Homemade Marshmallows

Marshmallows are a currency in our house.  Far be it from me to fib about bribing my child with sugar-filled products in order to get her to co-operate.  She knows the tariff for various activities like not messing around at the tea table (grapes and blueberries for pudding), tidying up (two bedtime stories instead of one) and probably the worst bribe of all, a marshmallow if she has her hair brushed.

Depending on her mood, hair brushing is somewhere on the scale between tedious and an all out nervous breakdown from the perspective of her parents.  Some days, we can get away with telling her she'll look beautiful like Lizzie (her favourite nursery nurse) and her hair is done without too much fuss.  Other days, one of her toys or one of the dogs will do her hair - she believes absolutely that inanimate objects and beings without opposable thumbs are capable of wielding a hairbrush, clips and bobbles - and the unlucky parent just about manages to get through the ordeal without reaching for something alcoholic.

So near, but yet so far...

On rare occasions, however, we do have to resort to all out bribery.  This usually happens when we've got somewhere to go and not much slippage in the itinerary for getting out of the door.  Bargaining starts before breakfast with the usual promises of 'beautiful Lizzie hair' or a list of animals or wooden jigsaw dinosaurs that she might like to have do her hair, but it's like she has a sixth sense that time is tight and she has a melt down at the mere thought of having her hair done.

I let her brush my hair and put conditioner in it.  This still doesn't persuade her to have her own done.  She sits rigidly with her head against the back of a chair and refuses to move, tears and snot coursing down her face.  A pile of unsuitable animals build up on the floor.  She doesn't want to look like any of her nursery teachers or her best friend Charlotte.  I threaten to have her hair cut off so she looks like a boy (which is what my mum did to me when I was small because I used to do this - and my hair is a hundred times worse to tame than Miss A's).  Even this doesn't work.  And her hair is so cute when it's done that I can't bring myself to follow through on the cutting threat.

And so I offer up a 'Marshie'.  And not just any marshie, but a pink marshie.  The snot covered child crawls onto my lap, smearing my top with snot (I've learned not to get myself ready to go out until the hair battle is over) and she reluctantly lets me tame her Cheerio and milk encrusted hair into bunches or a pony tail.  Eyes dry, we head into the kitchen to find the marshie pot.

So today's recipe of choice came about when I read about one of my fellow blogger's joy at being able to make her own marshmallows.  The recipe comes from the Eat Like a Girl blog and I knew that I just had to give it a go.  With a huge pile of 'marshie' you can even make your own shapes as Nelly of Nelly's Cupcakes did - melting a snowman into her hot chocolate.  What a fab, wintry idea.

Niamh gives you some of the science behind the actual marshmallow recipe.  Basically, marshmallows contain Italian meringue with some gelatine and flavouring thrown in.  The only downside to the recipe is that it's more descriptive than exact science and this meant that I had a bit of a disaster.  When whipping the meringue with the gelatine, the instruction is to "...continue to whisk until the marshmallow mixture holds its shape. Don’t over whisk or your marshmallow will lose fluffiness".  I was a bit worried about over whisking and consequently stopped whipping too early.  All looked well in the tray and it set well but sadly, the gelatine separated out.

The top bit tasted lovely although it was a little too wobbly - because it lacked the full amount of gelatine.  I then re-read Nelly's post and remembered she'd pointed out the length of time you need to whip it for.  Ah well.  Whilst Miss A announced that the top bit was "'licious" she decided the bottom "cheese bit is stinky winky" so it went in the bin.  But I'll try again another time when I have the house to myself and can put the mixer on for more than five seconds.

You can find the original recipe here.

Rhubarb and Custard Tarts

Today was a lesson in how to not transport cakes.  After lovingly baking a batch of tarts, I stupidly put the tin into a carrier bag and forgot to check that the tin was flat when I picked the bag up.  Consequently, when I realised my mistake, the tin was already full of sloppy rhubarb curd.

