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We don't just write about cakes. We're interested in everything "for her indoors". So when girls aren't in the kitchen, they're sewing or doing their nails, right?


Bought from a craft fair last year and apart from taking them out to 'colour categorise' them, they have remained in tact in their original packaging next to my unopened French Manicure set.

Best carrot cake

Unlike Josceline Dimbleby, Nigel Slater really knows how to make one of these. Hence 'Best' being in the header instead of 'weirdest'. Recipe has been oh-so-slightly adjusted mostly due to not having all the original ingredients at the time and making do with what I had made the results turn out practically similar yet almost half the price to make.

Ingredients

For the cake
200ml sunflower, corn or vegetable oil
3 eggs (separated)
250g light muscovado sugar
250g self raising flour
2 tsps cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
Juice of half an orange (zest it first - you'll need it for the icing)
200g grated carrots
150g chopped walnuts (save a handful to go on top)

For the icing
150g full-fat cream cheese
450g icing sugar
Zest of one orange (the one you juiced for the cake)

Pre-heat oven to gas mark 4 and line two loose bottomed sandwich tins (either 7 or 8 inch). Cream together the oil and sugar. Add the egg yolks one at a time and beat well after each addition. Stir in the orange juice, walnuts and grated carrots. Add the flour, cinnamon and baking powder and fold in with a large metal spoon. Now whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture. Divide between the tins and place into the pre-heated oven for 40-45 minutes. Your kitchen will now smell wonderful. Cool on a wire rack until needed.

To make the icing, simply beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar and zest. This might take anything up to 10 minutes if you're doing it by hand. Remember, you don't want it too runny as it will simply slide off the cake. On the other hand, if it's too stiff then it will be a nightmare to spread. Refer to the photo for desired consistency.

Take approximately a third of the icing and spread over the bottom half of the cake. Place the other half on top and spread the rest of the icing over the top and sides. Sprinkle over the walnuts just so people know that it's got nuts in it. Hopefully it will put some people off enough and leave more for us.

The recipe can be adapted to suit people on a dairy-free diet by substituting soya cream cheese in the icing.

Tardis Cake

"Anything Doctor Who themed - he just loves Doctor Who."




Yes that's right, someone actually paid for this and unbelievably, didn't complain. They even phoned afterwards to tell me how wonderful it tasted.

The profits made from the sale of the cake are still sitting in a trust fund set up especially for the day I am admitted into hospital for the long-term damage caused to my nervous system every time I look at this photo and cringe.

Method
Build cake using madeira sponge and glue together with buttercream and jam. Cover in marzipan and carefully place the rolled out icing over the tardis. Now carefully let it sink in that it doesn't look as you had hoped and peel off all the icing you just put on. Make up some more icing using egg white, food colouring and icing sugar that you don't have. Run to Sainbury's to buy more icing sugar. On arriving home, apply some deodorant and pretend not to see the clock on the wall telling you that she will be arriving in 20 minutes to pick up cake. Start to panic - this will ensure adrenaline kicking in soon. Bring icing together with said ingredients and gently smooth over cake. Put the windows and sign you made earlier on to the side and hope that no-one notices how AMAZINGLY AND UTTERLY SHIT it looks. Stifle any tears - save them for after she has picked up cake.

My breadmaker <3

Just in case you feel inspired by the french crusty update but haven't yet invested in one of these, I thought I might show you my breadmaker - the Morphy Richards Fast bake 48268.


Brushed stainless steel, 12 settings including a fastbake setting, 1.5lb AND 2lb loaf capacity and I have even started on the crust control yet.

But for me the most appealing feature isn't that it can bake you a loaf of bread in as fast as an hour and ten minutes or indeed it's unique retracting blade. No, for me it's most redeeming feature has to be the little window on it's lid so that you can see what's going on inside.


You can see it go round and round and round. And then up and then round and round again. And then up and then up some more and slowly, you can see it turn brown :)

The 48268 is simply leagues ahead of Morphy Richards cheaper version, the Compact Breadmaker 48245. Morphy Richards have tried to do it justice by listing it's programmable timer as a feature. This obviously comes as standard for the 48268 and unfortunately just makes the 48245 seem even more shit. Oh dear 48245 :(

My only word of caution on the 48268 is to not bother reading the manual - it's only really good when you have greasy hands and need something to wipe them on.

