Killer bananas

From the country that bought you Chinese Whispers, how an innocent text message about a dying grandmother can turn into complete chaos.

The Copywopydoodah cake: Part 2

Apart from getting a great shot down my friends top, this is the best photo I have of the Copywopydoodah cake before it was completely demolished. See the white, milk and dark chocolate stripes? And I made a "25" out of dark chocolate to go on top! Although someone already ate the bottom of the "2". Note to self; don't bring a cake you put your heart and soul into to the pub full of drunk friends :(

"It's THEIR cake now!" I said to myself though gritted teeth.

She'll HATE me for putting this one up.


Fingers crossed that a Choccywoccydoodah scout is reading this and wants to give me a job!

The Copywopydoodah cake: Part 1

Three of my friends are having a joint birthday party this weekend, despite the fact that their birthdays aren't really that close together and spread over two months. They've already shot themselves in the foot by setting the precedent for people to give joint birthday presents. So obviously their birthday present from me will be a cake. But not just any old cake. This one will be three times as big but hopefully won't look like something from 'Pimp That Snack!'. It will be a Choccywoccydoodah cake.

(Oh and it also means I can use up some of the Green and Blacks cocoa I bought from Waitrose about two years ago when they were buy one get one free.)

Usually for birthdays I'll make that foolproof chocolate cake by Nigella although I don't actually know which of her books it's from - it's the only recipe I've ever written down whilst watching one of her shows because, like everyone else, I'm usually transfixed with her lovely bottom and can't bear to take my eyes off the screen for as long as it takes to write down a recipe.

Ingredients for chocolate cake
400g plain flour
250g caster sugar
100g light muscovado sugar
50g cocoa
2tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt

175g unsalted butter melted and cooled
125ml corn oil
300ml cold water

142ml tub sour cream
3 large eggs
1tsp vanilla extract

Method
Mix dry ingredients until combined. Add the butter, corn oil and water to the dry ingredients and stir until smooth. Briefly whisk the eggs, sour cream and vanilla extract together and then beat into the rest of the mixture. Divide between two loose-bottom cake tins and bake at gas mark 4 for about an hour.

Do this another two times so that you have six cakes in total. You'll also start to realise what it must be like to be a machine in the Mr Kipling factory.

Once you have all six cakes lined up, you can start to sandwich them together. I did this using a chocolate buttercream icing made up of 400g melted dark chocolate, 350g unsalted butter and about 750g icing sugar. And yes, I went through the effort of sieving it. Make sure you fill up all the cracks - you don't want any weak points in this structure.


Now this is the part when you might want to reconsider making the cake. The buttercream icing was just to sandwich the cakes together and not to cover it. To cover the cake I needed something which could hold this skyscraper of a cake together. Something to keep it rigid, yet something runny. Something sticky and something funny. I needed caramel.

Ingredients for chocolate caramel covering
350g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
150g golden syrup
3 397g tins condensed milk
1tsps instant espresso powder/coffee granules
300g dark chocolate

Method
Gently bring all ingredients (except the chocolate) to the boil, stirring constantly. Turn heat down to a simmer and continue stirring until mixture becomes thicker and darker. This should take about 15 minutes. Break chocolate into pieces and stir into the caramel until dissolved. Leave to cool before spreading on the cake. Prepare to be amazed at how easy it is to use.

After cooling the cake in my fridge overnight, I was finally able to add the final layer of solid chocolate. I melted down 1.5kg of Belgian chocolate ...

"!!!!!!!!"

Yes, 1.5kg of chocolate to cover the cake which may seem exciting now but you will probably be so sick of chocolate at this stage that you will want to wash up the bowl instead of licking it clean. I allowed the chocolate to set before painting on the dark and white chocolate stripes to complete that Choccywoccydoodah look which you will hopefully see in Part 2!

BREAKING NEWS: Ainsley Harriot IS a 'winner'

We obviously already knew that he was a winner when he took over from Fern on Ready Steady Cook. But now thanks to the graphics department at the BBC (because they obviously couldn't think of any other chefs) Ainsley is now the face of victory over the smoking ban. See how he's waving to the losers? That's genius juxtaposition.