Let me take you back a few steps.  One of my colleagues is a massive fan of my rhubarb and custard cupcakes.  I came up with the recipe long before the Hummingbird Bakery published the recipe in 'Cake Days'.  I'm sure it features in many other books as it's such a classic combination.  I fill mine with a spiced rhubarb centre and then top with custard buttercream.  P is intrigued as to how I achieve the hidden middle.  He's quite intelligent but he really can't work out how I do it.  At first I thought he was joking when he asked, but he's asked so many times now that I know he's truly curious.

P is also a huge fan of custard tarts.  Whenever he brings in cakes to work, he'll always ensure that 50% of the batch are custard tarts.  I had never eaten one until recently as I really didn't think I would like the cold custard thing but I was pleasently surprised.

So when I happened across this recipe, I knew I had to make them for him.  I made the curd last week when another friend gave me a batch of rhubarb.  If I'm honest, I was a little disappointed as the curd took away a lot of the sharp tang of the rhubarb which I love.  It was also a bit 'eggier' than some of the citrus curds I've made in the past - this may have been my mistake in cooking it.  If (or when) I do this again, I'd probably make a rhubarb jam instead.


The rest of the pie is based on a Dan Lepard recipe.  I used up the rest of the beautiful pastry I made for the Botswanan Chicken Pie I made for the Olympic Food Challenge and the custard is also a Dan recipe.  I loved the idea of putting a cupcake case into the pastry cases to hold the beans for blind baking.  And I was happy that the pastry came out of the tin far easier than when I made Thomasina Miers' mince pies at Christmas.  I have to experiment now as I'm not sure if it was the blind baking that made them come out more easily or if the pastry I made at Christmas was a bit rubbish.

Oops!

Anyhow, when it came to baking the custard part, the blogger (Ms North) recommended filling them half full with custard to leave room for the topping.  I found that on baking the custard had decreased in volume somewhat - whether it was because it settled or dried out a little I'm not sure.  I'd definitely recommend going for two-thirds custard to one third rhubarb.  Plus it means you won't have so much spare custard to force yourself to eat!

The overall flavour was good with the orange complimenting the rhubarb nicely, but as I said it was just a tad too sweet for me with the custard and the curd.  But that's just personal preference.  The pastry was lovely and crisp on the one that I'd saved to test and photograph - it was also the worst looking pie before the disaster.

I would also recommend making them and serving them straight away.  After being in a tin all day, the pastry had gone soggy - I'm guessing from the dampness from the curd.

You can find the original recipe here.

Angela Nilsen's Twice Baked Cheese Souffles

Having been lulled into a false sense of souffle-making-knack-security when I made Kerstin Losch's Mousse di Limao for the Olympic Food Challenge, I figured that I was expert enough to pull off these twice baked souffles.

First bake....

I first happened across the recipe in Good Food Magazine a few months back and filed it away in the 'to do list' as a tick in the 'learn to souffle' box.  It also had the added bonus of being cheesy and low in calories so it was definitely a must-make.

Because the recipe is done in two stages, it allowed me to start it off on Sunday and then finish it today for dinner, thus claiming the recipe for today (my blog, my rules!).  With a full day of Prince2, including the practitioner exam late in the afternoon, I knew I'd be pushing it.  Any other Thursday, I'd've probably given into the hubby's demands for a chippy tea, but now he's on this health kick, chippy trips are banned (by him, not me for once).  But it forced me to not give up on this madcap challenge at the last fence.

Things started well on Sunday with the really cheesy sauce.  The roux is made from olive oil with just a touch of butter.  I'm not sure if the oil makes a difference but for once, I didn't have to battle to beat lumps from the sauce.  The addition of parmesan, Philly, chives and mustard made an amazing tasting cheese sauce.  I carefully folded in the whipped eggs as instructed and set them in the oven to bake in a bain marie.

....second bake....Disaster!

They rose well.  I timed them.  They looked cooked.  I left them to cool, and then ejected them from their pots.  Not good.  All three broke coming out of the mould - it looked like they weren't actually cooked enough in the first place.  Trouble was, even though it said how long to cook them for, there was nothing saying how to check that they'd reached the desired consistency in the middle.  Undeterred, I carefully transferred them to a tupperware box, wrapped as best I could and froze them.

