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!

Abigail's Strawberry Shortcakes

When I was a child, I remember Hanna Barbera's "Wait til your Father gets home" being on the telly.  I'm sure it was entertaining but literally, all I can remember is the title.  The meaning was slightly lost on me at the time as I never had the fear (or joy) of my father coming home.  But now it resonates as I've become that parent coming home to face the needs of Miss A.

I can pretty much guarantee now that whenever she's been subjected to Daddy DayCare, at some point, he will have used the 'Wait until Mummy gets home and then you can...' line on her.  Having a child generally makes crap days at work (like the one I had today) worthwhile.  But boy, I could've done without coming home to 'but Daddy said we could make Strawberry Crown' when I finally got in after a twelve hour day.

The fragrant Katie of 'I Can Cook' fame is to blame for this one.  We're going through a princess phase at the moment.  Yesterday this was a bonus as I managed to get Miss A's hair brushed twice without tears because I've been telling her for months that princesses have their hair brushed 100 times.  She finally succumbed to this yesterday, but I paid the price tonight because princesses must eat Strawberry Crown for pudding when they've been good all day.

Not being in the mood for soothing another tantrum (that's all I've done all day today - and I've had a few of my own too!) I gave in way too easily and soon we were in a happy, sticky, floury mess of a kitchen.

Cooked by my favourite chef!

In essence, it's a shortbread biscuit, topped with jam and strawberries and baked in the oven.  I never realised you could bake strawberries and they'd still come out pretty whole.  So I've learned something today.  It also got Miss A to eat something green because the jam is sprinkled with basil.  Okay so it was a tiny bit of green stuff but it was a new taste sensation for her.  And if I can convince her that lettuce is a kind of basil tomorrow then I'm getting somewhere.

Because I couldn't be bothered to dig out the original recipe, I just made my own base up and used almonds to give the shortbread a better texture.  Of course, they don't do that on the telly because of nut allergies.  I think it works well, but you can always substitute them with extra flour.  And to top it off, it's sprinkled with Demerara sugar.  I can't believe that Miss A was able to work out that soft brown sugar was not Demerara sugar when we were getting the ingredients out of the cupboard.  She's two.  This is slightly scary. If I'd not used up all my glitter stars making Dan Lepard's sparkly plum jam the other day I think we'd have used those instead as the 'gold' melted on cooking so we had to sprinkle more for decoration before serving.

Even the husband liked this one.  It's a great one for kids to make pretty much by themselves with a little bit of guidance.  If my two year old can do it, anyone can.

Serves 4 (adapted from I Can Cook)

100g plain flour
50g unsalted butter, cubed
50g ground almonds
25g caster sugar
8 strawberries - hulled and halved
4 generous teaspoons of good quality strawberry jam (we used Bonne Maman)
6 basil leaves, torn
Demerara sugar or edible glitter

Preheat the oven to 220c/200c fan
Put the butter and flour into a bowl and rub together until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Stir in the almonds and sugar and bring together to form a soft dough.  You may need a little extra flour if the mixture is a little soft.
Divide the mixture into four.  Shape into balls and then flatten to about 1.5cm thick.  Place on a baking tray.
Make a dip in the middle using your knuckles and spread a teaspoon of jam into the centre of each biscuit.
Sprinkle the basil over the jam then top with the strawberries.
Bake for 12-15 minutes until the biscuit is starting to go golden brown.
Leave to cool then sprinkle with Demerara sugar or edible glitter and serve with creme fraiche, yogurt or ice cream.

Dan Lepard's Fresh Ginger and Coffee Cake

This is looking like a cake just for the connoisseur rather than a crowd.  Initially attracting a lot of admiring glances, my trusty cake box hadn't had its lid removed once by the time I lifted the lid today.  I'm assuming that perhaps people were put off by the flavour rather than that they were just snubbing me and my cake.  But it's their loss because with just three more days at work before I bring this challenge to its conclusion, it's the very last time they'll be getting cake.

Coffee cake is admittedly a bit of a marmite choice.  You either love it or hate it.  In a room of a hundred people, you'll probably have around half of them eschewing coffee in favour of tea or soft drinks.  Working in IT as I do and being one of the many who mainlines caffeine on a regular basis, I figured that this slight boundary push was a risk worth taking.  And so far, it's spectacularly failed.

Much as they eat a lot of cake, they don't have a passion for Dan Lepard cakes as I do.  Or at least they really like them, but couldn't care less whose recipe it is that I'm using.  The recipe is one from the Guardian website and I chose it purely because I was interested in the flavour combination.

Having baked the sponge late yesterday, I was up at 5am icing it.  For once, I cut a piece out of the whole cake for photographic purposes and I decided to try a bit as I was curious.  The flavour combination works.  My brain struggled a little to compute all the flavours as they were going in but it works so well together, the cake is a taste sensation for anyone who doesn't think that Mr Kipling is the be-all and end-all of cake making*.


Filled with chopped pistachios and both fresh and stem ginger; and speckled with real, rather than instant coffee, the flavours are subtle enough to compliment each other and the lemon-cream cheese icing on the top adds another subtle dimension.

Coffee cake is one of my all time favourites and if I'm honest, I'd probably make a bog standard coffee sponge with coffee buttercream for nine out of ten coffee cakes but this is definitely something I'd share at cake club in the future.

The cake was slightly drier than I would've expected but this may be to do with me baking it in a rectangular rather than the recommended square tin.  I had to extend the cooking time a little to ensure it cooked through and of course, it's the corner pieces that always pay the price for an extended baking time.  Lesson learned - but the square tin had my disasterous marshmallows in it.

If you fancy testing your cake connoisseur credentials, you can find the recipe here.

*My father in law does

Dan Lepard's Dark Chocolate Berry Cake

There are a few things that I've tried several different recipes for over the course of this year in the hope of finding the perfect recipe.  I've found my favoured recipes for naan bread, vanilla cupcakes, lemon cake and meatballs (this is a cheat because we settled on Waitrose ones).

