Mary Berry's Chocolate Chip and Vanilla Marble Cake

"And now, the end is here, it's time to face the final curtain....I did it my waaaaaaay".  Poor Frank is probably spinning in his grave if he's listening to me wailing My Way as I type.  Here I am, a year on and 366 recipes tried, tested and blogged about.

Boxed up and ready for nursery

I'm on holiday from work this week so I let Miss A choose the final recipe.  Despite starting out with the mindset of changing the way my family eat, I made the rules elastic enough that I could indulge my new-found passion for baking over the past year.  With a rainy day ahead, it seemed the fitting way to end the blog - doing something with Miss A who has also discovered a passion for baking this year.

At the weekend she made a cake under her grandmother's expert eye for my mum's boss.  He still won't believe that she did pretty much everything herself apart from putting it into the oven and taking it out.  And today, she eagerly participated in the marble cake making.

Expert drizzling by my two-year-old

I must admit to being a little impatient at some of the things she's picked up from CBeebies such as the sugar-shuffling, big and small mountains and scooping and sliding with 'John and Millie' the spoons, but I'm so proud that she can work with big numbers, crack eggs, knows what a lemon zester is for and is aware of the perils of the kitchen already.

Now the need to do something new every day has evaporated, we will be practising making all manner of things from my the two childrens cookbooks that I own to try and broaden her horizons and repertoire further.  I only hope this year has been a good experience for her.

As for the cake, the tag line says that "children particularly enjoy the fun of making marble cakes".  That was true this morning.  It didn't do much for my blood pressure though as the kitchen was marbled with chocolate cake mix.  After a good spring clean, we covered the cooled cake in white and dark chocolate drizzle and the kitchen was once again marbled in chocolate.

This was one of Berry's really easy bakes - an all in one mix which you then divide into vanilla and chocolate.  It bakes really well and is probably pretty failsafe.  Although it makes masses of cake.  I managed to divide it into 28 generous pieces.  Miss A wanted to make it to take to nursery for her teachers but there's enough to share around all her friends too if they divide the slices into two for the children.

The recipe is from 100 Cakes and Bakes which I bought to take part in the Weekly Bake Off - something I'll hopefully be doing a bit more now this year is over.

I can't find the recipe online to share, but the book is only about a fiver on Amazon and well worth it.  I will say that I preferred Dan Lepard's Chocolate Crumb Marble Cake with its indulgent top, but for speed, this is definitely a great bake to make.

So that's it.  Well nearly.  There'll be one more post some time this week when I answer questions from The Last Post - feel free to drop by and add a comment if you have any questions you'd like to ask me about this year.  Otherwise, thanks for reading!

Mary Berry's Steak Diane

Just five more recipes to go and I'm staying with the mothership for the weekend.  It was the last weekend that I've had to do battle with the 'I need to cook for my blog' issue and I thought I'd warm her up to the idea by offering to cook what used to be her favourite meal.  I don't know if it still is (I forgot to ask and can't be bothered to walk downstairs to check).  But I remember being fascinated as a child, on rare meals out to The Four Horseshoes in Nursling, by the waiter burning my mum's tea at the table whilst everyone stared.

The recipe comes from Dame Mary's Complete Cookbook.  According to my mother, the Steak Diane connoisseur  it's not authentic because it doesn't have cream in it.  A quick Google reveals that Gordon and AWT use cream.  The Wikipedia description doesn't mention cream.  There aren't that many 'sleb chef versions of it on the web - probably because it's considered naff as its a seventies throw back.

Despite its grand French name, the sauce is simple enough to make.  Sautee some onions; add that French classic Worcestershire sauce; season with parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper and then pour in some flaming brandy.  At the brandy lighting point I had to remind my mother that I am 35 and quite capable of setting light to alcohol by myself without supervision.  She's probably right not to trust me as I nearly set the extractor fan alight at Christmas when I flambeed the Christmas pudding (although she doesn't know this as she was too busy acquainting herself with the wine).

The meal went down well with the family although I found the sauce a little too oily for my taste.  I appreciate the sunflower oil was to stop the butter burning but I think I could've gotten away with one tablespoon rather than two.

Four more days and counting!

Mary Berry's Crab and Sweetcorn Soup

Next on the list of things-I-have-to-use-up-before-next-Tuesday-because-I'll-never cook-with-it-again was a tin of crab meat.  I bought it months ago with the intention of making Leith's Chilli Crab Noodles one night when I needed a store cupboard meal.  That was about eight months ago.  Obviously being tinned, it wasn't too much of a trauma and it didn't take up much space.  But it was sitting there looking too much like a spare can of tuna and it had to go before I decided I wanted a tuna jacket, only to find that all I had was crab meat.

I'd eaten crab a sum total of once before in my life.  That was 25 years ago and then it was only the tiniest morsel as I found it too 'sweet'.  We were on a family trip to Cancale in France - it's a haven of seafood that I'd love to visit now I'm older and would appreciate a plate of fresh-off-the-boat Fruits de Mer but back then all I wanted to do was crack open everyone's langoustines and was then resolutely horrified at the French lady who sat on the side of an oyster bed, picking them out, shucking them and knocking them back like she was doing tequila shots.  It seemed both gross (I was 10) and barbaric at the same time.

The crab dish wasn't at all planned for today.  I had every intention of making Cathryn's savoury strudel from this week's bake off but stuff happened at work and I ended up being dragged along to a free lunchtime Mexican fiesta.  They say there's no such thing as a free lunch.  When you have to walk a mile down hill and then back up it in four inch heels, you certainly pay the price.  But it was worth it to spend time out in the fresh air and laugh at the management team who - replete with fake 'taches - looked like the band from the Doritos ad.

So the soup was the antithesis to the excess of mass cooked, watery fajitas and slightly chewy mystery meat tacos from lunch time.  Storecupboard fodder and simple enough to make when you're also juggling cooking a steak and mushroom ciabatta and fish fingers with Peppa Pig spaghetti.  As I was making it for one I used a whole tin of crab meat so it was much thicker and bulkier than it would have been for two.  The flavours were good although I added some chilli to give it a little heat and that worked really well.

The recipe I used came from my trusty Mary Berry's Complete Cook Book (the original version) but you can find it through this Google Books link.

Lil Ms Squirrel's Cheat's Blinis

There have been accusations in the past that I am rubbish of letting go of things.  Whilst I like to protest that this is untrue, the last couple of days has made me realise that it's time to face up to my denial and admit that I am unable to let go of the Olympic Food Challenge.

It was just nineteen short days in length and yet, here I am two days after, still mourning its passing.  I must adopt a 'Feel the Fear...' approach to this and do some kind of ritual with candles and consign the OFC to a happy chapter in my past.  But for now, there's still a smidgen of caviar in my fridge and it would be a shame to let it go to waste, which is why I found myself troughing on blinis this past lunchtime.

A blini to the uninitiated is a Russian drop scone, made using buckwheat flour and yeast and served with caviar.  You also see it commonly served with prawns and smoked salmon too.  As I had the leftovers from Sunday's Danish open sandwiches to play with, it seemed like the obvious choice for a fast, tasty and posh working-from-home lunch.

Having run out of yeast at the weekend though, I faced the dilemma of whether or not the recipe would work without the extra lift.  Then I remembered an oft-used trick for pancake recipes that require a little extra bubble in them.  Fizzy water.  Or as Miss A calls it 'Funny Water'.  With some baking powder and whipped egg white, this worked a treat giving me soft, light pancakes which were perfect topped with some Philly and the aforementioned caviar and prawns.

And because they originate from Russia, I will plaster a Russian flag on the post because I can.  It's all part of the letting go.  Now I just need to come up with a non-country-specific recipe tomorrow to break the flag-waving habit.  And if I'm struggling to let go of the OFC, how on earth am I going to let go of my own blog in just 43 days time???