But of course, once they hit the oven, they just spread into a huge, cheesy mess.  And to be honest, they went from tasty to bland - perhaps after the addition of the egg whites to the cheese sauce?  To say I was disappointed to have no tea after such a bad day would've been an understatement.  However now I'm all Prince2'd up, I saw the risk on Sunday and made sure I had some bread in to make toast for my tea instead.  I believe that's a Fallback Plan to use the correct terminology.  Or what mere mortals would refer to as Plan B.  Shame my risk budget didn't extend to lobster and champagne to celebrate surviving the exam with my sanity (just about intact).

So it's a thumbs down to this recipe for me.  But don't let me put you off trying it.  Just make sure you have a risk mitigation plan in place first!  You can find it here.

Protein Bars

Yuck.  Just yuck!

Yesterday I wrote about how I'd gone to the effort of making homemade peanut butter in order to then deliver some low cost protein bars for the husband and I.  Wish I'd not bothered.

Budget sludge on the left, yummy expensiveness on the right

If you buy protein bars from a shop, they cost anywhere between £1.40 and £3 each.  My budget option was intended to save me heaps of money - when you get through 10 a week between the two of you, it gets expensive.  Instead, I'm about to either chuck £4 worth of food away or spend the next eleven days choking down my home made attempt.

Despite the oatmeal and homemade peanut butter, the bars are sadly ruined by the taste of aspartame from the addition of chocolate whey protein powder.  It's really all you can taste.  When you make it up as a drink with milk and stick a banana in it, it's pretty palatable.  Mixed into a stodgy batter, it's frankly quite disgusting.

On the plus side, they kept me so full up to lunchtime and beyond that I wasn't tempted by any of the free biscuits on offer at my course during breaktimes nor did I really want my lunch (my belly thought I'd eaten a lump of putty).  It did save me from snorfing the bag of crisps, flapjack and orange juice accompanying the free sandwich, that pushed the lunch well beyond the 1,000 cal limit.

I seriously need to revisit the healthy, protein packed breakfast issue during the course of my new blog. There has to be something I can eat easily at work that will keep me full til lunch and isn't messy.  Answers on a postcard please.

If you're interested, this is the recipe I used.  Word of warning, trying to clean up afterwards is akin to trying to scrape dried concrete out of a cement mixer.  You won't go far wrong with a hammer and chisel.  Goodness knows what it's done to my innards!



MagicPunt's MRBs (Meal Replacement Bars):

Combine in large mixing bowl:

3 Cups Oatmeal
1/2 Cup Natural Peanut butter
1 cup Skim Milk
4 Scoops Protein Powder
dash of cinnamon

Mix until a sticky batter is formed (may take a few minutes)

use a large spoon to spread out the mix into the bottom of a Pam-sprayed glass or metal cooking tray (spread until even)

put in the fridge overnight and cut into 8 equal bars that yield:

11g fat (good monounsaturated fats)
26g carbs
21g protein

285 calories

Pimms Jelly

One of the most common questions I get asked about this 'odyssey' that I'm on is 'What do you do when you just want a pizza for tea?'  Well the simple answer is that I don't actually like pizza so it's not a problem.  I'll admit that I enjoyed making Dan Lepard's pizzas a while back, but still, I never crave pizza because historically I've not liked it so I can live without it.

It was actually set at this point...

Of course, pizza is just one of many things that could be substituted into that question.  I'm just being a bit pedantic.  If pizza was replaced by toast/poached eggs/spaghetti bolognaise/sausages and mash etc etc then the more accurate answer as regular readers will know is that I make cake.  Or a dessert.  Which I guess is a bit cheaty in the grand scheme of things.  But I made the rules so I can bend them to suit.  I've still tried - and blogged about - a new recipe every single day for the last 300 days.

