Mothers Day Cupcakes

As much as I love traipsing around countless shops which have been plastered in pink and filled with scented candles, mum-friendly DVDs and chocolate, I decided that it would be more fun to bake my mum a present this year.  I decided on red velvet, as she had previously mentioned, in a slightly mystified way, that they seem to be really popular at the moment.  Normally, Mum is not one for food dye (blue food is a red flag in her eyes) so this seemed like a good opportunity to unleash my inner child on the rainbow while still making her happy.

I used the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook for both the cupcake sponge and the cream cheese icing.  I also used muffin cases because these recipes are for American-style cupcakes, which are traditionally larger than English cupcakes.  However, the recipe only made eleven of these, whereas using smaller cake cases would, obviously, leave you with more cakes.

While I always enjoy baking, this recipe was particularly intriguing for two reasons.  Adding the distinctly brown cocoa powder/ food dye paste and watching the mixture turn red was a bit like watching a low budget but fascinating magic show.  On a similar note, the combination of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar brought back memories of papier-mâché volcanoes and the time when science was still fun.  I was a bit worried that these two oddities would reveal my baking ignorance (I went a bit Quentin Tarantino with the red food dye) and ruin everything, meaning a last minute dash to a garden centre.  However, the cakes rose (thank you God of Baking) and were definitely red.

I used cream cheese icing to top the cake, as I liked how the two colours contrasted.  As flowers are a traditional Mothers Day gift, I decided to make roses like the ones from Erin’s Birthday Cake.  I bought ready-made fondant icing and used liquid food dye in yellow, green, blue and pink to dye lumps of it, and for the purple I mixed the blue and red in a separate bowl before adding it.  I found that the easiest way to spread the colour evenly was to divide about two tablespoons of fondant in half, carefully putting about five drops of colouring (for a really bright colour) in the middle and then folding the fondant in on itself until the colour was spread consistently with no marble effect.  If the fondant is too cold or is left out, it will go hard and crumbly; if it is too warm, it will be slippery and will fall apart.  By the time I got to the last few colours, the fondant had gone quite hard.  However, the food dye made it softer, but not so soft as to be disobedient.  To find out how to make the fondant roses, click here.  My top tip would be to keep the petals an equal size, and to make sure that they are not much taller than the thin strip, as this makes them look slightly disproportionate.

While the roses were still far inferior to those in the tutorial, I was really pleased with how these cakes turned out.  In fact, there may even have been a small jig and musical number involved, but that’s another story.  More important than my response or musical ability was Mum’s reaction; she loved them, which just goes to prove that it is the thought that counts.  While the cakes saved me from sore feet and hours of hunting through pink chocolate-flavoured scented candles, they also meant that I got to eat cake.  Although this was delicious, the sweeter treat was being able to give Mum my time and appreciation in tasty cake form.

Erin’s Birthday Cake

In something of a promotion from my last birthday-related cake-based project, I have moved from making the accompanying cupcakes to the main event.  That’s right; this time, I got to make the one with the candles, the theme song and the massive amounts of fondant icing.

A lot of love, labour and chocolate went into this cake.  It took me about four hours all in all, leaving my friend and I just enough time to deliver it to Frankie & Benny’s before the arrival of the birthday girl.  Aside from the aforementioned ingredients, it also involved a lot of planning.  Before the meal, a few people were going to Cadbury World to consume large amounts of free chocolate and ride around in a cocoa bean.  While I love chocolate and would never eat anything else (except ratatouille, cheeseburgers and bacon) if it were in any way practical and socially acceptable, I thought that in this case chocolate cake might be a bit too much.  I had a recipe for strawberry cake which I thought might do.  Cue an undercover mission involving much confusion over the nature of Bakewell tarts in order to find out whether Erin likes strawberries.  Having ascertained that she doesn’t mind them, I exhibited a tremendous lack of imagination and decided to make chocolate cake (well, bacon has its limitations as far as cakes go).