This is how I made them.

Makes six blinis (based on a Mary Berry recipe)

• 35g plain flour
• 35g wholemeal flour (use buckwheat if you can get it for the nutty flavour)
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 medium egg, separated
• 55ml skimmed milk, warmed
• 25ml fizzy water
• pinch of table salt



Flag addict alert! Russia

• spray oil

• caviar, prawns, lemon wedges (I forgot this in the pic!) and cream cheese or sour cream to serve

1. Whisk the egg yolk, water and milk together then combine with the flours, salt and baking powder to a smooth batter.
2. Whip the egg white until it forms stiff peaks.  Fold into the batter carefully.  Decant into a measuring jug.
3. Spray a frying pan with the spray oil and heat over a medium heat.  Pour the batter into 2-3 inch diameter circles, spaced 1-2 inches apart.  Cook for two minutes until the bottom is set and and bubbles start to form on the surface.  Carefully flip over and cook for a further minute.  Slide onto a warmed plate and continue cooking until all the batter is used.
4. Serve with the accompaniments.

Mary Berry's Provencal Chicken

"Why is there a whole chicken in the fridge?" was the first thing the husband said to me today at around 11am.  "Because the Ocado man bought it with him" I replied.  The husband eyed me suspiciously.  We never have whole chickens.  It was dead, plucked and shrink-wrapped, I hasten to add.

Poor perspective - this was the Pamela Anderson of chickens

The husband doesn't "do" roast dinner.  We might have roast beef once a year after which he complains that there's too much washing up and that he shouldn't have eaten such a heavy meal at 7pm.  Oh and I forgot the bit where he scrapes the gravy off of every bit of meat, searching for the slightest hint of blush in the flesh.  He needn't worry - I now microwave his so it's as tough as old shoe leather (such a waste).  I then announce that roast dinner is too stressful and I will never cook it again.  A year passes, we forget the fuss and the whole drama plays out all over again.  Just like Groundhog day.  Except he's a bit balder and I'm a little greyer.

So when I finally admitted we were having roast chicken for tea, he rolled his eyes like Miss A does when I tell her she's got to eat what the grown-ups are eating and I know she'd much rather have a chocolate Philly and peanut butter sandwich.  This set the atmosphere for the rest of the day.  A bit of sulking.  Lots of suspicion.  But he's the one who's supposedly on a health kick and when he asked me yesterday why I only feed him stuff from Tiers Four and Five of Michi's Ladder, he got a short shrift because he won't eat anything from the first three tiers.

In essence, the recipe is for a pot roast chicken in a red pepper, tomato and carrot sauce.  There was nothing for him to not like.  True, he doesn't 'do vegetables, but I figured it was pretty much like a fresh version of Heinz tomato soup (overly sweet and orange) which he loves.

It's pretty simple to make.  Stick everything in a casserole, cook for an hour and a half, blitz the cooking juices and carrots, carve and serve.  A few roasties on the side and veg for me, peas for him (peas aren't a vegetable according to the husband) and we were done.

Ready for the oven

I put the plate in front of him, served his sauce on the side in case he didn't like it.  He tentatively dipped the second bit of meat into the pot and asked why I couldn't make all of our chicken as soft and juicy as this.  I didn't know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or slap him.  I've been on tenterhooks all day.  Despite him saying he'll eat whatever I put in front of him, no matter how much he rolls his eyes, it still stresses me out and I'd prepped both regular gravy and a ham and cheese sandwich just in case.  Phew!

This now means that I will have to find lots of other recipes where the chicken is poached rather than baked (his technique, not mine).  But hey, I've got a tick in the box for this blog.  I got him eating something new.  Result.


Because it was only the three of us, there was so much sauce left, that I've saved it for lunch tomorrow to eat as a soup.  Which is a good excuse for me to make Dan Lepard's soup bread from today's Guardian as tomorrow's recipe.  Double result.

And I then realised that today is also Bastille Day so I've also ticked the 'National Celebrations' box with this recipe.  Without even trying.  Yay me.

Recipe - serves 4-6

• 1.8kg free range chicken (without giblets)
• 350ml fresh chicken stock
• 50g carrots, diced if large and whole (I used baby Chanteray ones)
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 bulb garlic
• small bunch parsley
• 1/4 tsp dried basil
• 1/4 tsp dried oregano
• 250ml red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• Maldon sea salt and cayenne pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan.
2. Separate the garlic cloves and peel half.  Place the unpeeled garlic cloves in the chicken's cavity along with most of the parsley (reserve a few sprigs for the garnish).
3. Season the chicken well with sea salt and cayenne pepper
4. Put the chicken in a lidded casserole dish.  Arrange the peeled garlic cloves, red pepper and carrots around the chicken and pour over the stock.
5. Cover and bake for 1.5 hours or until the juices run clear when a skewer is poked into one of the legs.
6. Whilst the chicken is baking, boil the vinegar until reduced to about 2-3 tbsp.  Put into a blender with the basil, oregano and tomato puree.
7. When the chicken is cooked, lift it out onto a plate and pour the cooking juices and vegetables into the blender.  Blitz until you have a smooth sauce.  If it's a little runny, put in a saucepan and simmer for a few minutes until reduced.
8. Carve the chicken and pour the sauce over, garnishing with the remaining parsley.

Mary Berry's Victoria Sandwich

This was an unplanned recipe for this holiday and I picked it for two reasons. Number one that we are going on a serious health kick after the holidays and cake is banned (unless I'm baking it for someone else) and I've never made a traditional Vicky sponge before; and number two because I wanted to try out Stork Baking Liquid.

This post is not sponsored in any way by the makers of Stork.

I wanted to try it as it saves having to remember to get the butter out of the fridge when you have a baking emergency. Since having Miss A I only use butter or pure oil in cake because of the manufactured chemical history of margerine so this is a bit of a side step for me. As we're on holiday without a mixer it seemed like a simple way to make a cake without too much beating.

As I'm typing from my phone whilst hubby is driving through the sodden Highlands, I will keep this short and update when we're home.

The bake was very yellow compared to a butter- or margerine-based cake. The sponge was much damper on the bottom than I would've expected - more what I'd expect from an oil-based recipe (like a carrot cake).

However it was lovely and light and tasted good (thanks to some expensive vanilla bean paste) with a moist crumb.


It is a good store-cupboard stand by, however, I much prefer Dan Lepard's method of just using semi-melted butter.  Over the course of this blog, I've tried loads of ways to quickly soften butter.

One involves pouring boiling water into a pyrex bowl then removing the water, and placing the butter under the inverted bowl to let it soften.  Didn't work.  I've left it on the radiator in mid-winter only to forget it until I found the spaniel lapping at a suspicious yellow puddle on the kitchen floor.  Grating it works to some degree - the heat from your hand whilst grating helps even more, but if you're using a lot of grated butter in cold weather, it just reverts back to a uniform ball of butter.  But since hearing of Dan's method of having roughly 60% solid to 40% liquid butter - which you can do by microwaving it on medium (and watching it like a hawk), I've managed to get around the problem of remembering to take my butter out in advance of making a sponge cake.  In fact, I guess it's just like using this oil-based product but with a better colour and flavour.

As for my opinion of Ms Berry's recipe? Well its a standard sponge recipe with even quantities of ingredients making it simple to scale. And its one the WI would approve of as its only filled with jam and doesn't have cream. I've heard they disapprove of anyone other than the gorgeous James Martin doing that.

I used her recipe from 100 Bakes and Cakes, but there are loads of variations she's penned all over the web.  This is the version from the Telegraph which uses the same quantities as the book.