Sometimes I've tried two new recipes in one day.  Sometimes I've written about them both.  More often than not, I've actually only written about the more worthy recipe.  I've not documented some of the failures I've had - like the time I tried to make Lorraine Pascale's Totally Naughty Mini Toad in the Holes for Miss A's tea.  They ended up looking nothing like in the book - God knows how she got the sausages to stand to attention (*snigger*) - and Miss A refused point blank to eat them - despite being on an exclusively sausage-and-fruit diet at the time.  The picture was just so rubbish that I ended up writing about the lovely Chilli Chocolate Cookies I'd also made courtesy of a recipe from Jaim's Kitchen.

Thursday is normally the day I crack.  If I was dealing with a more adventurous family, I'd probably be more inclined to make an effort.  But Thursdays and I have never seen eye-to-eye.  Once upon a time it was free paper delivery day - not fun if you're a 15st 15-year-old lugging 200-odd free papers plus assorted leaflets from door to door.  Then Thursdays became working-late-night-opening-at-Debenhams night.  A brief respite appeared in my mid-twenties when it was go-to-the-nearest-bar-after-work-and-get-hammered-on-one-glass-of-wine.  And now, in my mid-thirties it's the day of the week when the fridge is bare and my patience is low.  Couple that with a husband who rolls his eyes at anything I ever suggest for tea unless it's takeaway and you start to understand why I struggle with recipes on Thursday nights.  

Even Instagram couldn't save these

I've been thinking about trying a Pimm's jelly recipe since the weather was last bright and sunny.  Having waited endless weeks to do it, I was motivated into action after buying some cute jelly moulds for Miss A the other day.  I was determined that rather than just buying packet jelly, I'd make my own from scratch so I know exactly what's going into it.  So used the Pimms jelly recipe as an excuse for a bit of pre-production testing before the weekend when I plan to make fresh fruit jellies from scratch.  Plus it meant I could have a 'dirty' tea of scrambled eggs with tomato sauce and didn't have to worry about making something exotic like Thomasina Miers' Huevos a la Mexicana.  Good old runny 'eggy-scrambles' with a big splodge of Heinz 57 on a toasted English muffin.  Bliss.


I had a can of pre-mixed Pimms that has been lurking in the fridge for the last six weeks (I rarely drink) so it seemed like a simple task.  Melt gelatine, mix with Pimms, bung in fruit, chill, eat.  I was rather relieved that it set, although a little disappointed that the fruit floated to the top.  I removed it from the fridge for it's pic.  Left it on the side whilst we ate tea.  Went to eat it an hour later and discovered that I now had a glass of flat Pimms with very soggy fruit in it.  Major disappointment.  I'm guessing it has to be eaten pretty much straight from the fridge.


Plus, the fizz had gone from the lemonade so I'm not quite sure why all the recipes advocate using lemonade.  I would've expected it to have a mildly carbonated fizz to the jelly but not a hint.  All in all a waste of a damned good glass of Pimms and somes strawberries.  Even though I don't drink often, I still felt saddened at this lost opportunity.  I'm really glad I didn't crack open the bottle of Prosecco that Ocado kindly gave me for being such a loyal customer and waste that on Jamie O's jelly recipe.  It's definitely going in a glass for drinking and nothing more.


Pimms and cake, however, works really well together.  My Pimms cupcakes got great reviews from my work colleagues a while back and I'm thinking of making a Pimms bundt for the Afternoon Tea Tent at Bridestock which is now only two and a bit weeks away!  But because Bridestock falls in the middle of the Olympic Food Challenge, I'm going to have another few days of double-recipe trying.  Oh well, at least it means I can eat a lot of toast for tea!


The recipe I used for the Pimms jelly can be found here.  Don't take my word for it that it doesn't work.

Dan Lepard's Brown Sugar Chocolate Cake

I'll be honest with you.  I got cocky.  Having made 26 other Dan Lepard recipes, I figured I could write the best part of this blog before even attempting the cake and then just stick in some pictures when it was finished and get an early night.

To sink one is careless...

And here I am, writing it all again. Because it was a complete and utter disaster.  I was supposed to be making a special chocolate cake as a gift for an old colleague of mine.  So where better to turn than Short and Sweet, I thought?  No matter what I've made before, I've always had good results.  And even when I thought I had a good recipe beforehand (like with lemon cakes and banana cakes) when I've made a Lepard one, it's just taken the game to a whole other level (see Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake and Bare Banana Cake).  Not so with this one.