For the triple-layered chocolate sponge I used the Hummingbird Bakery’s recipe for Brooklyn Blackout Cake.  I had used it before, for the Clown Cake, and it proved to be just as reliable this time, with a lovely crumbly sponge texture and rich flavour.  For the filling I halved the chocolate custard recipe from the same page in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.  It was the strangest thing I have ever made.  If the caster sugar, golden syrup, cocoa powder and water boiling on the stove was not concerning enough, the gloopy, gluey Flubber-like cornflour and water mixture looked entirely inedible.  However, when the two were combined, it somehow, inexplicably, worked, which just goes to support the theory that adding chocolate to anything can only improve it (unless that thing is bacon).

The trickiest bit was the decoration.  While I take a neurotic and creative pride in the appearance of all of my cakes (including the resiliently messy Mississippi Mud Pies), this cake, as a birthday cake, had to look particularly special.  Having spent a while pondering, I had an epiphany in a truly inspirational place: the baking aisle of Sainsbury’s in Selly Oak.  In order to carry out my vision, I found a video on YouTube which showed how to make a simple rose out of fondant icing, which is something I had wanted to try.  The video is quick but very clear and helpful, and can be found here.  I made a few the night before, also experimenting with food dye.  While the video recommends using colouring paste, I found that a small amount of liquid food dye (much easier to get hold of) does not affect the rigidity of the flower too much.  I used bright pink food dye on a lump of white fondant icing large enough for nine roses (well, twelve), which would mean everyone going could have a rose and they would all be a consistent colour.  I made them while the cakes were in the oven, and while they are simple to make they are trickier to really refine; the sizing was slightly inconsistent and some of them looked more rose-like and delicate than others.  However, all together they seemed to work.

Over Christmas, my Grandma and I decorated a fruit cake using fondant icing and those small silver balls widely regarded as a marvel akin to sliced bread and the pyramids.  We cut a snowflake shape out of the icing, stuck the icing to the cake, then filled the shape with the balls.  I decided that rather than writing Erin’s name on the cake in my typically shaky, small-child style, I would cut her name out and fill it with the pink sparkles that had been missing from Mum and Aunty Jane’s Birthday Cupcakes.  I rolled out the fondant and cut around the outside of the cake tin to get the right size and shape, then cut her name out in the middle of the cake.  Thankfully, ‘Erin’ is as short as it is pretty, and has lots of lovely straight letters, so it was not that difficult.  Having smoothed some more chocolate custard over the top, I very carefully lifted the icing and placed it on the top.  Cutting around the tin had helped but I still had to straighten the edges and smooth it all out a bit once it was on the cake.  I then filled each letter with a sizable amount of pink sparkles, trimmed the ends of the roses and pressed them gently round the letters.

Having finished, I could not quite believe that everything had gone according to plan.  Nothing broke, nothing was undercooked, the mysterious icing mixture came together, the roses looked at least vaguely like roses, the name was readable and vaguely in the centre and nothing fell off.  Of course, it wasn’t perfect; the angle it was leaning at made a certain Italian tower feel threatened, a few of the roses more closely resembled cabbages and the fondant wasn’t a perfect size.  However, as I handed it over to the very nice people at Frankie & Benny’s and asked in an alarmingly motherly way if it could sit somewhere cool, I felt very proud of my creation.  Fortunately, Erin appreciated having cake presented to her in public, accompanied by loud music and balloons.  She loved the cake and was genuinely grateful, which meant a lot.  Even those friends who had been to Cadbury World and never wanted to see chocolate again were nice enough to force down a slice and say it tasted good.  This all suggests, to my mind at least, that public displays of friendship and birthdays go better when cake is involved.