Mary Berry's Fruited Tea Bread

This post was going to be about Mary Berry's Barabrith.  But then I figured I might get a few raised eyebrows from my Scottish followers because I'm holidaying North of the Border.  Thankfully, Mary saved the day because her 100 Cakes and Bakes book has a recipe for Fruited Tea Bread.  Which is exactly the same recipe as Barabrith, except for one using regular tea and sultanas, the other uses mixed fruit and Earl Grey tea.  The quantities for everything is absolutely the same.

Sadly not my lovely spotty tin

I picked this recipe as I needed something to sustain us on our journey tomorrow.  We're off even further up North and have a four hour car trip ahead of us (excluding traffic jams and pit stops).  So fruited tea bread seemed like something that would travel well.

Updated 5 July 2012 @ 20:11

I bought a bag of Tesco's luxury dried fruit to make this - in addition to the usual staples of sultanas and raisins it also included pineapple, apricots and cherries - and it makes for a more interesting bake than a regular teabread like the Barrabrith.  I know Morrisons do a similar bag of dried fruit as I use it for my Christmas cakes.  So do Waitrose although it's a fair bit more expensive.

The bake was a little paler than it should have been because I only had golden caster to hand instead of the required muscavado, but it didn't detract from the look or the flavour.  It took 50% longer to cook than stated, but it may be because I was using an unfamiliar oven and I was a bit paranoid about it not being a fan oven and burning the cake.

It was nice and moist with or without butter.  A good, solid crowd pleaser.  But then aside from the odd one or two, my family generally never complain about being given cake.

Our lovely land lady also popped by the day before this to drop off some homemade millionaire's shortbreads, presented in the lovely Cath Kidston tin in the picture.  I so wanted to take it home with me as it would be great for styling pictures for the blog.  Sadly I don't have any loveliness like that in my day-to-day life.  I must buy me some!

A couple of other asides.  When posting from an Android phone, it autocorrects 'fruited' to 'fried'  I had a few tweets asking about the novelty that is Mary Berry's Fried Tea Bread.  And sheep are very partial to slightly stale fruited tea bread.  As are chickens, peacocks and Shetland Ponies.  And toddlers who are given the stale fruit bread to share with the animal neighbours.

Mary Berry's Salade Nicoise

One of our senior managers' favourite phrases is 'Every day is a school day'.  And today, I've learned why hardboiled eggs sometimes stick to their shells when you try to peel them.  I only learned this after nearly ripping my poor little boiled egg to shreds as I was trying to assemble my salad.  It didn't make for a very photogenic picture (I will never be a good food stylist anyway!), but it was tasty, nevertheless.

I noted down to make a Nicoise a few weeks ago when rummaging through my Leith's book for ideas.  Given the sunny weather over the weekend, it seemed an appropriate choice for tea tonight.  And thankfully the awful grey, wet morning gave way to a lovely sunny evening which meant eating salad didn't seem like so much of a bad choice.

There are so many variations on a Nicoise, that I plumped for Mary's version just because the book was close to hand at tea time.  All classic recipes have their variations.  I found some use potatoes (I didn't go with this as I'm trying to watch my calorie intake), others used sun-dried tomatoes (in all honesty I would've preferred this as I don't like fresh tomatoes, but again it was all about the calories).  There are also many different opinions on the dressing.

It may not be beautiful but it tasted good!

What I knew from somewhere deep in the depths of my brain, however was that is based around tuna, has  french beans and black olives and then other random salad vegetables thrown in.  Even the tuna is a contentious issue.  From the five recipes I looked at, four used tinned and one used fresh.  I would've preferred fresh, but because I keep buying tuna when I see it on special in the supermarket and putting it in different places in the store cupboard, a recent stocktake revealed seven tins so it seemed madness to waste more money buying fresh.

Some recipes used Cos lettuce, one used Iceberg, one used spinach.  I plumped for Little Gem as they were on offer in the supermarket.  Because I was after traditional here, I braved both fresh tomatoes and anchovies.  Mary adds cucumber to hers.  I went with this purely because I love cucumber and it's really low in fat (although I'm not sure it's traditional).  She uses a mild white onion.  I had half a red one left over so in that went, rather than wasting another onion.

And then the egg.  I don't like hardboiled eggs when the yolk is set.  Never have.  I love the white bit, but I hate the powdery texture of a fully set egg yolk.  Especially if it's got that nasty grey ring around the outside.  So for me, it was important to have my egg with the white just set enough but the yolk still runny enough to dip soldiers in.

I already knew to add salt to the water to make sure that the egg doesn't burst.  And you can stop the nasty grey ring by running the cooked eggs under cold water (not environmentally friendly!).  I also tend to cook my eggs from cold - I've figured out that 15 minutes over a medium heat works best (or about 9 minutes if you put them in boiling water).  Being environmentally friendly on the washing up front, I also through my beans into the same pan at the 10 minute mark.

Unfortunately, however, trying to peel my really fragile boiled egg (remember the middle isn't set so it's really delicate), I was disappointed to find the shell was ripping off bits of white with it.   I persevered and made it look just about respectable enough for the picture.  The minute tea was over (and I'd recovered from having to eat both tomatoes and anchovies in one sitting) I was Googling a solution to the problem.

And it turns out that my eggs were too fresh.  Apparently they need to be a few days old.  The trouble with that is, how can you tell with shop-bought eggs?  Yes, they have an expiry date.  And yes, horror of horrors, before I started this blog and got through a mountain of eggs each week, I would often use eggs that were a week or two out of date (and I'm still here to tell the tale!).  But how can you work out how long has elapsed between it being laid and ending up in my shopping trolley?

So next time I want really good hard boiled eggs (a rare occurrence anyway), I will make sure I use some that are near their expiry date rather than ones I've just bought.  Or just peel really carefully and know that I'll have ugly looking (but great-tasting) eggs.

As for the recipe, I deviated a bit from Mary's instructions.  And so I'd suggest just doing a bit of research and picking a recipe that works for you.  I really liked the meal, even with the fresh tomatoes but I think I'd try with the sun-dried ones next time for the intense taste.  And potatoes on the side because I'm still hungry.  Blooming diet!

Updated: Mary Berry's Malt Loaf

I made a bit of a schoolgirl error when doing the shopping this week.  I forgot to buy a malt loaf.  I'm a failure of a mother.  You see the routine on Sundays now is that Miss A and I (sorry, I don't care if it's grammatically incorrect - I was brought up to say whoever and I, whoever and me just sounds wrong to my ears) go 'fimming'.  She doesn't like getting out of the pool again so to avoid a tantrum, I have to warn her ten minutes before hand and then make a variety of promises to smooth the transition to home.

Promises include babyccino, doing craft when we get home, walking the dogs and most importantly the post-swim snack of malt loaf.  But of course, because I shopped in a real shop on Friday, I had nobody to remind me that malt loaf is something I should automatically put in my trolley like Ocado normally do.  Dilemma.  Even if we made it out of the pool tantrum free, a total melt down would ensue in the changing room if there was no malt loaf.  And that would just be me, from not having anything to distract Miss A with whilst I attempted to change from cossie to fully clothed in thirty seconds flat (about the time it takes her to work out how to undo the door lock and escape)

Thankfully, because it's summer and we have cream curtains in the bedroom (not my choice), I was awake the very second it got light this morning.  The curtains are a bone of contention.  We spent months trying to find some to complement our red colour scheme in our lounge.  Four months after finally settling on some, we went to buy a new sofa and the husband would only buy it in a horrible lime green colour so we had to redecorate the entire room.  The curtains got moved to the bedroom and now, allow light to pour in, unfettered.  Within the first day or so of this (two summers ago), I bought made to measure blackout blinds.  They're still in their box waiting for him to fit them (he doesn't trust me with power tools).