I just don't seem to have much luck with chocolate cakes.  I didn't like Nigella's chocolate cake.  I was disappointed with the Hummingbird chocolate cupcakes.  I don't want to tempt fate, but I've always had very good results with brownies.  But I can't hand on heart say that I've found a chocolate cake recipe that  does it for me.  My go-to recipe is the BBC Good Food Ultimate Chocolate Cake and I only didn't make that because of the complicated delivery method that this cake required.

There were rave reviews of the cake on Dan's forums and my lovely virtual friend Sadia of Baking Elements fame told me she'd never bake another chocolate cake after trying this one.  I didn't need convincing any further.

Because it's easier to take the iPad into the kitchen (Short and Sweet is a bit unwieldy) I found the recipe online and followed along with that.  Now, in hindsight, having just cross-referenced the book with the online recipe, I may have discovered where I went wrong...

Upside down and two slices in doesn't look so bad...

Lepard helpfully tells you in the book that the cake might sink due to the high ratio of fat and sugar to flour.  I picked this up when I read through the book version of the recipe and noted the remedy was to add two extra tablespoons of flour or an egg white.  Or both.  I added the extra flour so you can understand that I was even more disappointed when my cake still sank.  Actually that's not strictly true. I managed to sink two.  I mean one is careless, but two made me seriously doubt my ability to bake...

Because I wanted to share this nugget of information with you (the web version doesn't tell you this) I snapped a pic of the book recipe on my phone so I could have it at my side while I typed.  Then I decided to compare the ingredient list with the online one.  And it's significantly different in the flour area.

The version on the Guardian website was published in 2005.  Six years before the book.  The ingredient list looks the same at first glance until you get to the eggs.  The older recipe uses one egg rather than two and 50g less flour (before you add the extra two tablespoons recommended by the book) and the new recipe adds two teaspoons of glycerine although it unhelpfully doesn't tell you what difference this made.

With my Miss Marple skills working on overdrive,  I can only assume that with the inclusion of the codicil on saving the cake from sinking, Lepard has obviously come up with a slightly less risky version of the cake.  I picked the wrong one and ended up with not one, but two sunken loaves.

Third slice in and it just crumbled....

So my colleague will be a little gutted come Tuesday as the delivery service only happens once in a blue moon when all the stars align (if I'd posted the original blog, you would've understood that better) as I left it too late in the day to bake anything else and had no ingredients to spare.

I will write this one off as a lesson learned.  And if I'm honest, I'm not sure I'd make it again.  I cut the ends off of one of the loaves and served it with fruit and yogurt as dessert.  It was okay, but it wasn't all that in my humble opinion and didn't have the 'Wow!' factor that so many of Lepard's other recipes had.  Maybe if it hadn't sunk and I'd gone on to make the Treacle Chocolate Icing to top it with, I may have enjoyed it more.

Short and Sweet still remains my favourite go-to book of the moment.  But I would now advise caution when using some of the older online recipes.  If you own the book, it may be well worth checking for differences.

Jelly Baby Cupcakes

Ready for a snooze in the oven

A few weeks ago, I hit on the idea of making Jelly Baby Cupcakes with Miss A as a present for her grandad - my stepfather.  Terry loves Jelly Babies and has a really sweet tooth so this seemed like the perfect activity to occupy Miss A with and had the result that I could bake without worrying too much about my diet.

I had a quick Google this morning for a recipe (the 'rents are due to visit tomorrow to give me a few precious Miss A-free hours to get some housework done) and the only blog I could find was on the OlliesPops blog telling a tale of woe that Rachel had tried and failed to achieve a similar feat.

She gives a good account of testing several different things baked into the middle of cupcakes and advice that she'd tried freezing the jelly babies first, but sadly, they sank to the base of the cupcake case and left a nasty, sticky mess.  Poor Jelly Babies!  She didn't, however, divulge what her recipe was so I figured I'd have a go with my own method and see if I could succeed.