If I were a lesbian, I would really fancy...

...Kathryn Hughes from The Guardian for her article on the knork.


I love to see this amount of enthusiasm on something which people take for granted. I have been a closet fan of the knork's sister, the spork, a hybrid of the spoon and fork for sometime now and had no idea that someone else could spend so much time, not only thinking but writing on this subject.

In a parallel universe somewhere, I would be a successful writer like Kathryn and holding hands, we would go for long walks in Richmond park on Sunday afternoons. We would talk about her article on the knork and my critically acclaimed article on the spork. She would recite her Freudian views on cutlery and I would talk about how Spudulike are the perfect food outlet to showcase the spork.

"But oh..." I would sigh "...wouldn't it be amazing if someone could invent a hybrid of the two. A hybrid of two hybrids. A spork and knork as one..."

It doesn't take more than a heartbeat for her to pull me toward her shouting;

"Why, the sporkife!"

"The sporkife? Why didn't I think of that?!"

Why didn't you think of that Jeanette. Anyone could think to invent the spork but the person with the type of mind to think up the knork, well, anything is possible with that mind. Anything. Including the sporkife. God, she's amazing. I could make love to her right now, I would think to myself.

"Then Spudulike wouldn't need to give knives with their sporks. Hell, they wouldn't even be handing out sporks now there's a sporkife." I exclaim.

I look into Kathryn's eyes now filled with the same tears of joy that run down my face. We both stand motionless, consumed by the mutual love of knorks and sporks that brings us together. Two minds, one sporkife.

Delia's mincemeat

I've already got carried away with Christmas this year. I've already bought the snowman shaped biscuit cutters to make the biscuits that will decorate the tree and have made two massive jars of mincemeat and three Christmas cakes; one for the boyfriend, one for me and one to give away as a present although I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep up the pretence that I'm going to give it away. I used this recipe last year and was pleased enough with the results to make it again this year!

Using these fancy jars makes for an awesome Christmas present. Nanna will be very impressed.

Ingredients
450g Bramley apples diced into small pieces
225g shredded suet
350g raisins
225g sultanas
225g currants
225g whole mixed candied peel, chopped into small pieces
350g soft dark brown sugar
Grated zest and juice of 2 oranges and 2 lemons
50g almonds cut into slivers
4 tsps ground mixed spice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
6 tbsps brandy

Method
Combine and thoroughly mix all ingredients except the brandy. Cover and leave overnight. The next day pre-heat oven to gas mark 1/4 (yes, a quarter) and place the mixing bowl, covered with foil into the pre-heated oven for three hours. Remove from oven and stir occasionally until the fat coagulates. Now stir in the brandy and spoon the mixture into sterilised jars.

And to sterilise your jars, wash them in warm soapy water, dry and place them in a medium oven for 5 minutes or until completely dry.

Breadmaker bread recipe

I know it might seem silly giving a recipe for something which you don't actually make but breadmakers can be surprisingly difficult to get right.

In the past, I had been following the recipes from my breadmaker's manual and was quite content to pretend to be pleased with its results. Indeed, I would chew disappointingly on my heartburn-inducing stodge happy to bypass my taste buds in favour of the pleasure of eating something 'homemade'. The novelty was obviously quick to wear off.

I thought I'd give it another chance and use a recipe not featured in the manual. Since then I have been making bread practically every day for the last week. I've even taken it out of permanent hibernation from under the sink and have put it pride of place next to the microwave. That's a good thing - my microwave is amazing.


Gone are the days of bland, indigestible stodge. Say "Bonjour" to French crusty!

Ingredients
350ml water
1 tbsp skimmed milk powder
25g butter
540g strong white flour
1 and 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp light brown sugar
1 sachet dried fast-action yeast

Method...if you want to call it that
Place ingredients in breadmaker in order listed and use basic small setting. Or if you breadmaker is super fancy like mine, then use French setting.

Homous

My friend once told me that on the one and only occasion she could be bothered to make homous she discovered that it "didn't actually require as much oil as you might think." She said that as long as your put enough garlic and lemon juice in it you could pretty much get away with making it oil free. This inevitably sent my mind into homous overdrive. Imagine eating as much homous as you wanted! Because obviously 'oil free = fat free', and 'fat free = being able to stuff your face silly with it.'