Just add lashings of butter

My theory is that it's a reaction to being born on the shortest day of the year.  I need total darkness to sleep.  If it's light, I'm awake. This will mean I'll manage about two hours sleep when we head up to Scotland next month as it barely gets dark that far north in the middle of June.

Luckily for the malt loaf situation, this meant that I was able to get up at stupid o'clock this morning, whip up one of Dame Mary's finest, stick it in the oven and as it takes an hour to bake, I popped out to the garage for a cheeky 4.5 mile run on the treadmill whilst it was doing it's thang.  Just don't tell the husband - he'll freak that I dared put the oven on and leave it unattended.

Freshly showered, I took the rather pale looking loaf (well paler than that well-known shop-bought version) out of the oven and set it to cool, just in time for Miss A to wake up ready for the day.  I hope that she doesn't take after me on the being awake the second it's light front!

The recipe says the loaf is best eaten a couple of days after making but as I had to use it pretty much straight away, I'm not sure it will last that long.  As I only have one 1lb tin, I only made half the quantity but will definitely invest in a second tin and bake double next time.  Miss A loved it, the husband loves it and the bit I tried was nice although I think it needed a touch of salt to cut through the sweetness.  One thing Ms Berry doesn't do is stipulate whether to use salted or unsalted butter so I figure next time I make it, I'll try adding a half teaspoon.

I would also like to try replacing a little of the flour with some wholemeal to make it healthier.   Of course, that will need to be finely tested because the whole point of malt loaf is that it's squidgy - which this was, although less so than the commercially produced version.

Having seen the banana malt loaves in the supermarket, I'm wondering if using one in this recipe might work.  Probably a good use of frozen bananas as they don't need to look good when they're baked into a malt loaf.  For more info on banana freezing, check out my recipe for Hellman's Banana and Raspberry Brownies from last week.  It would probably also work well with some different dried fruit.  I'm thinking of maybe trying cherry and apricots.  Definitely one for experimenting with.

You can find the recipe in Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes which is a great buy from Amazon at around £4.  And if you buy that, you can join the Weekly Bake Off too.  Alternatively, you can search on line for the recipe, however I can't condone the website where I found it based on my recent comments on posting full recipes online with little credit to the author.

Update: 14th May, 2012

So 'Malt Fwoaf' as Miss A calls it has proved very popular in the Crowdey household.  So much so that the tiny one lb loaf I made yesterday had vanished by 4pm today.  In fact, the husband ate the last two slices, causing Miss A to have a meltdown because she wanted more 'Malt Fwoaf'.  Still unable to deal with my child's meltdowns, I appeased her with the promise that we'd make another one.

Of course, only having one 1lb loaf tin and not enough capacity to bake two separate loaves, I hit on the idea of making one 2lb loaf instead.  I added an extra tsp of baking powder (and a pinch of salt as discussed above - this improved the taste) and baked it for 1h 15 mins on 130 fan.  It still wasn't set in the middle so I then put the temperature up to 150c fan for 15 minutes and I had a nicely set, still squidgy loaf.  Only downside was that the edges are a little crispy.  If I'd not needed to cook fish fingers for someone's tea then I'd've just left it merrily setting on the lower temperature.

Let's see how long this one lasts!

Mary Berry's Orange Drop Scones

So many people have said to me this week 'I don't know how you do it' that today, it nearly became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I didn't know how I'd do it.  Last Wednesday, sat at my desk, I scribbled down a week's worth of recipes to make sure that the Ocado man bought the majority of the things I'd need when he arrived on Thursday evening.  Okay, so I jiggled things around a bit to make sure I had time to do the curd and the fancy meringue for the cake club cake, but I thought I was safe in the knowledge that there was a plan for today's recipe.

On returning home, absolutely shattered and desperate for a quick win on the recipe front, I discovered that I'd written down 'something with vegetables'.  I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote that, but I only turned up one pepper which has gone mouldy and a couple of sad looking spring onions in my crisper.  Along with four new potatoes and a bag of onions, it was hardly inspiring.  I was worried that this might be the end of both the challenge and my sanity in my currently sleep-deprived state.

Mmmm....pancakes!

Thankfully, Miss A saved the day by demanding to cook.  A quick flick through Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes turned up this recipe for Drop Scones.  Now in my book, they're not really a cake or a bake.  But hey, I'm not going to argue with Dame Mary.

Miss A used to have Scotch pancakes for her breakfast every Saturday and Sunday when she first started weaning.  Three small homemade pancakes, each with a slice of banana cooked into the middle for sweetness and then a pile of banana and strawberries on the side.  Then the fussy phase hit and the pancakes were cast over the side of the highchair, dog-wards.  I decided it wasn't worth the effort any more.  Cheerios are now the breakfast of choice.

So today gave me the ideal opportunity to re-introduce pancakes by letting us make them together now that she's big enough to stand on a chair and help out.  Of course, she cracked the egg, but she also had a go at squeezing oranges and using my citrus reamer.  All very messy and great fun.  When it came to the cooking bit, she peered into the pan and announced 'No eat pancakes, Mummy!'  Thankfully telling her that we'd feed them to the dogs soon changed her mind and she polished off three.

The recipe is fairly standard.  Flour, egg, sugar, milk and baking powder for the lift.  You then add orange juice and zest to the batter for flavour.  I will admit that I think it was probably lacking something to truly bring the flavour out - maybe a tiny pinch of salt or perhaps a splash of Orange Blossom Water.  But all in all, a pleasant twist on a standard recipe.  I'm sure they'd lend themselves to other citrus flavours too or to being served with a citrus butter or syrup.  Or citrus curd.  Now I'm typing I've realised they probably would've been good with the leftover raspberry curd from the cake of great epic-ness.

I can feel the weekend pancake ritual being re-instated very shortly.

Recipe - Makes 12 (adapted from 100 Cakes and Bakes)

• 1 orange, plus a little zest for sprinkling (optional)
• a little milk
• 80g self-raising flour
• 1/2 level tsp baking powder
• 20g caster sugar
• 1 large egg 
• spray oil

1. Grate the zest from the oranges and set aside, and then squeeze the juiceinto a measuring jug and make it up to 100ml with milk.
2. Measure the flour, baking powder, sugar and orange zest into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the egg and half the orange juice and milk mixture. Beat well to make a smooth, thick batter and then beat in enough of the remaining orange juice and milk to give a batter the consistency of thick cream.
3. Spray a frying pan with spray oil and then heat over a medium flame.  Drop desertspoonfuls of mixture into the hot pan.  When the top starts to bubble, use a palette knife to flip them over and cook for a further thirty seconds.  Transfer to a plate and cover with a clean tea towel to keep warm and soft while you cook the remaining pancakes.
4. Serve with butter, golden syrup, maple syrup or a fruit curd.

Mary Berry's Coffee Fudge Squares

I'm off to visit my oldest friend tomorrow.  And I've been informed by her husband that if I fail to bring cake then I won't be allowed in.  I like it that D likes my cakes but it meant that I had to find a reasonably quick and simple recipe to bake between getting in from work and toddler bed time.

Cue Mary Berry's recipe from 100 Cakes and Bakes.  It's a simple tray bake where you just chuck all the ingredients into a bowl, beat for a couple of minutes, bake, cool, frost et voila - instant cake.  Great.  And it worked like a treat.  Only complaint is that the frosting cracks a bit messily on cutting. Happy days - D should be happy tomorrow.

I now feel a bit guilty, however, after reading this article on the BBC Food website.  Because I made the cake in about five minutes flat - (with baking, cooling and making the frosting it took about an hour and a half in total).  But apparently, it's wrong to want to use a quick and easy recipe.  Well not wrong, but frowned upon.  Because of course, we should all want to spend hours after a busy day slaving over a hot stove.