First thing was to choose a decent batter.  Having tried several different vanilla cupcake recipes, I settled on using the recipe I used to rely on before I got back into cooking.  This is a basic pound cake mix that I make by weighing my eggs and then using equal quantities of flour, sugar and butter.  Because I didn't want the jelly babies to sink, I added an extra 25g of flour and to compensate, I added an extra teaspoon of baking powder to make sure they had a good rise to them.

"I'm the king of the castle"

Another thing I tried today was inspired a little by Dan Lepard (yeah, him again!) and his Bare Banana Cake from earlier in the week.  I'd just bought my butter from the supermarket so it was still cold.  I seem to remember somewhere in my Lepard-based reading this week that apparently if you find yourself with solid butter, it's perfectly acceptable to melt it in the microwave on a low heat for a minute or two and have the butter be partly liquid.  

Mine was about 60% solid to 40% liquid when I took it out so I beat it well with the sugar until I was sure that it wasn't warm enough to turn the eggs to scramble.  There was no difference to the end product than if I'd used room temperature butter.  In fact, it was better as I hand-mixed the cake (well with a wooden spoon and in a bowl of course!) so it meant I didn't have to faff around with cleaning the mixer afterwards.

I also took the decision to bake them at a lower temperature than normal (150c fan) in the hope that this wouldn't melt the jelly babies and I covered them in with a little spoonful of batter in the vain hope that encasing them would help prevent the melt.  Because I'm a wuss though, I only baked jelly babies into four, figuring that if they failed, I'd still have a dozen decent cupcakes to ice and top with jelly babies for the gift.

Bless my darling daughter, she bought the story that I was putting the jelly babies to bed when I covered them with cake.  When they went into the oven, she peered through the door as normal and when I asked what she could see, she said 'Shush Mummy.  Jelly babies are sweeping'

Mourning the fate of his buddy inside - note the sticky wrapper

My cakes took around 35 minutes to bake whereas they'd normally be done in 25.  I couldn't see any sign on the base of the case of disaster so I merrily iced them with a thick, lemon based icing, and topped them with another jelly baby.  A few pics and then the moment of truth.  Exactly the same problem that Rachel had.  A gooey-bottomed cake.

I then got to thinking that maybe I should've floured them in the same way that you do with fruit to stop it sinking to the bottom.  But why bother with the faff?  The simple solution would be to just bake the cakes, carefully hollow out a jelly-baby sized hole in the middle, pop the jelly baby in, replace the cut out bit (after having reshaped to make it into a nice little bed cover), ice over the top and voila!  Jelly baby cupcakes!

I'm a bit cross with myself as I've iced all of my cakes now so it's too late for this time round.  But next time I've got some spare cuppies, I'll give it a go.

So any plain vanilla cupcake recipe would work for the 'cut and cover' method.  Still, here's how I would do it next time.

Jelly Baby Cupcakes - Makes approx 16 (in muffin cases)

• 225g unsalted butter, softened (see above tip on microwaving)
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 250g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp lemon essence 
• 1/2 tsp salt

For the icing

• 200g icing sugar, sifted
• 2-3 tbsp lemon juice

• 32 jelly babies (if you make less than 16 cakes, you can eat the rest!)

• One or two 12-hole muffin tins (you can bake in batches if needs be)
• Cupcake cases (use larger ones to make sure you have enough depth to put the jelly baby in)