Poor lighting - taken at 4.57am!

But good chocolate cake has eluded me.  Pre-blog, I had made Angela Nielsen's Ultimate Chocolate Cake and after a disaster with a vanilla cake, it gave me a back up base cake for this challenge.  I then tried Nigella's chocolate cake  which I really wasn't a fan of.  I had a disaster with Dan Lepard's Brown Sugar Chocolate Cake and a similar crisis with a chocolate and clementine loaf cake that Miss A and I tried to make the other day that I was too embarrassed to blog about.

So today, having made a bargain with Miss A that if she'd make a lemon cake for my Grandad's birthday on Saturday (he hates chocolate cake, she believes that all birthday cakes should be chocolate), we set about trying Dan Lepard's Dark Chocolate Berry Cake for me to take in to work tomorrow for my lovely colleagues on my Business Process Excellence course.

Having made a deal with the trainer that if we finished by 4pm today, I'd bring in cake tomorrow, I was a little nervous that I'd have a further disaster (I'm touching my laminate floor in the hope I don't now jinx myself and drop the darn thing on the way into work in the morning!).  But so far, so good.

I nearly forgot the butter - which is the very first ingredient - but managed to redeem myself at the last minute.  Then I didn't realise that if you start the timer on my mobile phone and then plug it in to charge, it stops the timer.  Thankfully I'd double checked the time on the cooker clock when I put the cake in so I was able to work out how much longer it needed and now it's nicely risen and cooling in the tin.

Hutch plays mother

Of course, by the time it's completely cooled I will have to be in bed, meaning that I need to ice it first thing in the morning.

My only comment (so far) is that the instructions are a little scant for the novice.  For example, with the icing, it doesn't tell you to melt the chocolate in a bain marie.  I'm partly tempted to do it straight in the pan but I could do without a burnt chocolate crisis at 5am.  Nor does it tell you how to cool the cake - in the tin or on a rack?  I'm going for the in the tin method.

Keep your fingers x'd for me and I'll update the post tomorrow with a picture of the finished article and some feedback.

You can find the recipe here.

Updated 5th September 2012 @ 19:58

Having gotten up at 4.30am to ice the cake this morning, I'm afraid it's not particularly photogenic and the picture is poorly lit.  However, I'm loving the chocolate icing with the subtle hint of berry coming through from the jam.  I used cherry jam with mine and I absolutely recommend buying the Mirabel jam that you can get in Lidl which I used for my cherry Viennese whirls.  It has a really strong, sharp cherry flavour and cuts well through the chocolate.  I find English cherry jams far to sweet and I think they'd be lost in the richness of the frosting.

One miniscule criticism is again surrounding the food photography.  This time, it's the Guardian's website.  The stylist seems to have used a buttercream type frosting rather than the chocolate/jam/icing sugar version that Lepard suggests.  The icing in the official picture is very smooth and thick, showing no hint of cherries lurking in it - which is a shame.  Or maybe they just used a sieved cherry jam?  Nobody's ever going to taste that picture so they probably only cared that it looks aesthetically pleasing.  And in this instance, there's no picture in Short and Sweet to compare it to as the recipe isn't in the book.

Anyway on to the reviews.  My chief cake tester is on his holidays at the moment.  The second in command (on the cake testing front) gave it the seal of approval, as did the rest of the course delegates and the assorted managers who came to review our final presentations.  In fact, I've now been invited to attend twenty training sessions taking place between now and Christmas by one manager who was told that I always take cake when I got to a training session.  He'll be lucky!

My personal opinion from the tiny sliver I had was that it was a good, flavoursome, solid cake that would stand up to a wide variety of fillings and could probably slice well into a three layer cake.  It was a little drier than I would've liked which is purely my own fault.  Partly because of the timer issue (see above) and partly because I was trying to juggle Miss A into bed around the time it was due out of the oven so it got a few minutes more than it should have had.

Nevertheless, I will definitely be making this one time and again.  Chocolate cake recipe?  Sorted.

And finally, thanks to Hutch who got press-ganged into having his pic taken for the blog - just to prove I don't eat all the cake myself!

Dolly Bakes' "Best of British Apple" Bundt Cake

My overriding childhood food memory (aside from the faddy eating of peanut butter and celery and Bernard Matthew's roasts) is of hanging out in the kitchen on a Sunday morning as my beloved Grandma peeled and cored Bramley after Bramley for apple pie.  She didn't just make apple pie, but that was my favourite - it tasted even better cold the next day.  I had a real thing for the sharp taste of Bramleys and they were even better dipped in sugar to give them a sweet/sour contrast.  My next favourite thing was raw carrots and so she called me her little donkey.

Maple glazed and cooling down

I long to have a warm kitchen filled with smells of roasting beef and the warm, earthy smell of a cinnamon scented apple pie but sadly, family life isn't like that these days.  At least not in my household.  I've requested that I inherit her pie plate that's inscribed with a recipe for blackberry and apple pie but I know it's unlikely ever to see the light of day because I'd be paranoid about it being broken and besides, the husband "doesn't do pie".

Part of this year has been about me educating Miss A in how to eat properly (I've mostly failed here) and I want to recreate some of that warm glow of home cooking for her.  My pastry skills are still rubbish so I knew I had to make a cake.  My cookbooks are very lacking in apple cake recipes so I turned to Google for help. When I hit on Rachel's (aka Dolly Bakes) Best of British Apple Bundt, I just knew I had to make it.

Rachel is a massive fan of bundts and with this being my third, I'm falling in love them too.  They are proper sharing cakes.  None of your namby pamby selfish cupcake-ness.  This cake will feed the masses - and leave them wanting more.  I got my bundt tin on Amazon for about £12 - I didn't spend more because I wasn't sure I'd use it but now, having seen Rachel's beautiful star-shaped tin, I wish I'd bought something a little more extravagant.