Testing out a smidgen bit from the corner

I appreciate what the author is getting at, but honestly, she made me want to reach for my phone and dial the Chinese takeaway in protest.  With a full time job that sees me leave home at 6am and not sit down for a rest until nearly 9pm, and three very different evening meal requirements to deal with - quick and easy is often the way ahead for me.  Because it means I eat a balanced meal.  What are the alternatives if I don't do quick and easy?  Toast.  A takeaway.  Or just not bothering.

Through writing this blog, I've found so many 'quick and easy' recipes that are tasty, well balanced and can be on the table in less time than it takes to digest the instructions on a ready meal or agree which takeaway to buy.  I love to cook, but I think I'd enjoy it less if I cooked time consuming meals every day.  I love more complicated cake recipes - but I'd take a quick and easy home bake over preservative packed shop bought cakes any day of the week.

Anyway, I'll come down off my soap box!

And here's the recipe for the cake.

Recipe - fills a 23x30cm tray bake tin

• 225g softened butter
• 225g light muscavado sugar
• 275g self raising flour
• 4 eggs
• 2tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp coffee essence (or 2 tsp coffee granules dissolved in 2 tbsp boiling water)
• 2 tbsp milk

For the topping

• 50g butter
• 2 tbsp milk
• 75g light muscavado sugar
• 275g icing sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180c/160c fan.
2. Mix all the cake ingredients for two minutes.  Pour into a lined baking pan and bake for 35-40 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin.
3. Heat the butter, sugar and milk in a small saucepan until the sugar dissolves.  Boil for three minutes then beat in the icing sugar until combined (it will come away from the sides of the pan when ready - although I had to add a splash more milk as it was too dry).  Spread over the cake and leave to set.

Updated: Mary Berry's Lemon Yogurt Cake

A couple of weeks ago, this cake was cake of the week for the Weekly Bake Off.  Sadly, I missed out because being that it was Miss A's epic five-day birthday celebration, there just wasn't enough time to make any more cake.  Well not when you have a full time job and a toddler to look after too.

My work colleagues barely spoke to me that week.  For a few hours, every question seemed to be answered with just a grunt or a shrug.  It took me a while to work it out, but finally I realised that they'd gone from enjoying cake as a treat to expecting it.  So based on the reviews this cake got from the bake off, I decided that this will be my redeeming bake to regain some of the friendliness.*

Work in progress

On any given day, my favourite flavour cake varies.  Lemon or a decent coffee cake are definitely way up there.  Lemon cake is the very first cake I actually remember eating.  We were on holiday in Wales when I was about four and stopped in a little tea room run by a lady called Dulcie in a place called Solva.  The cake was beautifully moist and had snow white, lemon-sharp icing which crackled as you put your fork through it before softly yielding to the cake.  And being it was the very early eighties, it was adorned with lemon jelly slices.  I don't think I've ever eaten such a memorable piece of cake since.  Maybe I never will.

If I'm making lemon cake myself, I normally use a four egg sponge, laced with lemon zest and the juice of a lemon.  Once baked and cooled, I then slice and fill it with lemon curd (it will always be home made curd since I tried Nigel Slater's recipe) and top with a thick royal icing made with lemon juice rather than water.  And of course, lemon jelly slices on the top.  It's retro-chic.

My other top lemon cake recipe is the Hummingbird Bakery's Lemon Loaf from the original Hummingbird Bakery book.  I've made this countless times and it always turns out really well.  I think once it didn't rise quite as much as normal but the bake was still fine.  Although I've given my mum this recipe and after three attempts, she's never managed to get it to work for her.  They all went in the bin (and she's a trained chef!)

And then, of course, there's now Maria's Lemon Celebration cake to add to this list.  It formed the base of Miss A's birthday cake and I really enjoyed this.  To the point that I may make it my regular large lemon bake instead of my four-egg mix.

Hummingbird Lemon Loaf

For once, I made this cake entirely by hand rather than with my Kenwood.  Mostly because I had to bake after tea and this is the husband's telly-watching time when all other noise is banned.  So no chance of getting away with the noise of the Kenwood.  It was actually really satisfying to bake in this way.  I've always had a hand mixer even before the Kenwood but it was really nice to cream the sugar and eggs and whip the egg whites with only the most basic of utensils.  The old fashioned way.  In fact, that's one thing I like about Berry's recipes.  Unlike the current fashion for insisting that one must mix their cakes in a stand mixer or not use the recipe, Berry simply tells you to beat or mix or whisk without insisting you have expensive gadgets (okay so this is my own interpretation of certain books, but there does seem to be a bit of snobbyness in some books if you don't have the exact right equipment).

So this cake has a lot to live up to.  I could smell it baking away even though I'm two floors up from the kitchen.  And it's smelling pretty good.  Just as I was about to click publish, the hour of baking was up and I have a perfectly risen, nicely browned cake although the crust feels a little firm and I'm so tempted to put a drizzle over it.  But I'm having faith in the Berry that it doesn't need it.

Fresh from the oven

Of course, because I had to bake so late I won't be able to ice it before bed time as I doubt it will cool down before I go to sleep.  So final pics will have to come in the morning.  But if you want to get an idea of how it does look, hop over to the Weekly Bake Off and look at all the stunning entries there.  Mine will never look as stunning as those because I'll have to decorate it at 5am and it's for a bunch of guys who won't care that it doesn't look fancy so long as it fills their bellies.

If you want great advice on baking this yourself, you should also take a look at Jaim's Kitchen where she has written about her experience with this bake.  She tested it for breakfast which I think is an amazing idea and I may just do myself.  Just for research purposes of course.

Will update tomorrow with a finished pic and the verdict from the hungry hoardes.

Update: 29th March 2012

Well that's the last time I'm taking cake into work.  I couldn't give it away!  Okay so I got stuck in a meeting and by the time I was liberated, the office was pretty much desserted so half of the cake came home with me again.  I've still not had a bit but those that did said it was really good.  It looks to have quite a dense texture but was much moister than I was expecting as it felt quite crusty when I took it out of the oven.

As for the icing, well I'm back on my rant that Miss Berry is tight on the icing front.  I went for 25% more icing and this still wasn't enough in my opinion to get a thick even coating to the cake.  If you look at the picture, you'll see that the poor artificial lighting in my kitchen exposes the lack of icing coverage in place.  I would definitely use a bit more in the future to get a perfect white coating.  Definitely a bake again one.

* Okay, I fibbed.  I revealed the lack of cake during the lunchtime bakery run so the sulk lasted the five seconds it took to choose something else from the vast array in the bakery :)

Weekly Bake Off: Apricot Swiss Cakes

I've wanted to give these a go ever since I first got my floury mitts on a copy of Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes ready for the Weekly Bake Off.  The cakes are actually more biscuit-like and reminiscent of a Viennese whirl; the slight difference being that you pipe them into a cake case rather than onto baking sheets before sandwiching with jam and cream.

Trying to capitalise on the good weather and the clock change keeping Miss A asleep 'longer' than normal, I started my cakes at 7.30am.  I finally got them baked at about 3pm.  Why?  Well the recipe calls for soft butter.  The lovely @EversNanaJules tweeted me last night and said to make sure my butter was very soft.  I thought that in this weather, how could it be anything else?  I obviously didn't fully comprehend just how soft the butter needed to be.

With a lot of arm flexing, I finally got the ingredients into some semblance of a paste.  I then discovered I was down to my last disposable piping bag.  At this point, I should have sensed impending disaster.  Maybe I crossed a lone magpie on my run this morning and didn't salute him or something.  The mixture went into the bag but wouldn't come out again.  Well not until the side of the bag slowly bulged and split.