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/Gas 4.  Line the muffin tins with cake cases.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (or if your butter is melted, until well combined).  Add the lemon essence.
3. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together.Add an egg to the mixture and beat until incorporated.  Now add two tablespoons of flour and beat until the flour is well mixed.  Repeat this until all the eggs have been added.  Beat in the rest of the flour. 
4. Fill the cake cases two-thirds full.
5. Bake for 25 minutes until risen, springy and golden brown.  Leave to cool on a wire rack.
6. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and then add two tablespoons of lemon juice and mix.  You're aiming to get a thick, spreadable icing so if you need more liquid, add a few drops of juice at a time until you get the right consistency.  You can always add a little extra icing sugar if you make it too runny.
7. Using a sharp knife, cut a 'divot' from the centre of each cake.  The hole should be wide and deep enough to put the jelly baby in and allow you space to put the 'divot' back on.  Trim each of the 'divots' to fit snugly on top of the jelly babies and flush to the cake.  Now carefully add a teaspoonful of the icing and spread with the back of the teaspoon to cover the cake.  I find keeping the teaspoon damp helps with the spreading.
8. Finally top with another jelly baby.  If you've got the right consistency of icing, you should be able to stand your jelly babies upright.

Hokey Pokey Cupcakes (or not!)

Well today's blog is to document a disaster.  My oldest friend recently gave birth to my third god-child and so Miss A and I are off on the long trek home this weekend to visit them.  In truth, it's not really a long trek; it just takes about as much planning as a military assault as any parent of a toddler will know.  There's the stair gate; booster seat; the buggy; her toy pram; a million changes of clothes; food (my mother doesn't have porridge, cheerios or peanut butter); assorted stuffed toys which won't be the right ones when it comes to bed time.  The list is endless.  And then we'll get there and I'll realise I've packed no clothes for me and forgotten my phone charger.

I'd had high hopes when I dragged myself out of bed at stupid o'clock this morning.  I'd had a rubbish night's sleeps thanks to a pulled back muscle from yesterday.  Caused not by my run but by trying to do the zip up on a dress.  Seriously, can someone design a better way to do up dresses???  But all this was going to be made better by some cupcakes based on Mary Berry's Hokey Pokey cake recipe.

Hokey Pokey cake is an offering from New Zealand.  Basically a coffee flavoured sponge, spiked with chopped walnuts.  Then sandwiched with coffee butter cream and topped with more butter cream and walnut praline.  Coffee cake is my favourite cake and it's one of those cakes that rarely fails to please when bought from a coffee shop.  My friend's hubby loves my coffee cake.  I should've stuck with my old faithful recipe but thought I'd give Dame Mary's cake a go instead.

I wanted to make it as cupcakes as my friend's son has a nut allergy so, I omitted the walnuts from the sponge and thought I could decorate half with coffee and chocolate and then keep back some others for home and decorate them with the walnut praline.

Chuffed with myself for my organisational skills, I even used a tip I picked up over Christmas from Junior  Bake Off about how to neatly fill cupcake cases - by using a piping bag.  They went into the oven and this is where I came unstuck.  For they mushroomed up and overflowed.

No problem, thought I.  I'll just turn them into coffee cake pops.  Something I'd been wanting to have a go at for ages; but I never have any spare sponge to do so and it seems such a waste to make sponge just to crush it up.  But then I broke one open and it tasted horribly greasy.  So they are binward-bound.

What did I do wrong?  I think it's me and baking powder.  The recipe called for 225g of self-raising flour. Having none, I followed the instructions on my tub of baking powder that I needed four level teaspoonsful to turn plain to self-raising.  I should've known better as last time I tried this method with my favourite chocolate cake recipe, it overflowed its tin and welded itself to the bottom of my oven.

And my new oven and it's random cooking of baked goods doesn't help either.  I have a feeling the temperature wasn't right as they took ages to set.  Really must buy an oven thermometer to get the proper measure of what's going on.  Cake after cake after cake in that oven just never cooks as per the recipe.

Lesson learned.  Back to the drawing board for another day.  Shall have to wait until this recipe comes up in the Weekly Bake Off and give it another go!

If you want to see how they should've looked, take a gander at this blog I found about how to make them properly.

Easy Vanilla Cake

When I had the lightbulb moment that gave birth to this challenge, I never considered the finer details of the rules.  What happens if I'm bedridden and can't cook?  Can I do two recipes another day?  Could I convince the husband to cook a new recipe for me (fat chance) and just try the food?  What if I try two new recipes on one day anyway?  Can I 'cheat' and carry one over to the next?  What about days like today when I'm trying a new recipe but won't be able to taste it until Friday?  Does that recipe count as today's recipe of the day because I'm cooking it today or not until the tasting is complete?  And I'm decorating it tomorrow so today's picture will look really rubbish as it will just be a sponge in a tin.