I've yet to try a piece of the cake because it's being taken to work tomorrow for my very lucky work colleagues.  However the batter tasted amazing, the smells coming from the oven were to die for.  Although it's a 'British' cake, it's exactly how I'd imagine an American Mom's kitchen would smell.  And as for the maple butter glaze that you brush on to it....  This cake is going to be special!  If there had been any way to sneak a bit of it today, I would have done.  I was tempted to cut a slice out so I could take a decent picture but knew that if I did, I'd have to eat it.  And a bit more.  So it's still intact.  Just!

I'll update the post tomorrow with the verdict from work but I know it will be nothing but rave reviews.  Thanks so much for sharing this one Rachel.

Updated 28th August 2012 @ 20:38 

Well the verdict is in.  I didn't realise I worked with such cake connoisseurs.  After a lot of fussing about who was going to be the one to cut the 'giant doughnut' (nobody wanted to be accused of being the greedy one) and further faffing about the dividing lines on the cake (see the picture) and whether it was rude to cut a large segment in half (and even ruder to take both a narrow and a wide wedge), I got some feedback from my colleagues.

I was going to assign them all aliases but as I was collating feedback and re-read what I'd noted for one of the aliases, I realised there was the chance for unintentional innuendo (it started an afternoon of inappropriate smirking) so we're reduced to persons a through to e.

Person A said it was the second best cake I've ever baked.  He couldn't actually remember which his favourite was but I have a feeling it was Dan Lepard's Dark Banana and Ginger Cake.

Person B diligently listed pretty much everything that went into the cake - he would be amazing on the Masterchef palate test getting the apple, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla and additional butter in the glaze.  The only thing that foxed him was the maple syrup which was apparently his first taste of it.  He was one of the double-wedgers and enjoyed every last crumb.

Person C thought it looked like ginger cake or parkin.  It did indeed have a slightly darker crumb than some apple cakes.  When mixing the batter it looks like a fabulous coffee cake.  Another seal of approval.

Person D came back for seconds and thirds, claiming it was for some of our consultants who are working in the 'dungeon'.  Personally I think he just really liked it.

And finally on to Person E.  The person who ably wields the yardstick for all my cakes.  He's a tough man to please, not liking brownies or my favourite viennese whirls (this didn't stop him from eating the bacon brownies, the black and white brownie cheesecake or the cherry viennese whirls).  Plus apple cake is the only ever cake he's made so I knew he'd have the most positive (or damning opinion of all).  With his express permission, here is his verbatim verdict on the cake:

"Good texture, just enough ‘crunch’ on the outside juxtaposed by a nice interior – a balance of lightness & stickiness. Excellent apple flavours coming through with no cloying aftertaste.  9.5/10 :o)"

Rachel - I think we have a winner!

Dan Lepard's Saffron Peach Cake

There's a rumour going around that I'm writing a cake blog.  This is not true.  I'm writing a blog where I try and cook something new every day for 366 days.  The original idea was to attempt to broaden my family's food horizons.  I thought I was doing pretty well, having clocked up 322 different recipes on consecutive days.  In fact, sometimes I've made more than one new recipe each day, but they haven't always made it to the blog.  I've survived two weeks on holiday, Christmas with my fussy family, various bugs and so on and every day made something new and written about it.  And yet, everyone still thinks I'm writing a cake blog.

Summer in a cake

Admittedly, these opinions have come from two sources.  My best friend who has discovered the delights of baking and whom I have gone from talking geek-speak to, to discussing the merits of Willie's 100% Cacao and the joys of owning a bundt tin.  The other source of the rumour is from my work colleagues who have been the (lucky) recipients of the majority of the cakes I've made over the past (nearly) year.

This is probably because it's where my 'knack' (I hesitate to call it talent) and passion lie.  In baking.  I enjoy cooking from scratch but when you live with someone who has to eat a dish that tastes exactly the same every time you make it, the joy can be taken out of cooking when you fear the reaction if you happen to have run out of xyz and replaced it with abc just this once.  With cake, most people are polite/complimentary about it.  I can't remember ever giving anyone (apart from the husband) a bit of cake and them not at least saying thank you, but more likely they provide very positive feedback.

The one thing I've gotten from this year of cooking and blogging is the confidence to be a little more creative and experimental in the baking department although I still have much to learn.  The fabulous Great British Bake Off is back on our screens tomorrow night.  It was watching that this time last year that inspired me to do this rather strange challenge to myself.  The only way to progress in something is to practice and evolve.  I have learnt so much this year about cooking and baking and flavours and little twists that I feel I'm in a better place than I was a year ago.  I will be watching avidly this year to see what other gaps in my knowledge I should consider plugging once I get underway with my new blog.

Top of the learning list is that when you use something up, remember to put it straight into the Ocado shopping app so when you have the urge to bake, you don't wind up having to adapt and cut corners on certain recipes.  Or if you happen to be going to the shops for one ingredient, double check the cupboards before you go to make sure you've got everything you need.  Which is why I ended up making an almost almondless almond cake.

I still can't let go of the Olympic Food Challenge

I always always always have two or three bags of ground almonds in my cupboard plus a big jar that I pour all the ends of packets into.  Usually because I forget I've got some and then buy another bag when I'm baking something so build up a stock.  So when I picked this cake, it was with some confidence that all I needed to buy was saffron.  Not so I discovered when I turned all the cupboards out to find every permutation of nut (Brazils, macadamias, walnuts, pine nuts, pecans, pistachios...) but nary a bag of ground almonds to be found.  I'd put them all in my mum's chocolate and coconut birthday cake the other day and not replaced them.  Oops.

So I ended up flavouring the sponge purely with almond essence and replacing the almonds weight-for-weight with more flour.  It seemed to work okay although the little slice I tried was quite crumbly.  I'm sure the almonds would've made the sponge much moister.

But this is a fabulously cheery cake with it's sunny saffron hue and topped with sliced peaches.  The perfect antithesis for a miserable August day.  You can find the recipe in Short and Sweet or on the Guardian website.