Now I've been using Lakeland Disposable Piping Bags for a couple of years.  And up until recently they've been great.  But when icing Miss A's birthday cakes, I went through six or seven of them just to do two colours.  Maybe a dodgy batch or something - the rest of the roll had seemed okay.  But because of this, I didn't have a back up bag.  Well I did - the Lakeland Silicone Piping Bag which I bought off the back of it being the easiest ever piping bag to clean.  They lie.  Try scraping anything that is more than 5% butter off of it and seriously, you'll understand me.  It's been in the cupboard since the first time I used it which was shortly before I switched to 'sposies.

Afternoon tea, al fresco

In desperation, I thought I'd try it again, but all that happened was that it went all bulgy, then the nozzle blew out whilst the cake mixture stayed put.  Great.  I lost nearly half my mixture in the two piping bags, because it was just to sticky to scrape off.  The silicone bag is now off to a landfill somewhere.

Finally, I braved Sainsburys - only because Miss A's new 2-3yr swimsuit was too short in the body for her and I had to swap it.  I managed to pick up some 'sposies from there and the texture of the bag is great.  Nice and thick and I couldn't imagine it splitting, but they're so tiny.  Which in some ways is good because I used to get frustrated about wasting the big bags for a small amount of mixture, but it meant I had to attempt to refill the bag half way through piping.

To get things moving, I added about 25ml of milk to slacken the mix off a little.  It was still hard to pipe into perfect circles as the mixture is quite thick and if you touch the case, you then end up with the case spinning round in the tin whilst you try to pipe around.  I guess that practice would make perfect, however, nice as the cakes are, I think I'll stick to Viennese whirls as I love the jam and buttercream combo.  Plus after all of the stress of trying to pipe the darn things, in all but four of them, most of the piping just melted back in on itself and although you could see the swirl, it wasn't as defined as I would've expected.

The other issue I had was that it said to use fairy cake cases and a bun tin.  I have a bun tin, but do you think I could get fairy cake cases for love or money?  Nope.  Cupcake cases, muffin cases, mini muffin cases, petit fours cases, mini cupcake cases but no traditional fairy cake cases.  Or maybe everyone in my locality is participating in the Weekly Bake Off and so consequently there's been a run on fairy cake cases?  Who knows. Anyway, it meant that I needed double circles in my smallest muffin cases to get them to rise to the top and the ones I did in cupcake cases just looked a bit lost.

Starting to wonder if I'm just jinxed at Mary Berry cake recipes or something...??

Mary Berry's Ciabatta with Mushroom Omelette

Just cos it doesn't look good, doesn't mean it's not tasty...

Tonight's recipe is really simple due to time constraints and a lack of interest in food once again.  It didn't feel like it should really be part of the challenge as it's 'just a mushroom omelette shoved in a ciabatta' but it's actually a nice idea.  I'm not sure I'd've ever thought of it.

There were no real revelations in the actual making of said omelette and she does nothing funky with the seasoning.  But then this is Mary Berry we're talking about.  I'd expect nothing more.  Especially as this book is nearly twenty years old.  It's just good, honest food; really quick to make and very filling.  I think I'd add cheese next time, but that's just because I'm greedy.

Recipe - serves 2

• 1 ciabatta, warmed and split horizontally
• 4 eggs
• 250g mushrooms, thickly sliced
• 25g butter
• fresh thyme
• salt and pepper to season

1. Place half the butter in a frying pan and heat until foaming.  Fry the mushrooms for 3-4 minutes.  Remove to a plate and clean the pan.
2. Heat the rest of the butter in the frying pan.  Whisk the eggs together with 2 tbsp water, the thyme, salt and pepper.  Cook over a medium heat until set.
3. Add the mushrooms to the omelette, roll and place in the ciabatta.  
4. Cut into two and serve with a side salad.

Mary Berry's Little Iced Gems

Day two of baking for Miss A's birthday.  Today is the actual day and I've taken the day off of work so we can do something special.  Special for me (rather selfishly) meant not waking up at stupid o'clock for work.  And yet I was awake at 3:37am.  No matter how hard I tried to get back to the lovely dream I was having, it just wasn't going to happen.  Isn't that always the way when you're interrupted in the middle of a lovely dream??

Jellybean-tastic

Anyway, I decided to capitalise on yet another early start by baking the mini cupcakes for her to take in to nursery tomorrow.  I feel like I'm entering into that competitive motherhood thing which I so despise.  I don't get why the sisterhood feels the need to compete against each other in that alpha mummy way.  I'm a slummy mummy and I try to be proud of it.  But she's come home with so many boxes of funsize smarties and tiny slivers of shop bought cake that I feel compelled to provide something.

So the Little Iced gems from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes seemed to fit the bill.  Basically it's cupcakes made in petit fours cases.  Personally I felt that even for toddlers the petits fours cases to be a bit stingy so I used mini muffin cases from PME.

Because the cases were so tiny, I used a disposable piping bag to help me fill them rather than faffing around with teaspoonsful of mixture.  I ended up with thirty rather than the sixty five indicated by the recipe.

Tiny cupcakes

Berry indicates that you should just lay the cases out on a baking sheet with no need to use a special tin.  I found that this made the cakes a little misshapen.  It may be because I slightly overfilled them.  But they look home made and so in my book, that's good.  They cook really quickly, the texture is light and spongy (yes I ate cake at 5am but they are tiny!)  I much preferred this recipe to her standard-sized vanilla cupcakes which you can find a blog about here.

Because they'd risen to the top, I used a thicker icing than normal to decorate.  Normally I'd use a runny icing and let it flood to the edge of the case but here it would've dripped right off so I just smooshed a bit on with the back of a teaspoon and topped off with a jelly bean to make them look funky.

A great idea for baking for a children's party or as dessert if you're doing a nibbles type party.

Recipe

• 75g butter, softened
• 2 large eggs
• 100g self-raising flour
• 1 level tsp baking powder
• 75g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp milk

For the icing

• 100g icing sugar, sifted
• about 1 tbsp lemon jice
• sweets to decorate

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas4.  Arrange the mini cake cases on baking sheets.
2. Beat all the cake ingredients together until thoroughly blended.  Spoon scant teaspoonsfuls of mixture into the cases, being careful not to overfill.
3. Bake for 15-20 minutes until well risen and golden brown.  Cool on a wire rack.
4. To make the icing, measure the icing sugar into a bowl and add enough lemon juice to give a spreading consistency.  Spoon a little on top of each cake and spread out with the back of a teaspoon.  When the icing has almost set, top with a sweet.

Mary Berry's Vanilla Cupcakes

A good rule of thumb, as most people know, is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  This has become increasingly apparent as  I've been on this journey of trying new recipes.  Most of what I've cooked has been pretty new to me.  Other recipes, however, are me seeking an even better alternative to my staple recipes.

For example, I adore Angela Nilssen's  Ultimate Chocolate Cake.  I recently tried Nigella's Chocolate Fudge Cake as an alternative.  I didn't like it, everyone at work politely ate it (probably fearing that if they dissed it, they'd never get cake again) and then I got the husband's brutal assessment of it.  I can't repeat what he said here, but he didn't like it.

Ladybird cupcakes

Not one to pull his punches, never ask him for an honest opinion on something if you're not fully prepared to hear the absolute worst.  In fact, we now have a new method of me garnering his opinion on something.  If he doesn't like it, he'll say so in his own inimitable style.  If he doesn't pass comment, then the item being assessed (food, clothes etc) ranks anywhere from passable to sublime in his opinion.

Anyway, I digress (as I always do).  There are some things that are new recipes to me where I've tried several different versions before settling on a recipe that I like.  There's the meatball odyssey - Rachel Allen's got a thumbs down; BBC Good Food Chipotle Meatballs are good; Waitrose met the husband's seal of approval and now I'm never allowed to cook him any others.  And the naan bread quest.  When Sainsburys stopped selling the Sharwoods Naan packet mix, I tried one from my 'Breads of the World' book ("old boot leather") before happening across THE BEST NAAN RECIPE EVER, courtesy of the lovely Dan Lepard (he followed me on Twitter today. Cue girly squealy excitement!)