The opportunity to make it arose when cleaning out my cupboard, I found a bag of dried chickpeas which on every previous occasion I had pulled out to cook, I would frustratingly shove it back in the cupboard because I would realise that I had absolutely no idea what to do with them. But this time was different. This time I had the motivation of fat-free homous at the back of my mind.

So how to cook them? Well, Nigella writes that you should soak them in water overnight with a tsp of baking powder and bicarb, drain and the next day, immerse them in water and put them on the stove with the lid on at a simmering heat for up to three hours. Nigella even mentions how the 'nutty' smell of the chickpeas will spread through the whole house and how enjoyable it will be for you. Nigella must have simply been boiling some nuts that day because my house ended up smelling of dead cat fur. And that was despite the bay leaves I had put in for extra flavour.

So when you're ready, blitz together two cups of the cooked and cooled chickpeas, three tbsps of tahini, the juice of one lemon, four cloves of garlic, a tsp of cumin and then, with the food processor still on, pour hot water into the funnel a little bit at a time until you get the homousy consistency you're after. And I know we're after a low-fat homous but just for authenticities sake, stir through a tablespoon of olive oil.

If you're a sucker for sun-dried tomatoes then add five to the food processor. For those who like olives in their homous sandwiches but couldn't take any more embarrassing olive-falling-out-of sandwich-and-on-to-lap moments, then simply blitz a handful into the mixture. If you use kalamata olives, it makes it go purple!

Halloween cupcakes

I guess it's a bit late to be making a post about anything Halloween related. Supermarket stackers are no doubt already pulling all the Halloween confectionery from the shelves. Somewhere out there, hardcore Halloween enthusiasts are starting to realise that it won't be 31st October again for a whole year and asking themselves "Do I have enough energy to drag myself down to Sainsbury's to check out the half price chocolate witches and reduced vampire make-up which would really come in handy for fancy dress parties?".

I made these ones with a friend. At first orange seemed like a great idea because it meant we could make pumpkin faced cupcakes which worked for the one at the bottom in the middle but then confused us when we wanted to do anything that wasn't orange which is why every other one looks a bit naff unless you try to imagine another colour in the background.

To make the orange Royal Icing simply whisk an egg white for about 20 seconds until a little bit frothy. To get enough to cover about a dozen cakes, just use about a third of the egg white and then slowly keep adding sieved icing sugar with a couple of drops of red and yellow food colouring. When it gets firm enough to roll into a ball, dust some icing sugar on a clean surface and roll out. I used a cup to cut out the circles to go on top and some ready made tubes of 'writing icing' for drawing. Oh and I heated up about 2 tbsps of apricot jam with a tbsp of water to make a glaze which was then painted on the cakes to enable the icing to stick.

Chanelle has a tantrum on Ready Steady Cook

It's all too easy to bitch about this princess but seeing as she had never crossed over into the food/restaurant territory, I never had the means to warrant a good old Chanelle rant.

So imagine my joy when I saw her on Friday's edition of Ready Steady Cook!



What confuses me about this video is the number of opportunities Brian Turner has to head-butt Chanelle but turns them down. That's fair enough Brian. After all it's a family show and it's shown before the watershed but that really doesn't explain why you had to hug her instead. We'd rather be watching Deal or No Deal.

Slump in Italian wine sales

"Wine could make a good antibacterial mouth wash to fight tooth decay and a sore throat, according to Italian researchers." says The Telegraph.


Does that mean we can expect next weeks news to report that British researchers will recommend that you should gargle with cider?

The Anti-Borough Market

Have you had it up to your nostrils with trendy farmers markets? Are you sick of pretending that you like smelly French cheese? Do you want to spend your Saturday mornings anywhere BUT browsing organic foods you've never heard of surrounded by middle-class, half-arsed hippies? If the answer to any of these is 'yes' you may want to pay a visit to one of London's lesser known markets; Lewisham Market.


To be honest, I don't really mind Lewisham. I mean, it looks OK from the window when you pass through it on the train. That is until the day you pluck up the courage to get off the train and see the local shops and suddenly recall all the times you've heard bad things on the news about locals getting shot. Then comes the day when you finally visit the market on the weekend. It's then. That first visit to the market when you add up everything and start to realise why it has such an undesirable reputation. It is, in a nutshell, rough. But boy oh boy, is the fruit cheap!