Olympic Food Challenge - Romanian Apple Cake - Romania

I think Romania is the first of my countries that I've blogged about that has actually won some medals at the time of me posting.  Of course, they've had just over a week to get going and have managed to amass two golds (gymnastics and shooting), four silvers (judo x2, weightlifting and fencing) and two bronze (gymnastics and weightlifting) so far.  In short, don't mess with the Romanians - they're a strong and agile bunch.

Not a Cheeky Girl in sight

Romania itself is probably best known for being home to Dracula's castle in Transylvania - a historical region in the centre of the country.  Depending on whether you love or hate horror stories, that could be seen as one of a few of the bad things that Romania is known for.  Other slightly unpalatable things that spring to mind are communist dictator Nicolai Ceaucescu, who was overthrown in the bloody revolution in 1989 (I vividly remember delivering newspapers splashed with images from this in my formative years) and, perhaps worst of all horrors, for giving the world The Cheeky Girls.

On the plus side Romanian has given the world a host of eminent scientists, artists and sportsmen and women - you can read about them here.

The cuisine - as one website states - isn't necessarily the first thing you would consider when visiting Romania.  Not being an expert on this subject, I would agree however that it does seem to have many similarities to food from other countries that formed part of the Ottoman empire.  On the one hand, it's diverse.  On the other hand, when you have Bulgaria, Cyprus and Macedonia in your Olympic Food Challenge list, you don't want to be too samey.

I eventually settled on a Romanian apple cake because I had to do at least one bake during these two weeks (I've also baked several new recipes that I've not blogged about thanks to OFC including a rather nice triple layer chocolate and coconut cake and a neopolitan bundt cake).  Baking is probably my own best discipline when it comes to food and if I was going to go for gold in any category, this would be the one.

Sadly, I think I let myself down with this recipe.  Or at least the apples I chose let me down.  The recipe calls for five apples, but doesn't specify which type.  I went for the Pink Lady variety because they normally have a great, fizzy flavour and have previously worked well when a recipe has called for eating rather than cooking apples.  Unfortunately, this particular batch lacked that little bit of pizazz to contrast with the very sweet-spicy sponge that the recipe produces.  Ten out of ten to the recipe for simplicity and a great bake result.  One out of ten to the overpriced apples from Sainzlebobs, giving this an overall result of a silver.

You can find the recipe here.

Romanian flag

Lil Ms Squirrel's Summer Pudding Cupcakes

My gorgeous cousin, @BridestockBride is getting married in less than a week.  Not one known for convention, she and her hubby-to-be are having a wedding festival.  In amongst all the excitement, she's planning on having a tea tent with a cake stall and has been buying vintage china like a demon for the last year.

You can just about see the hidden middle...

Any of the guests who are vaguely capable of baking have been asked to bring some cake with them.  I still haven't quite decided what I'm making, but I came up with these cupcakes as a potential option.

Summer pudding is something that we never had when I was growing up because my mum doesn't like the 'soggy bread' outside.  For the same reason, we rarely had trifle as she doesn't like soggy sponge.  But I love summer fruits and figured that you could do a pink-tinged hidden middle cupcake with a dollop of 'cream' on the top.  I Googled about for recipes but couldn't find one so came up with my own.

Yesterday I made a half batch of cakes for a trial run and decided to add it to the blog today - even though it means a double-blog-day with my Olympic Food Challenge meal coming later tonight.

Because I'm not sure what the weather is going to be like come Saturday, I went for a topping of Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMB) because it's firmer than standard English Buttercream and will hopefully stand up to a warm day better.  Having mastered Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMB) a few months back for my epic raspberry cake, I decided it was only fair to try IMB as well.  The end product for both SMB and IMB appears to be the same. I don't have any SMB to hand to do a true comparison.  But the cooking method is slightly different.  With SMB, you heat the egg whites over a bain marie with the sugar and then whip them.  IMB requires you to add hot sugar syrup to partially whipped egg whites.  In both cases, you then whip the meringue to within an inch of its life, throw in a huge pile of butter et voila, buttercream.

Girly cakes ahoy!

The recipe I picked for the IMB instructed me to boil my sugar for seven minutes and gave no temperature.  After four, it started to turn caramel in colour so I popped in my Heston thermometer and it told me it was 168c already.  Disaster.  A quick Google revealed that the syrup should be no more than 110c.  The second batch took just over two minutes from initial boil to being ready.

Rather than waste the first batch, I threw in some pink food colouring and made some sugar graffiti just for the fun of it.  I remember seeing Lorraine Pascale do this and I was just interested in how to work with it and how long you have between pouring it and being able to flex it onto things and the moment when it sets hard and will just fragment.

Whilst making up the cakes, I then thought the fragments of sugar would add an extra dimension to the finished cake.  I asked the husband for his opinion.  It wasn't polite (I must confess I was so deflated, I tweeted exactly what he said).  But I'm pleased with them.

Here's how I made them

For the sponge (adapted from a recipe by the Hummingbird Bakery - makes 12-16)

• 240g plain flour
• 280g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 240ml whole milk
• 1/2 tsp rosewater (optional)
• 2 eggs
• red and purple gel food colouring

For the filling

• 200g frozen summer fruits
• 3 tbsp caster sugar

For the Italian Meringue Buttercream (makes more than you'll need for the cakes, but you can freeze it for later use)

• 5 egg whites
• 215g caster sugar
• 60ml water
• 340g butter, left at room temp for about an hour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

• Fresh summer fruits and mint leaves to decorate

• A sugar thermometer
• Cake cases
• 2 x 12 cup muffin trays
• Stand mixer with a whisk and paddle attachment