Collapsed grass

But I'm getting the feeling that sometimes it's better to know when to stop.  Mary Berry's Hokey Pokey cake is not a patch on my own coffee cake recipe.  And I'm sorry, but the vanilla cupcake recipe just doesn't do it for me either.  Don't get me wrong, they're pleasant enough but I much prefer my trusty Hummingbird Bakery recipe.  It's so good, it's published in both the original Hummingbird Bakery book and Cake Days.

For me, the word cupcake signifies a light, supremely soft, melt on the tongue cake, topped with a tooth-rotting swirl of buttercream.  Whilst these cupcakes where spongy enough, they just reminded me of an overgrown fairy cake or a small version of a Victoria sponge.  I think the slightly crispy exterior coupled with a dense interior just didn't enrapture me enough.

That's not to say that the Hummingbird recipe is perfect.  It drives me to distraction that I can't stack them on top of each other in the freezer box without them becoming stuck together - for some reason there's always a slightly sticky residue on the top of the cakes.  But I've had so many genuine compliments on them and requests for the recipe that I doubt I'll try another recipe from elsewhere.

Couldn't bring myself to eat the little critter

I do also like that these are fling-it-all-in-the-bowl-and-mix cupcakes.  Great when you need to knock up some cupcakes quickly whilst trying to stop your toddler from cleaning the windows with a piece of left over cookie dough.  The Hummingbird recipe is far more involved with lots of beating and scraping and adding bits of this then mixing then adding some of that then mixing blah blah blah.  But that's probably the difference between the two - more care, more air.

My other gripe is that it only made nine cakes instead of 12.  With the Hummingbird recipe, I always manage 12-16 cakes.  Then again, in some ways I'm glad.  I was trying to do some 'get ahead baking' for Miss A's birthday but I would rather bake the Hummingbird cupcakes to share so these will be good ones to practice icing techniques on.

The buttercream I used for the grass was just some leftover, bog-standard two parts sugar to one part butter buttercream but it proved to be a little too soft for my new grass making icing nozzle.  I've been informed that mashed potato is a good substitue for practicing icing techniques however I'm not sure how the husband would take to spud-topped cupcakes!

Recipe

• 100g butter or margerine
• 150g caster sugar
• 150g self raising flour
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence.

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/Gas 4.  Line a muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Mix all the ingredients together into a smooth, even batter.
3. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling each one to about 2/3 full.
4. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden and firm to the touch.
5. Cool on a wire rack before icing.

Updated: Weekly Bake Off Apple and Almond Dessert Cake

After saying I wasn't playing earlier this week, I decided to make a last minute entry into the Weekly Bake Off.  The main reason being that because I was a complete and utter numpty on Friday night when I was making marmalade and used up an entire bag of caster sugar, and then didn't replace it when I went to Sainslebob's this morning, I couldn't make the rhubarb and almond loaf I'd planned for today.  My work colleagues will be disappointed tomorrow!

So how did I manage to make a cake without sugar?  Well mes amis, I made today's entry with Xylitol.  And very nice it was too.  What's Xylitol, I hear you cry?  Well it sounds like some nasty chemical sweetner, but in fact it's a natural sugar substitute, extracted from the skins of fruit and vegetables.  It is used in many 'sugar free' products and is a marketed as a good alternative 'sweetener for those with diabetes and hyperglycemia'.

It has a lower Glycemic Index (GI) than regular sugar, coming at 13 for Xylitol vs 60-65 for standard sugar meaning the familiar cake sugar rush is more subdued.  It also has roughly one-third less calories than normal sugar, making it a good option for dieters.

I'd been aware of its use in things like sugar-free gum and mints, but never realised that it was a totally natural product until I read about it being used in cakes on the BBC Good Food website the other day.

The husband is diabetic and has the world's sweetest tooth.  Sweet stuff causes him all manner of problems which is why my work colleagues are treated to my baked goodies so often.  So I decided to buy some Xylitol and give it a go.

It's not cheap at £2.79 for 225g - enough for one large cake because you literally substitute it gram for gram with sugar.  I've tried baking with fruit sugar before with mixed results so I was naturally a little sceptical for this cake, but in the spirit of trying new things, I went ahead.

Low GI cake :)

And I was really pleased with the final cake.  It rose just like it should - it was helpful to see the other bake off entries to confirm I had a comparable rise.  As for taste, I found the cake a little sweet but that could just be the way everyone else's cakes are anyway.  I would've liked my apples a little tarter - but you can't control that in a cake.

All in all, a pretty good cake.  Not sure how it would be cold, but it's great slightly warm with creme fraiche or ice cream.  Just the thing to have after a big fat Sunday roast dinner - but in our house, it came after the usual chicken tikka.

Not had the husband's verdict yet.  He announced earlier, in total seriousness, that the rice krispie cakes that I'd made with Miss A this afternoon were far nicer than any other cakes I've ever made.  Miss A wasn't even round at the time so it wasn't like he was paying her a compliment.  Whilst I have a soft spot for krispie cakes, there really is no accounting for some people's tastes.  Another reason why my work colleagues often get cake - they're so complimentary.

Another good bake - but then it's from Dame Mary Berry so why wouldn't it be??

Updated - 13th Feb 2012 - Just a side note on the xylitol thing.  Apparently (I now have proof of this) it can cause a bit of belly-aching if consumed in large-ish quantities.  This only happens in a small percentage of people and apparently disappears over time after the body becomes used to it.  The husband was absolutely fine on that score so it's obviously just me.

It's also not good for dogs and can cause hypoglycemia in them so make sure you don't leave your cake where your four-legged friends can partake of a slice or several.

Hokey Pokey Coffee Cake - Take Two

Today's plan was (again) interuppted by my gorgeous girl.  I was working from home and had planned to join the Weekly Bake Off again.  Then reading the recipe, it suggested the cake was best served warm.  Not really one to take into work then.

A quick rethink turned up the Rhubarb and Almond loaf from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book which I've been meaning to make for one of the guys at work for yonks.  He was a big fan of my rhubarb and custard cupcakes long before the idea turned up in countless recipe books.  He is still in awe of how I managed to get the rhubarb compote inside them.  For someone who is so flipping brainy that it hurts, I'm continually amazed at his lack of practical common sense.

An outfit appropriate for freezing conditions (c) LCC Photography

I didn't, however, factor in Miss A's adamance that at 3pm she didn't want to get dressed and go out to buy rhubarb from the farm shop.  After a half hour battle, I finally prised her out of her pyjamas (the husband has stopped getting her dressed in the mornings because he just can't stand the drama) and spent the next hour trying to coerce her into something practical to face the cold.  She ended up in her Christmas outfit, minus tights, accessorised with satin lady bird slippers and a string of giant wooden beads.

I gave in.  Rooted through the cupboards.  Leafed through 100 Cakes and Bakes and decided to reattempt the Hokey Pokey cake I tried the other day.  Okay so technically it's not a new recipe.  But pretty much every other coffee cake recipe I read through uses the same two ounces or 50g of flour, butter and sugar for every egg.  With four times that filling my eight inch pans.  Self-raising flour and one tsp baking powder for luck.  The same as Mary Berry's Victoria sponge recipe.  Just with some coffee thrown in to flavour it.  Stick all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk for 2-3 mins with an electric blender.

In fact, it's pretty much the coffee cake recipe that I use all the time.  Even the butter cream ratio was standard and the same weights as say, the Hummingbird Bakery uses.  The new bit to me was making the hokey pokey bit (pecan praline).   I never got that far last time I tried the recipe.

