Carrot Cake

My dear old friend Caitlin recently came back from a European trip away with her boyfriend Alex, she asked us if she could crash in our spare room. We obliged and when they arrived, she was wearing an engagement ring! Well pop went the champagne, and as I do, I went into a baking frenzy. I had some carrots to use up so bingo: 

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/512793/lorraine-pascale-s-big-fat-carrot-cake The recipe here calls for 3 layers of carrot cake but my batter managed to make 4 layers (because I was using 20cm tins), and I usually make 50% extra icing as well which was a good job because the silky, billowy loveliness of the cream cheese icing MADE the cake. (Call me immodest, but I think mine looks better than hers). My friend Caitlin was so impressed by how effortlessly I managed to whip up the cake (more a virtue of the recipe than a virtue of my skill) and has since commissioned me to make her Wedding Cake. Exciting!

An Autumnal Apple Adventure

I love Autumn, so much. It is the best season by far, the nights drawing in, the leaves changing, the Rugby (this year anyway), and best of all, the run up to Christmas. One of the best things about Autumn, and so underrated, is all the pie. I love pie. Sweet pie, meat pie, pie pie pie. So I was delighted with the below story. I was staying at my mum and dads a weekend in September this year, and my dad's colleagues invited us all around for breakfast and to watch the Rugby. They had such a lovely home and had invited heaps of people over. One of the couples that they invited over made their own homemade apple cider, and would get their friends to donate apples, in return for some cider (a few weeks later). So, after the rugger (New Zealand won... obviously), we all donned our wellies and went into the garden to "pick" apples. "Picking" apples involved shaking branches with a massive plank, and it was literally raining apples. I'd never seen anything like it. We spent well over an hour collecting apples and when we needed to get to branches that we couldn't reach, my dad (57 years old) rediscovered his inner 7 year old and climbed up to shake the top branches. See if you can spot him:

 I was amazed by how many apples we got from one tree only. I can only imagine the amount of cider, and the amount of good days spent drinking that cider. We filled up an entire trailer, I couldn't believe it! Apples as far as the eye can see:

Anyway, we all got invited to go to the cider makers home to help making cider. My mum and dad went along, but sadly, I had to come back home to London, so I got sent away with some delicious apples to do my best with. Well, my lovely David loves apple pie, and he's getting really good at making it too. I love to add cinnamon and soaked raisins or sultanas, and hey presto: the easiest, yummiest, most autumnal pudding. And all with apples that rained down from a tree with my 57 year old dad on it.

Whoopee, it's a Woopie!

Woopie Pies- what a flippin' revelation! This little baking excursion was inspired by Simon Rimmer from Something For the Weekend, find the recipe here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolate_whoopies_67418
The marshmallowy goodness on the inside... mm, mm, mmmm! And you can't beat a handful of rasps to freshen things up!

My 21st Birthday

21st, a coming of age. For me, I've always been 64 at heart, but I threw myself into the spirit of saying goodbye to my kiddie years by throwing a Pirates and Princess party. I managed to get my paws on a brand spanking new copy of the Australian Women's Weekly Kid's Birthday cake book. It turns out it was an institution in all of our childhoods... My brothers and I loved it as kids, and I found a "well used" copy in David's mum's kitchen too! When I found the new edition in Homebase (of all places?) I just about did flick flacks. So here is a Pirate Ship and a Princess Castle from the book... and because I needed to take something in to the office, I made a little martian for good measure. As a testament to my immaturity: don't miss the dead flowers, drying shorts and bottle of carpet cleaner in the background (I learnt from this mistake)

Easter Time

I can't quite remember what it was that inspired me to make this Easter cake, maybe a surplus of mini eggs. Or maybe it's because I LOVE EASTER! It is by far the best holiday of the year. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas: the warm inside, the cold outside, the shopping, the food, the family... but it also has the expectation. After all the buildup, Christmas day is a bit of an anti-climax, I tend to have an argument with my mother/brother/boyfriend/alloftheabove. Easter has none of that. It's all about new starts, chocolate and chilling out with whoever you want to. No stress involved. The below was a choctastic overload with chocolate sponge, chocolate ganache filling, a vanilla buttercream and some mini-eggs (always a winner) to decorate. It was a bit of a sickly sweet overload, but you'll never catch me worrying about my bikini bod!

I'm such a good friend

Yes I am. I made this cake for my friend Cansu (pronounced Jan-sue) who was mega-devastated about saying goodbye to her teenage years. I can confirm - 18 months later, that nothing has changed since her birthday. The hours I spent tweezering these little dragees onto the cake were some of the most frustrating in my life. I have learnt, however, that it is these very tasks that are the most gratifying. I gave her the cake in a lecture and she squealed so loudly that we got a really stern look from our lecturer.

For the sponge I used my never fail Vicky Sponge recipe which you can find in my earlier post. I made your classic chocolate buttercream and then used some surplus Toblerone Minis to decorate. Things I learnt with this cake: Patience is a virtue: don't ice too soon. 

Ice Cream Cake

This is another one which was inspired by the other women in David's life. This time: his Auntie Kit, an incredibly devoted mother to 3 boys, one of whom was conveniently born 2 days after Christmas, which is pretty cool because he has all of his family around at his birthday, but kind of sucks as well, because we're all still suffering from the Christmas Food Coma Hangover. Anyway, I think it was his 12th birthday when I watched as his mother and cousins whipped up a delicious looking ice-cream cake. It looked so good I could barely wait until his birthday to eat it, and once I'd seen how easy it was, I HAD to make it at the next available opportunity. My housemate's birthday! He LOVES ice-cream so it was an obvious option. I got some honeycomb icecream, some vanilla ice cream and I stuck in bits of toffee, bits of chocolate, bits of caramel, hunks of flake and some jellybeans. Now this comes with a caveat. DO NOT use toffee or jellybeans in ice cream cake, unless of course you need a cheap tooth extraction (that was sarcasm... just don't). But it really is dead easy. See below

Ingredients:
2 litres of whatever icecream you like best
200-400grams of your favourite confectionery (nothing that will break your teeth when it's cold)
A bag of chocolate fingers

Method
Line a cake tin (pref. springform) with clingfilm
Leave the ice cream out for 30-60 minutes so that its soft but not soupy (cream cheese texture - so you can mix it)
Mix the ice cream together with chopped up bits of your confectionary
Pour it into the clingfilm, and chuck it in the freezer.

After at least 2 hours, take out. Turn out of cake tin. Wash your hands and smooth over the crinkly bits in the cake. Line with lovely choc fingers: I have a more elaborate recipe for this but you'll just have to keep reading to find out what that is.

:-)
Enjoy
CJ