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/325F.  Line two muffin tins with paper muffin cases.  If you only have one muffin tin, you can always bake in two batches.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat on a slow speed until it resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Mix the eggs, milk and rosewater in a jug.  Pour half of the milk mixture into the flour mixture and beat slowly until combined.  Scrape down the sides, add the rest of the milk mixture and then beat until you have a smooth batter.  Add a little red and purple food colouring to the batter and beat well until you have a dark pinky-purple colour that you're happy with.  It's important to use gel colours as you don't need too much of them to get a good colour and they won't make the cake batter to liquidy.
4. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling them half full.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, then remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Meanwhile, make the filling by putting the frozen berries and caster sugar in a small pan and heating gently over a medium-low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the berries are in a thick syrup.
7. For the Italian Meringue Buttercream, put the egg whites into the bowl of the stand mixer and add the whisk attachment.
8. Put the sugar and water into a small saucepan with the thermometer and heat until boiling.  Just before the temperature reaches 110c, start the mixer going on high to whip the egg whites.  Once they have some volume and the sugar syrup is at 110c, remove the pan from the heat and slowly pour the syrup in a stream into the mixer as it whips the eggs.  Once all the sugar syrup has been poured in, continue whipping until the egg whites are cool to the touch.  This can take around ten minutes.  It's essential that they're cool or the buttercream will end up runny.
9. Once the meringue is thick and cool, start adding the butter in in small lumps.  It will take a while to add all the butter and the mixture may appear to go runny for a while but it will come back together right at the end when the balance of butter and meringue is right.
10. Finally, turn the mixer down to medium and add the vanilla bean paste, beating for another minute until it's all incorporated.
11. To assemble the cakes, use a small sharp knife to cut a deep cone shape from the centre of the cake (don't eat it, you'll need it shortly).  Take care to not cut right through the bottom of the sponge.  Add a spoonful of the summer fruit mix then trim the cone of cake to fit as a lid to cover up the fruit.  Pipe a swirl of buttercream over the top of the cake to cover up the cut but still show some of the pink sponge around the edges.  Decorate with the fresh summer fruit and sprigs of mint.

The spare buttercream will keep well in the fridge or freezer.  You need to bring it back to room temperature and then whip with the stand mixer for five minutes to return it to its original consistency.  You can find out more about my experience with doing that here.

Dan Lepard's Dark Banana Ginger Cake

I first came across this recipe a couple of months ago when I was looking to make a banana cake for my then mentor at work.  Dan had published a pair of bare banana cake recipes in his weekly column for the Guardian.  Last time I went for the first recipe.  Today it's the second recipe from the column.

183 cals of yumminess

At the time the recipes were published, I was trying to convince my mother that Dan is a bit of a baking deity.  She wasn't convinced despite me raving about all the recipes of his I've baked during this journey.  The weekend the column was published was the first time she'd had a chance to taste one of my Lepard bakes when I made his Cinnamon Cake with Blackberries.  She'd raved so much to her work colleagues about it that they asked for pictures and they then insisted that she try one of his recipes and bring it in for them to test.

In a bout of spooky coincidence, we both made banana cakes on the same day although she made both, I only made the Melted Butter Banana Cake.  Given that it was a week when I was pretending to diet, I didn't actually try my own cake but that weekend, she bought me a small sample of both of hers to try.

Her taste testers, like mine, had wolfed down the Melted Butter one, but were less enthusiastic about the Dark Banana Ginger Cake.  I tried both and had to agree with them.  The dark cake was lacking in something but I wasn't quite sure what.

Queen Abigail, chief banana masher

Until I made the cake myself that is.  Although the husband is on a diet (as am I), he decided that he quite fancied a banana cake.  I used to have a diabetic-friendly recipe that I found on the BBC Food (not Good Food) website from Diabetes UK, but no amount of Googling could turn up the original one and I know my handwritten notes got lost when we moved house.  But Dan's recipe ticked a lot of the boxes.  It uses oil rather than butter and is made from wholemeal rather than plain flour.  Two ticks in the 'vaguely healthy cake' box.

At the outset, I figured the 'healthy' bit was why this cake was less successful in my mum's taste test than the buttery one.  But I have a feeling she possibly tampered with the recipe.  Unlike her own mother, my mother doesn't like ginger.  My grandma adored the stuff.  For me, it's one of those things that I suddenly started liking when just after my grandma passed away.  It was really spooky.  I'd never liked smoked salmon or ginger before then.  And yet around that sad time, I became addicted to those things.

So I think mum omitted the ginger and this recipe absolutely needs it.  I bet if I ask her she'll probably deny it and say she stuck religiously to the recipe.  Maybe she did, but I don't remember chunks of ginger in the sponge.  Plus I cheated and modified the recipe a little myself, adding a teaspoon of ground ginger and a half teaspoon of salt to the batter to bring out the flavour.  And I used stem ginger rather than glace ginger so I poured in the last spoonful of ginger syrup for good measure (the rest having been used in the triple ginger butterflies from Saturday afternoon).

Lots of cake!

If you've read any of my other posts, you'll know I've labelled my husband as having a 'discerning palate'.  When it comes to cake, he's my harshest critic (see some of his other feedback here).  And his scathing Ramsay-esque criticism is no longer exclusively reserved for me.  He recently ate some cheesecake (I won't say where it came from but it wasn't mine) and declared that it was vile and he could make something ten times better.  I'm still waiting to see evidence of his culinary genius - personally, I thought it was one of the nicest homemade cheesecakes I've had in ages, but I'm willing to be dazzled by the husband's cheesecake prowess.

Anyhow, he declared this to be the best banana cake he's ever eaten and that he wants to eat it every day forever.  High praise indeed.  And it comes in at just 183 cals per piece - made in a 20cm square tin and cut into 16 pieces.

Verdict from work colleagues to follow tomorrow.

The original recipe can be found here (it's the second one down)

Lil Ms Squirrel's Raspberry Margarita Polenta Cake

The theme for tonight's Clandestine Cake Club is "Sporty or Naughty" as a celebration of the forthcoming Olympics.  Having singularly failed to come up with a cake idea that is synonymous with Sport, I settled for Naughty, which basically means anything goes.

