Shortbread Hearts

Apparently I had hearts on the brain; my next baking project was a large batch of heart-shaped shortbreads.  The second week of November had breezed in to find me feeling a little unwell and in need of some T.LC.  Shortbread seemed the obvious choice; containing only three ingredients, thus rendering the quest for ingredients unnecessary, and cheerfully sweet, they are fairly easy to make and go well with my favourite cure – a nice cup of tea.

I used a recipe from BBC Recipes, which can be found here.  Rather than cut them out into sober, adult rectangles, I stubbornly stuck to my guns and managed to get about twenty five little heart biscuits.  I must confess that I forgot to put them in the fridge, as the recipe suggests, but I don’t think that this minor slip affected the taste.  The fact that I rolled them out too thin and overcooked a few, however, meant that they did not produce that beautiful, melt-in-the-mouth sensation required from shortbread. 

Although they fell short of the shortbread ideal, they were a compatible partner for a warm drink and a healthy dose of therapeutic television.  Whether it is a cold, headache or broken heart, these biscuits are an easy, tasty pick me up, especially when you take the instructions to heart.

Victoria Sponge Cake

Aside from the few lecture hours, late starts and lack of a definite answer to most questions, one of the perks of being an arts student is Reading Week.  This sees a week-long hiatus from the lectures that we do have, in order that we may pursue scholarly activities such as musing on the nature of life, going clubbing and, unsurprisingly, reading.  As such, we all stayed in bed, caught up on television and went home.  A trip home also meant a trip to see Grandma and the opportunity to bake for my family again.  Having exhausted my reserves of television shows, I was introduced to Junior Bake-Off by my mum.  In the quarter finals, four mini contestants battle it out in the kitchen to produce various baked goods, which are presented to fastidious judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood for careful inspection.  The first episode saw the bakers take on Mary Berry’s own recipe for Victoria sponge.  A light bulb moment and trip to Tesco later, I was tackling it myself.

I have never had much luck with Victoria sponges; despite pleas, threats and folding flour in a manner so gentle it made the mixture purr, they never seem to rise properly.  This time I followed Mary Berry’s all-in-one method, and it worked a treat; the only real problem was convincing it to come out of the heart-shaped tin intact (it refused, and the golden brown edges stubbornly stayed put).

Besides being even lighter and fluffier than a first year essay, it left a considerably sweeter aftertaste and was eagerly received.  There was also more jam involved, which is always a bonus.  Who knows if it would have made the grade on Mary and Paul’s bake off; it rose properly, and for me that’s a first.

Flavour of the Month - November 2011

November traditionally sees the leaves fall off the trees, the temperature outside drop a further ten degrees and a flood of premature Christmas merchandise flood the shops.  On the nineteenth, it also sees my brother, sister and I jump excitedly out of our beds, plough through our presents and blow out the candles on our birthday cake.  This year will be our twenty first birthday, and to celebrate I chose to honour my University course in English and American Literature by being English and having an American-themed party.  In order to get into to the spirit, I have donned my cowgirl hat, dug out my flaming torch of progress and found four American dream cakes:

1.      Surprise Stars and Stripes Cake

Besides the cheerfully patriotic banner, from the outside this cake looks fairly modest.  Cut into it and we discover the hidden secret – a beautiful stars and stripes cake!  The picture is from an incredibly creative event planner’s website, which you can access by clicking on the image below.  For details on how to make the cake, visit this website which has written instructions and a link to a very helpful video.  Hands over your hearts, everyone.

2.      Two Tiered Flag Cake

A second appearance for the famous flag, this cake is a little more over the top than the previous one.  Although the, er, stars and stripes should have made it obvious, the highly informative stars bursting out of the top leave us in no doubt as to the nationality of this cake.  Follow the link on the picture for this and a host of other very creative Independence Day-themed cakes, although be prepared; if you have an aversion to red, white and blue, give it a miss.

3.      Barack Obama Cake

Can we find a cake in the shape of Barack Obama?  Yes, we can.  In an original but slightly terrifying take on dessert, here is the President presented in cake form.  Although one can only hope that Obama spends his time as deep in thought as this cake’s pensive expression suggests, he might be slightly bemused by this caricature.  Grab some red, white and blue balloons, add a few candles and you have a potential present for the man who has everything: Happy birthday, Mr President!