Mum and Aunty Jane’s Birthday Cupcakes

The main attraction for any birthday is the cake, specifically the one with the candles and the theme tune.  As these had already been taken care of I had an excuse to make cupcakes, the younger sister of the birthday cake.  This discussion of younger sisters is particularly appropriate as my mum and aunt have birthdays two years and a day apart.  To register both birthdays separately (because siblings born at similar times hate being lumped together) I decided to make two different types of cupcakes.  For my mum, I stuck with the classic strawberry cheesecake cupcakes, while for my aunt I chose decadent chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing.

Having made the strawberry cheesecake cupcakes several hundred times (OK, twice, but you are probably sick of hearing about how yummy they are by now), I will just say that they were, of course, from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and were decorated with digestive crumbs topped with almost alarmingly red quartered strawberries.  They were a nice alternative to chocolate (not something I have ever needed personally, except for a particularly torturous Lent, which put me religion entirely) and just as messy to make and delicious to devour as ever.

Although I was set on chocolate cupcakes I wanted to add a girly touch.  Decoration often provokes tricky decisions for me, due to my dislike of, firstly, throwing sprinkles on things like a child who has had too much sugar (I am sure there is skill to this, but mine is undeveloped), and secondly, inedible decorations (what is the point?).  Eventually, after much meditation on the matter, I decided to use the bright pink sprinkles I used for the Pink Vanilla Cupcakes.  Typically girly: undoubtedly; Edible: of course; Sprinkles: huh?  At the great but strangely named Meatloaf once crooned, two out of three ain’t bad.  There was, however, a problem.  I couldn’t find any in the great baking haven that is Amersham Tesco.  So that plan went out of the window, and instead, I bought chocolate vermicelli (definitely edible) and some odd-looking pink things, which looked dubiously like dyed chocolate buttons but which promised to taste like strawberry.

I used the chocolate cupcake and icing recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and waited for the cakes to cool before slathering on as much icing as the moist sponge would hold.  The icing was quite thick and cold, which made it hard to manipulate without damaging the cake.  I filled a mug with boiled water, and left the pallet knife in there to warm up.  This made it easy to smooth the icing into a more respectable dome-like shape.  I put about a tablespoon of vermicelli into a bowl and dipped the top of the cupcake until there was a reasonable layer.  I topped this off with a (genuinely strawberry) pink button dipped into the icing.

Having successfully affected their transport from my dad’s house to my grandma’s (which involved a crate, change of driver and some careful pot-hole avoidance), I put them in a cool place to wait until the evening.  I displayed them on the cake stand my aunt had brought me for Christmas, which thankfully made them look much better than the crate had.

 The final result was that the birthday cakes were rather neglected, although I suspect the familial pressure may have had some sway in this.  I am, however, pretty sure that the yummy noises were not entirely theatrical, and I know Mum and Aunty Jane appreciated the gesture.  The cupcakes may not have had candles or their own musical fanfare, but the personal touch, large quantities of icing and a healthy dose of family love and pressure meant they were a welcome addition.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sometimes, chocolate chip cookies are the only possible answer.  They are easy to make but eternally tempting, smell amazing in the oven and taste like luxury out of it.  The mixture is almost as delicious as the cooked product, as long as you don’t mind eating raw egg.  They are also wonderfully transportable, which is handy if you are spreading cookie goodness across the nation and so they need to survive a train journey.

I used The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook chocolate chip recipe, which leads to perfectly sized cookies (roughly the size of a small cat, if there was any doubt) that taste so distinctly like a piece of classic American baking that you almost need a very small Stars and Stripes and a baseball mitt to eat them.

Next time I will put more chocolate in (when my answer is not cookies, it is chocolate) but I finally found the correct cookie texture.  They may have survived the journey, but these cookies were anything but tough.  

White Chocolate Chip Muffins

This weekend, it was my turn to brave the three hour journey and extortionate ticket prices which are the requirements for a trip to see my boyfriend Tom in Cambridge.  The dessert I made would need to be travel-proof and have minimum decoration but maximum taste.  What could live up to these criteria better than a chocolate muffin with white chocolate chips?