So much as I, like every other baker in the country without exception, have a soft spot for (Dame) Mary.  But isn't she stingy with her buttercream?  And the syrup used for the praline too.  Or maybe that's how she's managed to stay so trim with years and years of home baking under her belt.  Because she doesn't really subscribe to the modern tooth-rotting phenomenon  that is a cake that can give you diabetes just by looking at it.

Ooooh...the Hokey Pokey....

Personally, I should know better as the husband and several of my relatives are sufferers.  Instead I furtively delight in licking out icing bowls and try to ignore the fact that I inhabit a high-risk group, what with my afro-Caribbean heritage on the one side of my family (I got all the crap stuff from my father - my horrible frizzy hair; my huge nostrils which are too big for my English nose; my ginormous backside and thighs; a higher risk of things like diabetes, heart disease and passing on sickle cell anaemia to my children)

But with Dame Mary, there's no room for spare butter cream.  Every last morsel has to be scraped from the bowl to fill and top the cake.

And the tiny bit of caramel that went into making the praline meant that I couldn't successfully isolate whole praline-d pecans for the top.  If I was making it again, I'd make double the caramel and then lay out individual pecans and smother them with the spare syrup.

Another top tip.  Make the praline on a buttered tray.  She recommends this or parchment.  I chose parchment.  But then spent a good ten minutes picking stuck parchment off the bottom of my nuts.  My pecan nuts!

So I used the praline in the butter cream and then made a little pile in the centre of the top of the cake.  Hopefully it tastes okay.  My taste team will give their verdict tomorrow with any luck.  I think they're enjoying having me on this secondment!

Recipe is from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes.  £4 or so on Amazon.  Definitely worth buying!

Update - 8th Feb 2012.  Well my colleagues really liked it (although I think they just like being given cake in general) but it certainly isn't my favourite coffee cake recipe ever.  The hokey pokey in the middle was a fun touch but I think the lack of icing and the fact it was a bit coffee-less was disappointing.  Also forgot to add a touch of salt as I use unsalted butter in all my cakes.  Would I make it again?  Yes-ish.  I'd just make my own butter cream next time.  Then again, I have a feeling that I may enjoy some of the other coffee cakes in this book even more.

Update 10th Feb 2012.  According to my husband, this ranks amongst the worst cakes I've ever made.  He's definitely a man who calls a spade a spade.  Just never ask him if your bum looks big....

Weekly Bake Off - Farmhouse Victoria Sponge

Yesterday was a bit of a sucky day so to cheer myself up, I decided to participate in the Weekly Bake Off which I discovered by Twitter.  In a nutshell, the lovely @WeeklyBakeoff decided to bake her way through Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes and has invited her fellow tweeps to participate.  Every Monday, she selects a recipe.  People bake it and submit their pictures by the following Sunday for a bit of fun judging.

It sounds a little bit odd as the judge only gets to see the cakes and not actually taste them.  In fact, I was a guest judge for the Black Forest Gateau and it was really hard.  Firstly because they all looked great, but secondly because you have to look beyond the skill of the photographer and judge things like the balance of cake to filling and factor in any unusual twists in decoration.  There were only four entries the week I judged as it was the week before Christmas and it took me ages to make up my mind.  I pity whoever is judging now everyone's back to normal baking.

So on to the actual bake.  It was an interesting recipe.  When I first read it I decided not to try it as I'm not really a fan of orange or Victoria sponge, but I needed some baking therapy and a second perusal showed it to be a really really simple operation that I could perform whilst Miss A ate her tea.

You literally chuck everything into a bowl and mix it for two minutes on high before putting into prepared tins, baking it, making the buttercream filling whilst it's cooking, then it's just a case of cooling, filling and dredging with icing sugar.

Mine took more than the five minutes the instructions implied.  The recipe uses light muscovado and I'd let mine get damp so I spent ages trying to beat and grate it back into some semblance of sugar grains.  I then chose to beat it with the butter first to make sure that it was a smooth as possible.  I also increased the quantities because Berry uses a smaller tin for this cake, but helpfully, her standard Vicky is in a 20cm tin so I stole the ratios from there instead.

It made a lovely soft cake mixture and the muscovado meant it was less sweet than a regular white sponge.  It baked really well - especially given my trouble on Friday and the general issues I've been having with my new cooker.  One rather stupid schoolgirl error was that I forgot to butter the tins so the edges are a bit raggedy - but I think it adds to the farmhouse charm of the cake.

If you don't have hardened sugar, it really is simplicity in itself to make, bake and fill.

Vicky sponge with an orange marmalade and butter cream middle

I've yet to do a taste test of an actual piece as I'm taking it in to work tomorrow.  Having tried the components though, it's looking good for a non-orange cake, non-Vicky eater such as myself.   The bitterness of the marmalade works really well against the sticky-sweet buttercream.

For the record, I used Waitrose Essentials Seville Orange Marmalade which I love.  It's so cheap compared to other Seville marmalades which is great when you have to watch the pennies.  Was hoping to get some Sevilles to try my hand at marmalade making, but I fear I've missed the boat this year.  Although I understand you can buy pre-prepared oranges from Lakeland.  But that's just a bit cheaty isn't it?

In the spirit of the Bake Off, I am following the lead and not publishing the recipe.  The book is only £4 or so on Amazon and is definitely worth a buy, even if you don't want to join the competition.

However, as I'm in a sharing mood, I will share with you my mum's Vicky Sponge recipe which she drilled in to me as a child.  I can't remember exactly how old I was when I learned this recipe but it's one of those things I'll never forget.  The chocolate version characterises my childhood and always reminds me of the Michael Rosen poem 'Chocolate Cake'.  Rosen is probably best known as the illustrator of Roald Dahl books in the Eighties but wrote and illustrated many books and poems of his own.  If you love cake and have never heard this poem, go read it now!

For every lovely new cake recipe I bake, there is still nothing like my mum's chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream (made with margerine, not real butter - just doesn't taste right otherwise).  If she ever ever gets round to reading my blog and this post in particular, I hope she takes the hint that she should make one next time I visit.  It's one of those comforting things to cling to like my Grandma's roast chicken dinner or her sausage and potato bake.  No matter how bad things are, the chocolate cake can always raise a smile.  Hint....hint...

Recipe - fills two 8" (20cm) sandwich tins

For the cake

• 9oz (250g) self raising flour
• 6oz (175g) soft margerine
• 6oz (175g) caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/180c/160 fan/Gas 4
2. Grease the two tins with butter or lard and base-line with baking parchment
3. Beat the margerine, sugar and vanilla essence until light and fluffy.
4. Beat in the eggs one by one.  If it looks like it's starting to split, add in a tablespoon of flour (this is my tip!)
5. Sift the flour into the bowl and mix gently until well combined.
6. Divide between the two sandwich tin.  Wet your hand and use it to smooth the batter evenly around the tin.  Make a well in the middle of each tin, exposing the tin base.  This will ensure you don't get a bump in the middle of your cake.
7. Bake for 25 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool.

To make this a chocolate cake, replace 1oz (25g) of the flour with the same amount of sifted cocoa powder.


For the filling

• 4oz (125g) icing sugar
• 1.5oz (40g) margarine or slightly salted butter
• 1tsp vanilla essence
• splash of milk (optional)
• 4tbsp jam (raspberry or strawberry for a vanilla sponge; optional cherry for a chocolate sponge)
• icing sugar for dusting.

1. Beat together the icing sugar, margarine or butter and vanilla essence until smooth and creamy.  You may need to add a splash of milk if it's too dry.
2. Use the jam (if using) and buttercream to sandwich the cooled cake. 
3. Dust with icing sugar.

PS Mum, if you've read this, I hope you noticed I did the measurements in imperial first and then metric :)x