4.      New York City Three Tiered Cake

Last but by no means least is my personal favourite.  While I generally believe in keeping fruit and cake firmly apart, this representation of the Big Apple is stunning.  From the skyline to the Statue of Liberty, the details make you want to look and look, and I love the cute yellow taxis.  The apple on top even looks good enough to pick up, shine and take a bit out of – assuming it is chocolate, of course.

Eerily Endearing Halloween Ghost Cupcakes

Although the main focus of Halloween is the important task of warding off evil spirits, we all know that its real purpose is to dress up and eat silly amounts of sweets.  And biscuits.  And, of course, cakes.  I had a real trick up my sleeve for this year, thanks to my shiny new cupcake book; super spooky, frighteningly fearsome, eerily enticing ghost cupcakes!

I used the Hummingbird Bakery’s chocolate cupcake recipe, purely because this makes the richest and most mouthwateringly moist cupcakes known to man.  In order to make six ghosts, I made twelve large cupcakes and five smaller ones; this slightly strange numbering came about because, despite my pleading and coaxing, the mixture stubbornly refused to make one more small cupcake.  While I waited for them to cool down completely, I mixed up a quarter of the usual amount of the Hummingbird Bakery’s vanilla icing, adding a few drops of green food colouring for a Halloween effect. 

Then came the construction.  Using one of the large cupcakes that had behaved itself and stayed in its case, I smoothed a layer of icing thick enough to act as glue on the top.  After taking one of the naughtier large cupcakes out of its wrapper, I placed this upside down on the icing.  I put another layer of icing on the upside down cupcake and placed small cupcake, also upside down, on the top.  I then cut a small slice from my block of readymade fondant icing and rolled it out between two sheets of clingfilm until it vaguely resembled a sheet.  Although my Love Food: The Cupcake book suggested smearing icing all over the tower of chocolate cake goodness, I felt this was a bit risky, so I draped the sheet over the tower, and pinched it together slightly to give it more shape.  Using melted chocolate, I carefully drew two eyes and a wiggly mouth on each sheet.

The ghosts did not look particularly scary, but then again it is quite difficult to make something formed mostly of sugar and chocolate look more blood curdling than cuddly.  They were not perfect; a few people thought that the mouths were moustaches, and some of them – the cakes – were rather oddly-shaped.  Still, they were sweet spectres, and devilishly tasty at that.

Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes

The world has seen many classic couples; Romeo and Juliet, fish and chips, Ben and Jerry, chocolate and chocolate.  This week I decided to explore one such dynamic duo, specifically, one inspired by the culinary geniuses of America: peanut butter and jam.  Such perfect flavouring deserves a perfect medium through which to express its greatness, and what better than the small but mighty cupcake?  

I used the peanut butter cupcake recipe in my tasty new book, Love Food: The Cupcake.  This was supposed to yield sixteen lovely, golden, peanutty cupcakes, but I ended up with fifteen.  I suppose mine were extra large lovely, golden, peanutty cupcakes.  They were extra large, anyway.  Once they had cooled down, I cut a small cone-shaped chunk out of the top and filled the space with as much strawberry preserve as I could jam in before replacing the wedge of cake.

 For the icing, I used the Hummingbird Bakery’s vanilla icing, with two heaped teaspoons of strawberry jam mixed in with a spoon at the end.  As I am currently without a pallet knife (they are on my birthday wish list, the first time any cooking accessory has featured) I piled this on with a spoon and smoothed it out, leaving it a little rough.  I would like to pretend that this was because it looks nice with the big brown peanuts, but it was actually because spoons are not as effective at smoothing out icing as pallet knifes.  I filled a bowl with peanuts and dipped the top of the cakes in them, leaving them with an unhealthily healthy topping.

The famous flavour team did not fail.  The cupcakes tasted very strongly of peanuts, so they are a miss if you don’t really like them that much – but then, if you do not like peanuts very much, you probably will not choose to make these.  The jam in the middle was, I am told, a tasty surprise; the sweetness worked well with the peanuts, and the jam-flavoured icing was sweet without being overpowering.

This delicious double act has joined forces with the humble cupcake to form a tasty new take on an old favourite.  It seems that while some good things result from a perfect pairing, really good things undeniably come in threes.