I used the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook but with chopped up Milky Bar for the white chocolate.  In the spirit of generosity and an even number of cakes, I made sure to divide the mixture between the twelve cases, rather than making a few extra.

Aside from making the kitchen smell of chocolate cake when I brought them out of the oven, the muffins revealed themselves to be sunk in the middle.  This was probably the result of the oven temperature being too low.  Speaking of sinking, the white chocolate chunks had sunk to the bottom, which led to much undignified licking of cake cases.

Despite their imperfections, the cakes were chocolatey, moist and survived the journey to Cambridge.  While this goes to demonstrate their reliable nature, it also helped that they were locked out of the reach of temptation in my suitcase.

Mini Birthday Cakes

My next cake project was for my grandad’s eightieth birthday.  Birthday cakes for me have a very specific taste – soft vanilla sponge with a strawberry jam and buttercream filling and topped with beautifully sickly fondant icing.  I decided to try and emulate this specific taste in the miniature form of a cupcake.  Since birthdays are supposed to be extra happy days, I wanted to make them standout; with this in mind, I decided to try and make 3D icing balloons coming out of the cakes.

For the sponge, I used the vanilla cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days.  For some reason the recipe uses double the amount of all the ingredients in the same bakery’s vanilla cupcake recipe in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook while claiming to produce the same amount.  I decided to try out the new one and ended up with twenty seven, rather more than I needed for Gramps.  Luckily, Grandma was making dinner for everyone on Thursday, in two days time, so I put the rest safely away and kept thirteen to write ‘Happy Birthday’ on.  Despite a new oven, the cakes came out looking generally unscathed, although a few were a bit brown on top.  While they cooled, I got on with making the balloons.

I made three balloons in green, pink and blue, and four in yellow.  I washed thirteen coloured paperclips in washing up liquid, rinsing and drying them well before straightening them out.  I bent a curve into the middle of each one, with a straight bit at the top.  At the bottom I doubled the paperclip over to stop it toppling over once the balloon was on top.  To make the balloons I used small lumps of fondant icing dyed with food colouring.  I took a small lump of the coloured icing, a couple of centimetres in diameter, and rolled this into a ball.  For the knot of the balloon I took a small bit from the coloured icing and pushed it to form a point.  I stuck this under the balloon, pushing gently until it stuck on.  I put the balloon down on a clean surface to dry, as I would need to wait until I was at Gramps’ house to assemble them. 

Meanwhile the cakes had cooled so I added a teaspoon of strawberry jam to the top of each cake and smoothed it over.  Using butter cream icing from Love Food: The Cupcake I put this on top of the jam and smoothed it down with a spoon.  Although it got a bit mixed up with the jam, this did not really matter as the taste would be the same.  I rolled out white fondant icing and used a cookie cutter to cut wavy circles large enough to cover the top of each cupcake and gently put each one on top of the jam and butter cream.  I had initially wanted to spell out ‘Happy Birthday’ on the cakes in blue fondant icing, but I did not have any cutters and was running out of time.  Instead, I used spare butter cream to stick small blue circles in the centre of each cake, and went to Gramps’ to construct the cakes.

A few of the paperclips needed bending again to make them look more like balloon strings, and I think that the ‘Happy Birthday’ message would have looked better.  The idea did not quite work as I had hoped.  However, the vanilla sponges were very light, and were proclaimed by Mum to be ‘the best we’ve had yet’, which was a nice compliment.  They really tasted just like little birthday cakes, even if the balloons left me a little deflated.

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. 

Mississippi Mud Pie

Cupcakes, muffins and doughnuts are all very well, but I felt it was time to attempt something a bit trickier in order to gain favour with my housemates.  As such, I returned to my old nemesis: the Hummingbird Bakery’s Mississippi Mud Pie.

With a glaringly obvious crack down the middle, it was not the most photogenic of pies, but it stood, brave and bare without its cream topping, just a sprinkling of cocoa powder between its crisp surface and complete nakedness. 

