My Tiny Plot

Although I’m a bit late with Cake Friday this week I have an excuse. I found this lovely Pastel Swirl Cake tutorial and just had to make it.

Inside, it’s a three-layer chocolate cake with vanilla icing. I didn’t have any purple colouring for the top layer so I mixed red and blue – that seemed to work.

It’s peachy cupcakes on the elevensies menu today. It’s the usual cupcake recipe with a peach slice plopped in the bottom of each and some soft brown sugar spinkled on top. I used tinned peaches but I will be making these again when I harvest my peaches in the summer. I bet fresh peaches taste amazing and will probably transform the taste.

The teacups and plates are part of a 1950s melamine set that I bought for our summer camping trips. I love the colour. It reminds me of Summer Cornflowers. Happy Cake Friday.

Hello bakers! There has been such a great response to Cake Friday that I’ve decided to make a little Flickr photo group so that we can all share our lovely cake shots and recipes in the same place. The group is called Cake Friday and is invitation only (just so we don’t get lots of annoying spam comments). But all you have to do is join the group before you post. Happy baking!

In the photo: my boy anticipating that he might get a slice of this, sticky, three-tier chocolatey mass of goodness. I expect he will.

Last week I wanted to make Lemon cake but I didn’t have enough Lemons. This time I made sure I had enough Lemons because my mouth has been watering all week at the thought of eating Lemon Drizzle Loaf!

I know I said that my new found bake Friday’s were all about bringing the family together, hanging out in the kitchen, baking, building Lego (not me obviously) drinking coffee and enjoying the anticipation of ‘the cake’. That’s all true but I think I’m driving this because, well, I basically want to eat cake. Is that okay? Great…

I was inspired by the Lemon and Lime Syrup Cakes over at Things We Make. They looked yummy and moist. While I like Lime in some dishes I’m not too excited about it in cake so I went for Lemon instead. I love the idea of making the ‘drizzle’ with Golden Syrup though so definitely used that part of it. I didn’t have small loaf tins so I just made it in a large loaf tin.

Here’s my version:

Lemon Drizzle Loaf

320g caster sugar
3 eggs
350g plain flour
grated zest of two Lemons
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
250ml whole milk
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
200g unsalted butter, melted

For the Drizzle
Juice of 1 Lemon
50g Golden Syrup

Preheat the oven to Gas mark 170°C

Put the sugar, eggs and lemon zest in a mixer beat until well mixed.
In a separate bowl sift the flour, baking powder and salt.
Mix the milk and vanilla extract in another bowl.
Add a bit of the flour mixture to the sugar mixture and beat, then beat in some of the milk mixture. Repeat this process until everything is mixed in.
Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.
Pour in the melted butter and beat until well mixed.
Pour the mixture into a greased and floured loaf tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour or until golden on top.

Heat up the Lemon and Golden Syrup in a pan. When the cake comes out the oven. Set a cooling rack over the sink, pour the syrup over the cake in its tin. It will overflow. Let the cake cool and turn out.

I was going to bake Lemon cake today but I ran out of Lemons (essential ingredient in Lemon cake) so I made Banana cake instead. Bananas – now I have lots of those!

I used the very simple recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook which includes lots of ginger, cinnamon and melted butter. The boys seemed to like it even though it was quite gingery. Here’s the recipe from the book, which if you like cakes, I really do recommend you buy.

270g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
200g peeled bananas, mashed
280g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
140g unsalted, melted

23 x 13cm loaf tin, greased and dusted with flour

Preheat the oven to 170°C (or 160°C fan)

Put the sugar and eggs in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) and beat until well incorporated. Beat in the mashed bananas.

Add the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and ginger to the sugar mixture. Mix it thoroughly until all the dry ingredients have been incorporated into the egg mixture. Pour in the melted butter and beat until all the ingredients are well mixed.

Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and smooth over with a palette knife. Bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until firm to the touch and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool slightly in the tin before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Not exactly cake but baking at least. I decided to use up the Blueberries from the freezer since there is precious little in the garden right now. A pie seemed the sensible option and a good excuse to get my pie dish out.

I made the pastry in the usual basic pie crust way – with a little help of course. We even made an err.. sort of, pastry snowman out of the left over bits.

I blind baked the base, weighted down with kidney beans and parchment.

The filling is so simple. Just Blueberries (550g), juice from one Lemon, lemon rind, 100g of caster sugar and a spoonful of cornflour to thicken. Then you let the oven do the work and cook it for 50 minutes at 170 degrees C. I think I’ll use more cornflour next time as the water from the frozen blueberries meant that the filling wasn’t as gloopy as I’d like.

But warm Blueberry pie with ice-cream? Wow! The boys had never had that before and by the end they were practically bribing me for more.

Okay so I know it’s not Friday but I made a decision today that may affect my Fridays from now on. I have come to the conclusion that cake is not bad. You know that bit in The Holiday when Cameron Diaz says, ‘I just want to eat carbs without wanting to kill myself.’ Well you know what, I really do.

When I was on holiday with some friends over New Year were were talking about how your mum would always ‘bake a cake’ and it would be a special thing. Gathering the ingredients (which would sometimes require a walk to the shops), preparing, aprons, grandma’s old beige mixing bowl, the packets, the dust, hot ovens, the s-m-e-l-l, the anticipation, watching it rise, the anticipation, the cooling, not yet! And then, finally, finally, when a cup of tea had been made and at least one neighbour had been invited, the taste.

I think we’re guilty, these days, of looking at a cake as just a pile of calories. Yes they have sugar and eggs and butter and la de dah in them but really? Is it worth missing out on all of the above just because it may be a little bit bad for us.

In truth I feel like a bad, bad mother for denying my boys the same excitement that I felt all those years ago.

So the decision is this. Friday is cake day. Not one that comes in a box, or packaging or even sneakily bought from the farmers market. No, Friday is ‘bake’ a cake day. With natural ingredients, hopefully including something from the garden too. And shared with neighbours, friends, boys (big and small) and me.

Disclaimer: I’m not promising to bake a cake every Friday, but I will try.

This is the Carrot Cake from The Riverford Cookbook. It’s gorgeously moist with lots of Carrot in it and no icing because it doesn’t need it. I did add a bit of Cinnamon to it which seemed to work.