And it would seem that chefs aren't the only people who will benefit from the smoking ban. According to this really shit report from the BBC that reads like something out of Women's Own, the paparazzi will be able to get more shots of celebrities who step outside from bars and restaurants to 'have a fag'...I am loving the logic behind that.

We just have to hope that the chef shortage won't get so bleak that Ainsley is drafted to work in some country pub and has to quit TV for good.

Chocolate mousse

My boyfriends imminent house move has given me a panic that most people get when moving house. A panic which makes me want to throw out as much stuff as possible to make the process of moving house a lot less stressful. Not that it's even my house or me who'll have to do the moving of things. But still, I want to do my bit and using up his food seems to be the best way I can help. And I'm sure he'll be thanking me when he doesn't have to carry that bar of chocolate to our new place. It also means I can get him to do reviews on the food I make;

"I'm new to mousse, so don't really know how to review one. I've only ever had mousse two or three times ever, so am a bit short of a frame of reference about what makes a mousse good or bad. This one seems to be very much like the ones I had before, though, and those ones were made by proper chefs (or at least a well-calibrated mousse machine in a factory) which must mean this one's very good.

Uncle Jen will probably say it came out wrong for some weird reason, like she does with everything. Probably this time she'll moan because there was a slightly thick, chewy crust on top that tastes quite strongly of golden syrup. That's not supposed to be there, she'll say, also mentioning as an aside that she threw three previous secret attempts away because they seemed too runny.

However, the thick, chewy, syrupy/chocolatey crust is a secret lovely bonus! Like those thick lumpy bits you get in Easter eggs where the chocolate's gone too thick. They're a treat THEY don't want you to have because they're JUST TOO NICE - and so is this mousse's thick crust.

The first one had a huge lump, about the size of a large kidney bean, right at the top in the middle. What a treat. The second one (pictured) had a more uniform consistency. Both were very chocolatey and syrupy and quite fluffy, which, to my extremely stunted palette, is what a chocolate mousse should be like.

So I'll give this chocolate mousse a final score of eight Mars bars out of ten Mars bars. Recommended." Cmdr Zorg

Ingredients
100g dark chocolate
1 and half tbsp water
1 tbsp golden syrup
2 eggs, separated

Melt chocolate in a double boiler with the water and syrup. Take off the heat and beat in egg yolks one at a time. Whisk egg whites until stiff. Fold into chocolate mixture and divide between the two non-stackable ramekins I got with some very tasty Gu puddings.

(Recipe comes from Nigella's How To Eat.)

Annoying habits: leaving teabags next to the sink

Isn't this the worst thing? Why are people so afraid to put a hot teabag straight in the bin? Are they worried that the heat from the teabag is so intense that it will melt a hole through the bin liner? Or is it because the sink is closer and lets face it, we want to get that milky goodness down our necks faster than we can care to think about the correct disposal of the used bag?

Surely the above example is illegal. Not only have they put it IN the sink but it has also been hidden by the sponge - probably on purpose because they wanted to rid themselves of the responsibility of binning it. Some innocent will come along shortly, fill up the sink to wash the dishes and horrified, they will scoop up the soggy bag into their hands. Lets just hope they were wearing gloves.

Oh my godfathers. This has to be the worst kind of bag-disposing laziness I've ever seen. We can only hope that someone uses the sponge from before to mop up that spillage. Then at least the other bag should be discovered. Perhaps in the future, spoons should come labelled with instructions on how to squeeze excess liquid out of teabags.

Potato fraud

"At least two leading retailers are under investigation for selling Israeli potatoes as 'British new potatoes' and may face prosecution. They cannot be named for legal reasons." says The Times


"The alert follows a potato survey in South Wales..." probably carried out by the man above.

Banana loaf cake

I've had issues in the past with banana cakes. Mostly to do with getting carried away with the amount of bananas in the mixture which in turn, the flour can't support and the end resulting a banana flavoured lump of stodge. Then there are the politics of the differences between banana cake and banana bread, although I think I've come to the conclusion that they're pretty much the same thing and all turn out the same way - more cakey than bready.

This one is essentially a banana madeira cake. It's light and very nice cut into slices and spread with honey. Try making it the night before so you can have it for breakfast the following morning. Just don't tell the people eating it, the state of the bananas when they went into the mixture. And it's probably for the best if you try to forget it as well.