Pastry always requires a stern word with the dough and a little prayer to the God of Pastry before it goes in the oven.  Thankfully this time it seemed to work, as it came out short and golden brownish.  The middle involved a mixture of chocolate and golden syrup so that was less of a worry, although next time a small sacrifice to the God of the Top of Pies might make it more even.  Or, failing that, something scientifically accurate.

So was it pie-fect or pie-tiful?  It was described by one housemate as sex in a cake, so this perhaps suggests it is closer to the former.  It was also responsible for a mini fight and a bit of friendly bullying, which is always the response bakers are looking for.  As such, it seems that the mighty Mississippi Mud Pie has at last been mastered.  Let’s hope that it is a permanent victory and that future attempts do not see me eating humble pie.

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes and Mini Sponges

A few happy coincidences occurred to bring these into existence.  Firstly, I found out that my housemates like cake; but then again, in all honesty, who doesn’t.  Perhaps less predictably, they also like strawberries.  In the final happy twist of fate, the farmers market on campus is selling these sweet, juicy, big red strawberries that taste like heaven in fruit form.  These were all the excuses I needed to whip out The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and make these old favourites again.

There was a slight glitch.  When the cupcakes came out of the oven, they also came out of the cases.  It might have been something to do with the new cases - cheerful colours with white polka dots – but the faithful old white ones also let me down.  This suggests that it was the mixture itself.  The strawberries were extra ripe and a bit squishy, which could have made the cases slip off.  In any case, while some behaved themselves and stayed put it was clear that a rescue mission was in order.

I had never iced cupcakes in that pretty, delicate, swirly way; I usually just slap mounds of it on until there’s a satisfactory cake to icing ratio.  The first few cupcakes were a bit of an experiment, with lopsided results, and the last few were not much better, but with a coating of forgiving digestive biscuits and two well-placed strawberry quarters, they almost looked refined.  Now for the rescue operation.  I decided to make them look like mini strawberry sponge cakes.  I turned them out of the cases so the strawberries were on the top and then covered these in piped icing, digestives and strawberry quarters.  They almost looked deliberate; delicate treats for garden parties, picnics and chilly October days.

So how do you show your supremely supportive, downright delightful and entirely excellent housemates your appreciation?  While others may choose some form of interpretive dance, for me the solution is a piece of cake.  Or maybe just a strawberry.

For Grace, Jonny, Miriam and Tom

White Chocolate and Strawberry Jam Muffins

I’m told that it is socially acceptable to eat muffins for breakfast, even if they contain very breakfast-unfriendly things.  My love for chocolate is well-documented, and while I approve of chocolate mixed into breakfast things – Coco Pops, Nutella, Coco Pops Munchers – I cannot reconcile lumps of it for breakfast.  However, I decided to put my personal feelings aside and make something that people could eat at breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Or even brunch.  So I settled on muffins; but what kind?  Chocolate seemed obvious (at least to me) and something healthy.  OK, so jam is not that healthy, but it contains fruit and gives lovely gooey centre.

I used the Hummingbird bakery’s recipe for blueberry muffins, then mixed in about half a jar of jam and folded in 200g of chopped up white chocolate.  I spooned the mixture into cases then added a teaspoonful of jam to each one, and popped them in the oven.

They did taste of strawberry jam, so that much was a success.  The problem was that the jam and chocolate chunks sunk to the bottom of the muffins and stubbornly remained there while the rest of the cake obediently left the case.  In fairness, a combination of jam and chocolate doesn’t taste bad, but a combination of jam, chocolate and cake tastes better.  Next time, I will add the jam after the cakes have cooked, in order to guarantee gooey goodness at the centre.  

So they were a miss in terms of the ingredients staying in the cake, but the flavours worked well, turning it into something a bit like a glorified jam sandwich.  And they’re socially acceptable at whatever time of day; right?