Take a look at this lot for example. A massive bag of grapes, an equally stuffed bag of bananas, a box of mangoes, fourteen plums and two pineapples. All for £5!

Is it organic? No! Is it fair trade? Not likely! Is it at least fresh and of good quality? Hardly ever!


Look at those apples. OK, so they're quite pale compared to the ones from Borough Market (on the right) but then again, you're paying a pound for the whole bowl. So who cares if they've been on the pavement? I certainly don't!


Box of mangoes with strange black spots for £1? Yes please! And to think you could have bought the 'disease-free' variety in Borough Market for double!


And who needs all those fancy pastries and muffins when there's a perfectly good doughnut stand? They are fresh after all! I didn't see that man making that really delicious muffin before my eyes. Who knows where it could have come from?


We'll ignore that for now....


And don't worry if you couldn't find what you wanted at the market - Iceland will probably have it.

Nutella cake

Seeing as every other food blogger under the sun has done the Nutella cake (e.g. here, here, here, here, here and here) and not wanting to feel left out, I thought I really should do it as well. Not to mention the fact that I've been desperate to see how satisfying it would be to empty a whole jar of Nutella in one go.

Ingredients for the cake
400g jar Nutella
125g soft, unsalted butter
6 eggs, seperated
120g dark chocolate
100g ground hazelnuts
1 tbsp Frangelico, rum or water

For the ganache
125ml double cream
125g dark chocolate
1 tbsp Frangelico, rum or water

Beat butter, Nutella and Frangelico together until combined (BTW, I don't think Frangelico really exists. It sounds like it's been made-up, like Brangelina or frenemies which is why I used rum instead). Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, saving the egg whites for later. Add the ground hazelnuts and melted, cooled chocolate. Fold in whisked egg whites and bake in a lined 23cm springform tin at gas mark 4 for about 45 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

To make the ganache, you simply heat the cream over a LOW heat to which you add the chocolate then keep stirring until it has melted. I really stupidly started doing the stupid washing-up and didn't see the cream bubbling away with the chocolate inside, burning at the bottom of the pan. This, really unfortunately, led to this mess:

(Warning: Some readers may find the following pictures offensive and/or disturbing)


ARGGHH! How could I mess up something so simple? And what IS that yellow liquid? I obviously couldn't spread that on top of the cake and so had to go to the Co-op AGAIN and once AGAIN be convinced that their "dark" chocolate really does have a cocoa content of 63% and above. Why isn't there such a thing as a Waitrose Local? The second attempt went much more smoothly because I was actually paying attention. This is what it should look like:


Ahhh, much better! This was then lightly whipped and then spread on the cooled cake. I found that it took on the consistency of butter cream although judging by the other blogger's attempts, I'm not sure how ganache is meant to look.


Even though there's a whole jar of Nutella in the cake, I think perhaps it would have been better to add some extra sugar as it is rather rich and hence not great for children even though you might think that kids would be this cakes target demographic. It is ultimately a tacky but fun version of Torta Caprese which, after Christmas cake, is one of my most favourite cakes. And maybe if I didn't have such a stuck up view of chocolate nut cakes, then this one would soon be winging its way to my best cakes list for its fudgy, brownie-like qualities.

(And if you're planning on taking photos of the cake, it's probably best not to display it on that really naff Argos plate your Mum fobbed off on to you because even she didn't want it.)

Apricot jam

I thought there was some big secret behind jam. That it took days of preparation and then hours of cooking and required loads of sugar. Well, I was right about the sugar bit, in fact I was rather shocked to discover how much sugar goes into jam. The cooking bit however, I was wrong about. It took only a couple of hours from start to finish to knock up four jars of the stuff and now that I know how easy it is, I feel like I can't stop myself now.

I already tried out strawberry jam last week. Laughing, I put my half-price, half-eaten punnet of strawberries into the saucepan expecting to get two teaspoons worth of jam at the end of it:

"There's no way I'll make enough jam to make this experiment worthwhile. Aren't there like a million strawberries in a jar of jam? I'm sure I've read that on the label before!"


But no, I was rather pleasantly surprised to find a healthy sized jar-portion sitting in the bottom of the saucepan after my experiment. Which is why I've now moved onto apricots.