Ingredients
175g unsalted butter
175g golden caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 large, very ripe bananas

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and eggs and beat until combined but don't worry if it curdles - it always turns out fine. Mix in the flour and finally mash the bananas and mix them in. Pour mixture into a lined loaf tin and bake at gas mark 4 for about an hour.

How far is too far? The bananas in a banana loaf cake

I was thrilled to see these three rotting bananas in my Nan's fruit bowl today when visitng her for my weekly knitting session. Thank goodness I deliberately bought five bananas instead of the two she had asked for when buying her shopping almost six weeks ago now. I knew she'd never get through them all!

'Now I can make a banana cake!' I thought to myself. Only to completely forget that running home is probably not a good idea with bananas in my bag which resulted in that one splitting open. If you look closer, you can see one of my hairs stuck in it.

The problem is now that I'm completely overloaded with mouldy bananas as I had been saving up these two that 'went off' at the end of last month.

Don't worry, I'll lob that bit off.

Naff foods I like but have always been afraid to admit liking #3

Cocoa powder. As in eating it with a spoon straight from the jar when I'm craving chocolate.

Like last year when I ate all the chocolates from the Advent calender in one go. And the same the year before then, and the year before then, and the year before then, and the year before then...

New York Holiday

There are only a few good reasons I have ever considered going on a diet for. Once was to look good for my boyfriend on our first date (because I'm shallow like that) and most recently because I knew I'd be going on holiday to New York and wanted to be able to stuff my face when I got there. So after a not-so-gruelling eight weeks of cutting back, I was finally able to let myself go on the cheesecakes, pastrami, club sandwiches and pretzels.

(N.B. Rather annoyingly I only bought batteries for my camera on the last day of the holiday and even then I kept forgetting to take photos of my meals which is why I have only really have a breakfast, a slice of cheesecake and a box of chocolates to show.)

We spent most mornings at this diner recommended to us by the bloke at reception at the Casablanca where we were staying. Apparently, it was the inspiration behind Seinfeld although we didn't see him there so I'm not sure of the validity of that claim.

This is a before and after photo of our breakfast. Note how the plate which had my Eggs Benedict on, isn't in the 'after' photo as it had to be promptly taken away as we were using up so much crockery that they needed some back for their other customers.

Or maybe it's because we needed a whole plate for the empty packets of butter, jam and syrup - all mine.

Our whole day seemed to revolve around maximising our calorie intake. It was thoroughly enjoyable yet to reach our potential, we had to step back and look at things mathematically.

Wake up early + Go to bed later = Get in another meal

This conclusion might have been a bit more useful if we had actually managed to stay up past 11pm but because of the time difference and all the walking, we were well and truly beat. Walking around did have it's benefits though;

Wake up early + Go to bed later + Walk everywhere = Get in another meal and plenty of snacks

Walking everywhere meant we were able to convince ourselves that we were burning up vast amount of calories and therefore needed three slices of cheesecake every time we passed a deli. The cheesecake below was a fine, if not the best example, of one of our fuel-ups, not that I can remember the name of the place it's from. I did however manage to make a tit of myself by asking the man behind the counter if it was a New York cheesecake. "Yeah, sure!" he laughed. Mustn't forget to make a fool of myself in front of the locals! What other stupid things could I do? Ask the hotel porter how much is a good amount to tip him? Yeah, that'll do.

One of the places I was desperate to visit was Chocolate Haven. After stopping off for lunch in Greenwich Village, I asked the waiter if he knew of a chocolate shop called Chocolate Haven and if it was any good. He said he hadn't heard of it but that I should most definitely check out Jacques Torres on the corner of Hudson Street because it looked like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and does the most amazing cookies. Of course when we get there we realise that Chocolate Haven and Jacques Torres are indeed the same shop and that it does indeed look like the inside of Roald Dahls mind (as do the chocolates).

The pistachio marzipan sticks out in my mind more than the others. Although there was a chai tea flavour fondant covered in white chocolate which was equally memorable. Eating them, however, makes me realise how grateful I am for Belgium being so close to the UK and having such a huge influence on the chocolate back home because as nice as they were, they still don't compare to the quality of chocolate we get here. That still didn't stop me from bringing home a whole carrier bag full of Baby Ruths and Zagnuts though!