Clown Cake

Originally this was supposed to be Brooklyn Blackout Cake.  You know, that chocolate cake coated in crumbs with the dark, seductive chocolate custard peeking through?  Clearly I was aiming for a broody classic; also quite clearly, it didn’t quite end up like that.  A brief warning: if this is the first post you’ve seen, I would just like to apologise for the poor welcome, and promise that this is the messiest cake on the site (even including the Mississippi Mud Pie.  No, that was definitely worse.)

The recipe for the icing used corn flour, and as this was a spontaneous outburst of cake making I thought that running out to Tesco would ruin my creative flow.  In other words, I didn’t fancy going out in the rain.  Besides this was the first time in a while that I was making a cake that had no specific recipients; I only had to please myself, and that meant that Mum wasn’t there to protest against bright colours.  As such I turned into a child and covered the whole thing with yellow vanilla icing and pink stripes.  I made the vanilla icing with the Hummingbird recipe, but I have to confess that I cheated with the pink.  Tom’s mum, knowing that I love pink and I love baking, bought me some pink ready-made icing.  And I hadn’t used it: until today.  Gone was my enticing chocolate vision, replaced with a colourful, fun-filled mess.  I based the colours on those Party Ring biscuits that appeared at every party you went to when you were about seven, the ones that scream ‘EAT ME BECAUSE I’M FUN!’  It looks like a seven year old decorated it; I’m willing to claim that this was the intention.

The layers of chocolate cake came out moist and crumbly, and they tasted better than I had thought they would with the vanilla icing.  There are supposed to be three layers to this cake; I was using 21cm tins instead of the recipe’s 20cm, and the mixture didn’t spread as far as I thought it would.  This didn’t make too much difference, although it would have looked cooler.

So the piping needs work and the yellow is a bit anaemic; it tasted good and my inner child was delighted.

Maltesers Cupcakes

As I mentioned in my previous post, I made two lots of cakes this week.  Coconut is a rather divisive subject in my family; much like marzipan, carrots and those little green gherkins in McDonald’s burgers, everyone has strong views on it.  In order to please everyone, I decided to give them two options.  I had been itching to try the coconut cakes, but I didn’t want the poor, deluded coconut haters to feel neglected.  With this in mind, I decided to take something tasty – the classic chocolate cupcake – and mix it with another treat; the long-term snack-time favourites that are the mighty Maltesers

In truth, I was in a bit of puzzle over which flavour base would fully show off that taste which is unique to Maltesers.  I initially thought of vanilla, which would give them a chance to show off their chocolate malty flavour, but in the end I decided that the only flavour which can truly support chocolate is chocolate.  With this in mind, I used the Hummingbird bakery’s Hazelnut and Chocolate Cupcakes recipe to create the chocolate base, but instead of adding Nutella to the middle, I blended about 110g of Maltesers until they were roughly the size of chocolate chips and folded them in just before spooning the mixture into cases.  I also mixed half a teaspoon of vanilla essence with the milk, just for a bit of extra Maltesers flavour.

The results were interesting.  I was imagining crunchy little lumps of Maltesers.  In reality, the chocolate and malt melted in the mixture.  While this was not quite what I was aiming for, it did give them quite a unique taste.  The icing, again from the every trustworthy Hummingbird bakery, was just more chocolate, which my inner child tells me can only be a good thing.  Next time I would probably add a white chocolate swirl to the top of the icing, just for a contrast, but I think these successfully promise the Maltesers feast they were created to be.  

Don't like coconut?  It's not your fault.  These chocolate treats will unite both nutters and notters; just don't let us eat them all.

Coconutters Cupcakes

As everyone is uncomfortably aware, September has well and truly shoved what is known as summer out of the way in order to drench us all with rain, chill us to the bone and then promptly blow us away.  In order to inject some last summer joy into proceedings, I went with the Hummingbird bakery’s coconut-flavoured cupcakes this week.  It perhaps says something about the English summer that to remind everyone of sunshine, I chose a fruit which cannot grow in England.