Ingredients
1.5kg apricots (after stoning)
1.5kg white granulated sugar
1 lemon
Approx. 10 almonds from inside the apricot stones

This will give you enough for four medium sized jars however you can make however much you want based on how ever many apricots you have. Basically, once you've taken the stones out, weigh the apricots and this will give you the weight of sugar you will need.

Half the apricots and place in the biggest saucepan you have with the sugar and juice from one lemon. Boil for about 30 minutes until the sugar has dissolved. In the meantime, you can get on with the almonds. That is, if you choose to put them in, as I only actually put them in one of my jars.

Crack open about ten of the stones to get the kernels and then blanch them for 2 minutes in boiling water. Skin them, halve them and place on a paper towel to dry out until you need them.

Now you're meant to do the Wrinkle Test on the jam which is now my most favourite test in the world! (And I reckon I passed it with flying colours). It involves eating warm spoonfuls of jam that have been spread on the surface of a chilled plate. If the jam wrinkles when you tilt the plate after a couple of seconds, then it's set and you can take it off the heat. If not, then let it boil for a few more minutes. You should really chill your plate in the freezer before hand but I did mine under the cold tap for a few minutes which is probably a bit of a waste of water and hence not very good for your Water Footprint - that's like your Carbon Footprint only muddier. Once it has been taken off the heat, Delia suggests dispersing the scum collected on the surface with a knob of butter but I found it easier to skim it off and disperse it in my tummy :)

After eating the scummy jam, leave it to cool for half an hour and then divide into sterilized jars. Sterilized jars, just to remind you, are jars that have been washed in warm, soapy water and then dried in the oven on a medium heat for about 30 minutes.

Apparently you should wait a few months to let the jam mature. If you're concerned that you won't have the willpower to go through with this, then I recommend getting your mum to come around and hide them. Just don't get your senile grandmother to do it or in a couple of months time, she would've forgotten where she'd put them.

Super headline

"Superfoods fly off shelves as Britons get healthy" according to The Independant.

Of course they can fly. They can also see through walls and save children from burning buildings!

Cowabunga dudes!

I've been wanting to do an update on this pizza for months now but was always worried that a self-respecting food blog would never do a pizza update for fear of never being taken seriously ever again because after all, any old fool can make a pizza. But seeing as I'm not a self-respecting food blog I thought I might as well do the update anyway.

Before you ask, no I haven't put the pizza straight on my dining table. That happens to be an unnecessarily large cutting board. Back to the recipe...

Ingredients
1 pound bread flour
3/4 cup warm water
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 and 1/2 tsps active dry yeast
1 and 1/2 tsps sugar
1 tsp salt

I found the recipe for the base here before you think I actually have the culinary knowledge to make up something this simple myself.

Combine the water, oil, yeast and sugar in a jug and leave for a few minutes until it starts foaming. Stir the salt into the flour. Mix the two together to form a dough but don't bother kneading it - it's not that type of dough. Now divide it into two and put one half in the freezer for next time unless you're planning on eating pizza two days in a row or actually have a 24 inch pizza pan as the recipe states. Like my kitchen is even that wide! Then leave the dough to rest for at least 24 hours although I found it even better after two or three days. So once it's rolled out and placed onto an oiled pizza pan, spread on about 3 tbsps sun-dried tomato puree and then about 6 tbsps of passatta. I like to use a red pepper, a red onion and lots of salami for my toppings and then about 150g of grated mozzarella. And for the love of God, put the toppings under the cheese and not on top unless of course you like dry, burnt-out vegetables. Bake for 12 minutes at gas mark 7.

Sainsbury's Gu puddings offer

I still can't understand what Sainsbury's are getting out of this. Gu products have become such an integral part of my diet that putting them on offer is like putting bread or milk on special offer.

The novelty of the glass ramekins has officially worn off though. They're taking up so much room in the kitchen cupboard that I'm considering taking them down to the glass recycling bin. Either that or everyone will be getting ashtrays for Christmas this year.


Oh and don't bother with the lemon souffle - it's very greasy and leaves you feeling like you want to brush your teeth for the rest of the evening. Go for the vanilla cheesecake or the tiramisu, or Tiramigu, should I say.

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!