Ready for cake club

With time not being on my side, and a need to make something that I've never made before, I decided to go for a polenta cake, to further use some up some of the bag of polenta that's still languishing on my storage shelves.

The lovely Jacqueline from the Cake Boule blog recently wrote about a similar cake that was Mojito-inspired.  I loved this idea, but lacked the 7" cake tin to make it in.  I toyed with the idea of scaling it up to fit my eight inch tin but having read some theory on the Ruth from the Pink Whisk's website, I decided I didn't have the time or patience for that either (and her method required me to have a 7" tin to start with which kind of defeated the objective of the exercise for me).

A quick search turned up a similar recipe in Kitchen by Nigella Lawson.  The recipe is also available online which is really helpful.  And it uses a 9" springform tin which I have so there was no faffy adapting.

I then hit on the idea of using up some of the raspberry glut that my garden seems to be producing on a daily basis.  I know this makes my CCC offerings rather typecast - my last effort was an epic Raspberry and Lime Swiss Meringue Cake - but I figured that it would be a pretty twist to an otherwise flat, yellow cake.  Googling around for another recipe, I found this one from Jane Hornby on BBC Good Food.  I was intrigued by the idea of using frozen raspberries rather than fresh so I popped some in the freezer, mixing three quarters in with the batter and adding the rest ten minutes before the end of baking.  Given the often delicate nature of raspberries, it works really well.

The healthy/sporty factor was further increased by the lack of flour in the cake.  It's made with ground almonds and polenta so with the use of gluten free baking powder, it has some virtues.

My biggest baking problem is always time.  I never seem to have the time to savour the process.  It's something that's always squeezed in during Miss A's nap or before work (so at about 5am) or late at night just before bed time.  This often means I make mistakes or get a little stressed by missing ingredients.  The entire kitchen was turned upside down looking for the baking powder.  It's always to the right of the bunny biscuit jar.  But while I was away at the weekend, the husband took it upon himself to "tidy up".  I couldn't find it for love nor money so ended up making my own courtesy of this fabulous substitutes guide from Joy Of Baking.

Fresh from the oven

Everything was going smoothly.  I was thinking about the look and texture of the batter so I could comment on it for this post.  It had a lovely, sunny tinge yet was quite stiff and heavy.  Obviously from the almonds and polenta.  I popped it into the oven.  Started to tidy.  Found egg number three still sitting uncracked next to the bunny biscuit jar.  That serves me right for trying to bake without my egg-cracking assistant.  She would never have allowed such an oversight.

As for other adaptations, I replaced the one of the lemons with two limes and added 25ml of tequila and a pinch of sea salt to the syrup for the Naughty bit.  Just enough tequila to get a taste without putting you over the drink-drive limit.  Essential when driving back from cake club.  The salt to balance the sweetness of the sugar and give it that authentic margarita twist. It does make quite a lot of syrup, but if you spoon slowly, the cake will drink it in.

If I was serving this for dessert, I'd probably use a side of lightly whipped marscapone, thinned with a little creme fraiche, sweetened with some icing sugar and spiked with lime and a pile of fresh raspberries from my garden.

Will update with the verdict and some pics from cake club in the morning.

Raspberry Margarita Polenta Cake - Adapted from "Kitchen" by Nigella Lawson

for the cake:

• 200g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
• 200g caster sugar
• 200g ground almonds
• 100g fine polenta/cornmeal
• 1 1⁄2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 3 eggs
• zest 1 lemon and 2 limes (save the juice for the syrup, below)
• 200g frozen raspberries

for the syrup:

• juice 1 lemon and 2 limes
• 25 ml tequila
• pinch of Maldon sea salt (other brands are available, but Nigella would approve!)
• 125g icing sugar

• extra icing sugar to dust

• 1 x 23cm (9") springform or other round cake tin

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C (fan)/gas mark 4.
2. Lightly butter the base and sides of the baking tin then base-line with baking parchment.
3. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Mix together the almonds, polenta and baking powder.  Beat a third into the butter mixture followed by one egg.  Repeat until all the dry mixture and eggs are incorporated.
5. Beat in the zest, carefully fold in 3/4 of the raspberries (reserving the rest for decoration) then pour into the baking tin, smooth the top and bake for 30 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven and decorate with the remaining raspberries by gently pushing them into the surface.  Take care not to push too hard!  Return to the oven for another ten minutes.
7. Remove from the oven and check with a cake tester which should come out clean.  The cake should be shrinking away from the sides at this point.  Place the tin on a cooling rack.
8. Make the syrup by boiling together the lemon and lime juice, tequila and salt with the icing sugar.  Once the icing sugar has disolved, carefully prick the sponge all over (in between the raspberries) and carefully spoon the warm syrup over the cake.
9. Leave in the tin to go cold before removing to serve.

If you don't need this to be gluten free, but want it to be nut free instead, you could replace the almonds with 200g of plain flour.

Updated: 2nd September 2012 - I've decided to enter this for the September 2012 Alphabakes competition.  The key ingredient this month should begin with 'P' so polenta cake definitely counts!

Lil Ms Squirrel's Lemon Amaretto Bakewell

My current boss is about to move on up the ladder towards the top of what is affectionately known as The Ivory Tower and so as a final farewell, I decided to make him a Bakewell tart.  He's long been a fan of my Bakewells, ever since we had a bake sale at work years ago and he said he couldn't possibly partake as it was all going to be chocolate and he'd given it up for Lent.  I baked a Bakewell so he had to put his hand in his pocket (he would've done so anyway!) and he declared it to be the best Bakewell he'd ever eaten.

Since then, when anyone needs him to do something, there's a bit of a standing joke that I need to make a Bakewell for him first to distract him from the awkward question that's about to be asked.  So it seemed appropriate to make one to celebrate his promotion.

