when I was little. I used to be wowed by her beating arm - so fast! I think I've caught up to her now.

Cake stall signage

27/07/2008 First cake stall at Colombia Road

Eleanor, Claire and I had been offered the opportunity to run this stall by our friend James who works on the coffee stall opposite. We were very excited. Below you can see the urban background to the stall.



In the photo below you can see the inspired 'CAKE STALL' sign.
I think we made about thirty quid each!

05/05/2007 Rhubarb and ginger cake

I adapted a Nigel Slater recipe to make this cake and because I'm silly, I didn't write the exact recipe down so have never been able to repeat it quite like this first time.
When I made it I was a little too eager and took it out of the tin too soon so it broke and one third fell on the floor. My flatmates were more than pleased to eat this bit. The rest was then eaten on a bench in Tring by 4 greedy girls.