This week, Tom and I decided to be adventurous; rather than use coconut milk from a tin, we bought two real live furry coconuts and proceeded to dismantle them with nothing but our determination, wits and bare hands.  Well, sort of.  We had to use YouTube to look up the proper way to make holes in the coconut and how to break it in two (see the links at the bottom of the post), which is actually disappointingly simple.  The recipe called for 120ml of coconut milk, which we got out of one coconut, with a little extra left over.  The other one is sitting rather nervously by the sink, having watched its friend being stabbed through the eyes with a screwdriver, drained of its milk and then hammered until it split into two and had its innards gouged out.  I ended up using all the milk, as the mixture didn’t really taste particularly coconutty, but even this didn’t give it much flavour.  Elsewhere in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook there is a recipe for a large coconut cake, which explains how to grate coconut.  I cooked the two halves at 170 degrees for fifteen minutes, then spent ages attempting to grate the flesh.  In the end I gave up on the adventurous way, and used desiccated coconut from a bag.  The cakes didn’t taste overwhelmingly of coconut, but at least the desiccated coconut gave it the familiar texture.

For the topping I used, predictably, the Hummingbird bakery’s chocolate icing and more desiccated coconut.  When I had thought about which flavour to go for, I remembered Bounty bars, which was probably the first food I ate which contained coconut, and opted for chocolate.  The recipe calls for a lot of icing sugar; 300g for one batch of twelve cakes.  As I was making two loads of cakes (see the Maltesers Cupcakes) I thought I would be stingy and make one and three quarters worth of the icing to divide between both.  I started with three quarters of the original recipe, and this spread to enough for both batches of cakes.  I love their icings; this one had a lip-lickingly delicious chocolate taste, which worked well with the understated sweetness of the cakes. 

These cakes turned out to be somewhat lacking in the summery coconut punch I wanted, a bit like the weather.  Next time I will leave the coconut, screwdriver and hammer to one side, and use tinned coconut milk instead.  (Tin openers are quite adventurous, aren’t they?  The way you pull them apart, that confident, scissor-action, could almost be reminiscent of a Swiss Army knife, plus you have to avoid cutting your fingers on the edge of the lid when you throw it away.)  The desiccated coconut did give the cakes texture, and they were nice and light.  The chocolate worked well with the flavouring, and I quite like the colours together.  The original recipe used pineapple rings, which maybe would have given it more flavour, but that’s an exotic twist for another time.

If you fancy a glimpse of summer, these cakes will add a ray of sunshine to a gloomy day; just don’t get too adventurous.

If you still want to live on the edge and use milk straight from the coconut, find out how to drain a coconut here, on a website with the most self-explanatory domain name ever.

If having drained the coconut you want to break it in half and eat its insides (or clap the two halves together to make horse sounds), find out how to do this here.

I Love Pecan Pie

After the Mississippi Mud Pie mayhem, I was determined not to give up on my vision of presenting a perfectly turned out, mouth-wateringly delicious, dive-right-into it pie.  With this goal in mind, I embarked on another of the Hummingbird recipes: the mighty Pecan Pie.

The course of true pie love never did run smooth, and neither would the first batch of pastry.  Once that had been thrown (with feeling) into the bin, the next batch came out fine.  The recipe tells you to use a blender to mix the pastry, but as I don’t have one, I used a combination of a handheld blender and a handheld mixer.  For the first pastry, I used my hands to mix it together, which it didn’t like; it went very crumbly and wouldn’t stay in one piece long enough to roll.  I also put it to rest in the fridge, which the recipe didn’t mention specifically.  The second batch, treated with more patience, worked a lot better, although it still refused to roll out far enough to properly cover the (now correctly sized) pie dish.  Saying that, I did have enough left to offer some decoration, as primitive as this was.  I wanted to do a Stars and Stripes design, but there wasn’t enough, so instead I thought I would go for simplicity and give it a heart.  It also reminds me of The Pie Song from the film Waitress (if you love pie, this film was made for you), which mentions ‘a pie with a heart in the middle’.