Today's new toddler skill - blind baking a pastry case

Of course, Miss A hasn't baked since we were on holiday so I had to let her help me out.  Therefore, it's by no means the most photogenic Bakewell ever, but for a two year old, she's not done too bad a job of decorating the top.  The pastry is a bit squiffy - I'll take the blame for that.  More haste and less speed needed.  I used ready-bought pastry and failed to notice that Ocado only sell frozen pastry.  When the Ocado man turned up at 5pm with my delivery, I had to delay proceedings for an hour while the pastry defrosted.  But we got there in the end.

On a slight side note about Miss A, I rarely get the opportunity to drop her off at or pick her up from nursery as she only does 9am - 4pm.  But recently,  I went to the nursery Jubilee party.  Her key worker approached me and asked for a word - the phrase that strikes fear into the heart of every parent.

In the split second between the request and the story, I panicked that she was behind in her learning or she'd been doing something naughty that toddlers do (biting, pinching etc) but no, my delightful little two-year-old has been in the home corner teaching all the other two year olds how to bake.  She's stands there with some authority explaining how to correctly attempt to crack the rubber eggs, that you need to cream the butter and sugar first and that it needs to be soft.  That you weigh the flour out carefully with a spoon and then it goes into a tin and into the oven but you have to ask Mummy or one of the assorted pets to do it as the oven is too hot for children to touch.  Such a proud mummy moment. I now expect that tomorrow, all the children in the Ocean room will know how to blind bake a pastry case :o)

Ooops, there's a crack in the pastry

Anyway, bake to the bake.  So I replaced the jam with lemon curd - a good way to use up all the egg yolks getting left over from  the egg-white omelette extravaganza - and Disarronno into the sponge and topped it with Amaretti biscuits.  I had intended to crush them and sprinkle them on, but my little helper insisted that we placed them on the top as they were.  I'm worried they'll be too hard to cut, but we'll see tomorrow afternoon - if Leaving Boss decides to share it with the team that is!

As for Incoming Boss, well I know him pretty well.  And I'm well aware of his culinary peccadilloes.  He's already tried most of the cakes on this blog that have been earmarked for the office and has been complimentary about all of them.  Even Nigella's Bacon Brownies - and he's not a brownie fan.  I hope he didn't take the job just so he could have special cakes made for him!

The recipe I adapted for this came from my mum and I blogged about it here.  This is the recipe for my twist on the original.

• 250g qty shortcrust pastry
• 125g softened butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 medium eggs (rough weight 125g)
• 125g self raising flour
• 50g ground almonds
• 1tbsp Disaronno Amaretto or 1/2 tsp almond essence
• 2t bsp milk
• half a jar of lemon curd



Beautifully decorated, two-year-old-stylee

• 8-10 amaretti biscuits, crushed

• Essential equipment - 9" loose bottomed flan tin

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4
2. Roll the pastry to 5mm thick and large enough to cover the base and sides of your flan tin.
3. Line the tin with the pastry, prick the base over with a fork, add a circle of parchment weighed down with baking beans and bake for 25 mins.
4. Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
5. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding 1tbsp of the flour with each addition to prevent curdling.
6. Add in the Disaronno Amaretto or almond essence then beat in the almonds and flour and 2tbsp of milk.
7. Remove the baking beans and parchment and bake for a further 10 minutes.
8. Remove the pastry case from the oven, cover the base with the curd and then top with the sponge mixture.
9. Sprinkle the sponge with the crushed amaretti biscuits.
10. Change the oven temp to 190c/170 fan/gas 5 bake until golden and springy to the touch - approx 25 minutes.
11. Leave to cool in the tin until completely cold then transfer to the serving dish.

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.

Dan Lepard's Easy Chocolate Birthday Cake

So right now, we're in hopefully (sunny) Scotland and by the time you're reading this, we will have produced a stunning Father's Day cake for the husband.  With it being our seventh wedding anniversary tomorrow as well, I figured what better way to tick off a new recipe than to bake a celebratory chocolate cake.  This also helped justify why I needed to pack my sandwich tins for holiday.

Artfully decorated by Miss A with giant jazzes

We always take basics with us to cope with the first night just in case we don't make it to the supermarket - normally Weetabix, bread, frozen milk (it can defrost on the way) and a few other odds and ends.  Our favourite Scottish hideaway used to have a well-stocked pantry of basics left by previous visitors but this new location is an unknown quantity so I included all of the dry ingredients weighed out already and then threw in my scales too - just in case neither location had a set.

Then it just needed a quick trip to the local shops for eggs and cream and some magic from Miss A and hopefully at some point during this week, I'll be able to furnish this pre-written post with a picture of the finished cake.

In the meantime, here's a link to the recipe online.


Updated 17th June 2012 @ 21:10

There's just something about me and chocolate cakes (excluding brownies) that just don't seem to be working well together on this blog.  When we finally arrived at our destination, I realised that despite ticking them off from my holiday packing list, I actually forgot to bring my scales with me.

My holiday packing list

Unfortunately, the scales at the cottage are a bit hit and miss (although if I'm honest, my own scales are temperamental) and so this cake was destined from the start to not be perfect.  Add to that my decision to halve the recipe and baking in an unfamiliar oven; plus, not checking that the batter was evenly spread in the pan, I was lucky it even resembled a cake.  And because I was so worried about it sinking, I didn't dare look at it until 25 minutes had passed.  By which time it was cooked, but a little dry.

Lepard's cake is stuffed with whipped cream and jam before being slathered in chocolate icing.  Because we already had an amazing cake in our holiday fridge on arrival (more on that another night - it deserves its own special post), I decided to cut down on the cream and just make a simple ganache for Miss A to spread over the top of the cake.

The flavour of the cake was really good.  It just probably need a little less time in the oven and a little more filling/topping to disguise it's dryness.  Miss A was really proud of her efforts and it was a good recipe to allow her to help with every single stage, apart from melting the butter and heating the cream for the ganache.

I owe it to this recipe to bake it in its true form another time.  In the meantime, I'm off to polish off some more of the other cake before falling into a sugar-induced coma.  Laters!