In all honesty it would be easier to carry it over to Friday because I have to work in the morning and then drive the cake half way across the country on Friday afternoon so I will struggle to find time to fit in another recipe.

I decided to make a fondant covered sponge celebration cake.  I wanted to do my usual chocolate cake, but I wasn't sure how it would stand up to being covered with fondant rather than just ganache so I figured I'd look to the expertise of BBC Good Food again.  I made a wedding cake from their recipe collection earlier this year for the same friend and the lemon layer was beautiful so I thought I'd give their Easy Vanilla Cake a whirl.

Very anaemic cake going back in the oven

Moist.  Here I go again with my wandering brain.  @MermHart (Miranda from the telly) you have so much to answer for.  I can't hear the word 'moist' without it making me chuckle to myself after a scene about eating National Trust cake - not that I've ever had a moist cake in a vastly over-priced National Trust cafe, but still it's worth a watch on YouTube.

When I finally got into 'Miranda' I just adored it as it's kind of how I used to imagine my life would be when I was a kid.  The wandering mind (I still have that); bursting into song like life is just a musical; dating a talented and gorgeous chef like Tom Ellis' character Gary - well you can't have it all...

Anyway, those first five paragraphs were from this morning when I was basking in the early morning glow of being proactive.  Fourteen hours later and disaster has struck.

I still don't know if it's me not having gotten to grips with my new cooker or if there was too much syrup poured over the cake but this took moist to a whole new level.  The cake is now languishing in the bin.  There is moist and there is soggy.  This erred on the side of downright soaking.  It just fell apart.

A bit that didn't end up in the bin being taste tested

When I took it out of the oven at first, it was really anaemic looking as you can see from the picture.  Another twenty minutes and it appeared to be cooked through (I stabbed it multiple times to test) but was still pale.  I continued following the recipe and duly cooled it, covered it with syrup and then left it to cool completely but as soon as I sliced the top to neaten it up I knew I had a disaster on my hands.

It was very vanilla-y and very moist.  The bits that weren't soggy tasted okay but all in all, an unmitigated disaster.  My chocolate cake is now baking away.  Should've gone with that in the first place and just tried a different recipe today.

Oh well.  Can't have success every day.  Will I make it again?  Probably not despite the rave reviews its had from other bakers.  I will look for another vanilla cake elsewhere.  And buy an oven thermometer too - just in case...

Onion Bhajis (or not!)

Day four and disaster number one.  At this rate I am due to have 91.25 disasters over the course of this challenging.  Now there's a heartening thought.  Not!

I'm not having a good week.  Make that I'm not having a good month.  Roll on October.  But without whining on too much, last week I stupidly managed to order two huge bags of onions from Ocado.  Or maybe Miss A did it when she was playing with Talking Ben on my phone?  Whatever.  I'm now inundated with onions.

My first plan to make lots of lovely French onion soup with cheese croutes has been slightly scuppered by the appearance of the Indian summer.  It's just too hot for soup and cold soup is just so wrong.

Next option - make onion bahjees.  Something I've never attempted before so a great idea for the recipe challenge.

Now this is where I should have just stopped.  At the thinking stage.  But no, I Googled for recipes and found several on www.onionrecipes.co.uk.  Did I heed the warning bells at this point?  No.

What is it that people say about Chinese restaurants (or Indian or French or any other national restauarant)? If there are no Chinese (or Indian or French or yadda yadda) eating in the restaurant then don't go in no matter how good it looks.

This transpires to a lot of recipes.  If they're not written by someone who is from said country or who has at least visited said country, then steer well clear.

I ended up with 'curried onion half moons in a pile'  Not even curried onion rings.  Never trust a recipe that says it's good and simple.

Lesson learnt.   No tea for me tonight. Tomorrow, I shall mostly be baking onion bread.

If you want to try and prove the recipe works though, you can find it here