After the trauma of the pastry, the filling felt pretty easy, although I would offer this advice; do not check if recently boiled sugar and syrup is hot or warm by tasting a teaspoon of it.  It will hurt your tongue.  And you will feel very stupid.  Another problem I had with the filling was that my endlessly helpful boyfriend, Tom, and I searched high and low for corn syrup, including a Tesco so large it was frightening, and we couldn’t find any.  OK, so not high and low – we didn’t go to America – but in the end we just used golden syrup, and it worked fine.

While I was rolling the second lot of pastry, Tom, who has helped me through many dessert catastrophes, looked at it and promptly reminded me of the pie in the Lurpak advert; the man makes a really ugly but tasty-looking pie.  I was offended, initially.  I had high hopes for this pie – it would look exactly like the picture (well, except for the decorative pecan halves), it would unleash a taste of the divine, and would generally be considered to be The Father Of All Pies.  Having rolled, filled, cooked and eaten it, I have concluded that this was, perhaps, optimistic, particularly in light of the aforementioned Great Mississippi Mud Pie Mayhem.  Instead, I have decided now, that the homemade quality is its appealing feature.  It may not look piefect, but it tasted pietty good on the inside, and that is what counts.

Listen to 'Baby Don't You Cry (The Pie Song)' by Quincy Coleman and Andrew Hollander here.

Watch the Lurpak advert here.

Cuppa Cakes

No dinner at Grandma’s this week, as she is sunning herself on holiday in Slovenia, but I persevered with trying to make a Mississippi Mud Pie from my brand new copy of The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.  Suffice to say it looked nothing like the picture (and that when they tell you to use a 23cm pie tin, do not assume that a 26.5cm one will work just as well).  Spurred on by this failure, and my weekly dose of The Great British Bake Off, to bake more, I decided to try something I had been thinking about for a few weeks, and which had a superb chance of not working.  If you are English and like to adhere to stereotypes, what is the best companion for a cupcake?  A cup of tea of course; the two were made to go together.  With that in mind, I decided to try a cupcake flavoured with good, old fashioned everyday English tea.

I had seen a recipe for green tea cupcakes in The Hummingbird Bakery: cupcakes and muffins, which used three tea bags brewed in milk overnight.  I didn’t have the time (or, admittedly, the patience) for this.  I put three tea bags in about 100ml of hot water, added about 20ml of milk, and left it to brew while I mixed the rest of the ingredients.  I took the vanilla cupcake recipe from the ever trusty Tarek Malouf and the Hummingbird bakers, but when it said to add 60ml of milk I added 45ml and mixed.  I whisked the egg and vanilla extract into the tea, then added this to the rest of the ingredients as instructed.  Once they had cooked and cooled, I used the Hummingbird Bakery vanilla icing, topped off with half of a mini chocolate digestive being ‘dunked’ into the tea.

I was a bit apprehensive about how these would work out, but they actually tasted quite good (at least in my very biased opinion).  When I make them next, I will probably use the same number of tea bags but less water, as they ended up being a bit too moist.  Are tea and cupcakes a match made in heaven?  My tea-hating boyfriend assures me that he likes them, but I’m not sure if that means they were not quite flavoured enough, or that they were just right.

The jury is still out, so I may have to test them on Grandma’s unwitting guests next week.  If nothing else, they will be a very English-tasting treat to welcome her home.

P.S. This is why I decided not to write about the Mississippi Mud Pie:

Next time I will aim for something that looks like a less literal interpretation of its name.  However, while it may look like something from Mary Berry's nightmares, the large amount of chocolate and cream drowned out the pastry and it actually tasted quite good.  Good old chocolate: I knew you wouldn't let me down.