PS: It's been mostly raining with a tiny glimmer of sunshine!

Lil Ms Squirrel's Pimms No 1 Cupcakes

I'm on a course this week and was a little disappointed that it meant that I wouldn't make it to the second meeting of the Bath Clandestine Cake Club for logistical reasons.  The theme this month was 'Alcoholic Cakes' and I'd been planning on making a Pimm's bundt cake.  After pondering the best way to deliver all of the fruit flavours associated with Pimm's, I found a fabulous idea on the Skin and Blister blog, where the bundt was drizzled with Pimm's and sugar and then had little sticks of fruit, artfully arranged on the outside.

Made the most of a tiny bit of evening sunlight

When I finally realised I wouldn't be able to make it to CCC (last night, when my usual journey of forty minutes, took an hour and forty!), I decided I'd save the bundt for my cousin's rather fabulous Wedding Festival Bake Off and not bake at all this week.

Depending on how you look at things fortunately (or unfortunately), my course colleagues kind of talked me into baking tonight anyway.  You know when you go on a course and they do that really annoying thing at the start where you tell everyone who you are and then one random fact about yourself?  Well for once, I had something interesting to say.  I told them about my blog.

It sparked a discussion over lunch as to whether I was actually cooking 'real food' or was doing 'beans on toast', 'beans under toast', beans with toast on the side', 'cheesy beans on toast'....  Thankfully, because I've blogged every night and for all apart from about two posts, I've managed to get at least one picture of the results (didn't think about doing it for the very first post, and one disaster went straight in the bin as I was so p'd off with it), I was able to direct them to the blog so they could explore for themselves.

This lunchtime, I got asked what was for tea last night.  I was secretly pleased that the ones staying at the local 4* hotel said that my dinner sounded better than what they'd had.  And then talk turned to what today's recipe was.  Because I'd already spoken about my love for baking and how my normal colleagues have been the recipient of many a cake, I kind of felt duty bound to do my usual Tuesday night activity of baking for work.

And so the Pimm's cupcake was born.  I had done a little research on this last night and was disappointed with the lack of inspiring recipes.  There's even one on the Good Food Channel website that has cucumber buttercream.  That's a step to far for me!

Ready for the oven

With this in mind, I set about creating my own recipe which I'll share with you tonight.  I'm not saying it's perfect.  I think they're okay.  There's probably room for improvement.  I think they're lacking something, but I'm not quite sure what.  So if you want to try the recipe and tweak it, let me know what you did and how it turned out!

I used the Hummingbird Vanilla Cupcake as a base as I was looking for a light airy bake.  A while back, I made their Mojito cupcakes for work, but because I was making bigger cakes this time and needed 14 of them, the vanilla recipe worked better with a slight adaptation.

For the filling, I reduced some Pimm's, orange juice and sugar and then added in halved strawberries and left them to cool.  The buttercream was laced with Pimm's, orange, lemon and lime zest.  I did a bit of research on this yesterday and found that the lovely Jacqueline over at Cake Boule had made Pimm's and strawberry buttercream for her gorgeous truffles.  I was pleased with her tip that she tweeted me that it makes a soft buttercream as I wasn't so worried when it came time to pipe it.  No big Wilton 1M swirls on these little beauties!  Again, if that's what you like, tinker with the buttercream recipe until your happy with the consistency.

I've tried one, purely for the purposes of telling you how it came out.  The rest are piped and now chilling in the fridge in my cake carrier, ready for a trip to the office tomorrow.  There was a small bowl of buttercream left to, so I'll be interested to prod it in the morning and see if it's set or not.

I'll update tomorrow with feedback from my colleagues.  Of course the trouble is that we have a 'Learning Contract' that we wrote on Day #1.  Amongst many things, it states that we are not allowed to criticise others.  Any rule flouting incurs a £1 fine.  So far, we've collected £7 (of which I contributed one for answering the phone to my boss).  So I'm sure they'll say the cakes taste amazing even if they don't really think so.

Recipe - Makes 16 (I use muffin sized cake cases)

For the Sponge (adapted from a recipe by the Hummingbird Bakery)

Got a bit carried away with Instagram effects...

• 240g plain flour
• 280g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 240ml whole milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped

For the strawberry filling

• 16 small strawberries, halved (or eight large ones, quartered)
• 3 tbsp Pimm's No 1
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp orange juice

For the frosting and decoration

• 500g icing sugar, sifted
• 160g unsalted butter at room temperature
• pinch of table salt
• 60ml Pimm's No1
• zest of one orange
• zest of one lime
• zest of one lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/325F.  Line two muffin tins with paper muffin cases.  If you only have one muffin tin, you can always bake in two batches.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat on a slow speed until it resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Mix the eggs, milk and mint in a jug.  Pour half of the milk mixture into the flour mixture and beat slowly until combined.  Scrape down the sides, add the rest of the milk mixture and then beat until you have a smooth batter.  Beat in the lemon juice.
4. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling them half full.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, then remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Meanwhile make the strawberry filling by placing the Pimm's, sugar and orange juice into a small pan.  Bring to the boil and then simmer until the liquid has reduced by about a half.  Remove from the heat and add in the strawberries.  Toss to coat and then leave to cool.
7. When the cakes are cooled, carefully cut a small cone shape from the top of each cake - keep the cut outs, don't eat them!  Fill the hole in each cake with a couple of pieces of the strawberry and then replace the piece of cake you removed.
8. Make the frosting by beating the icing sugar, butter and salt together using an electric mixer until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Add the fruit zest, and continue beating.  Slowly pour in the Pimm's.  Beat until light and fluffy then spoon or pipe some onto the top of each cake, ensuring that the cuts in the top of the cake are covered.  
9. Finally top with a whole fresh strawberry.  Or if you're feeling extravagant/arty, use fresh mint leaves and twists of orange, lemon, lime and cucumber skin cut with a cannoli cutter.