What do you mean you don't like peanut butter??!

I've not exactly been showering myself in glory in terms of "mother of the year" lately.  I mean lets take last weekend as a prime example.  Instead of spending the bank holiday weekend with Madam I abandoned her (to her father obviously, I didn't leave a couple of boxes of cold Dominos in the kitchen and tell her "I wont be long") to go cover myself in glitter, don spandex and party in a field near Northampton at the glorious Shambala.  To be fair it was my birthday and at 33 years old it seemed utterly necessary to pop my festival cherry.  God that sounds so pathetic at 33...practically on the "Never Been Kissed" spectrum.  So yes, I had some time out and came back thinking I needed to step up my game this weekend to make up for it. 

Now we, like most of the country and (if Buzzfeed is taken as gospel WHICH IT SHOULD BE) the world, are completely engrossed in The Great British Bake Off.  Pose provides full commentary and critique whilst I sit thinking how I'd quite like to enter GBBO but not sure the BBC would approve of the sweet looking 33yo baker swearing incessantly in the background.  Inspiration peaked by Ugne's PB&J ice cream roll (GET IN MY BELLY NOW), Pose and I decided to do a little mummy-Pose-baking-bonding.

Peanut butter is food of the gods.  Fact.  You simply can't make me think otherwise.  I'm stunned that other than peanut butter cookies I've never really tried baking with peanut butter.  Or I'm just a purist.  I dunno.  Anyway, we thought we'd do something with peanut butter...and jam....and cake...and then wrap it all up in chocolate.  Because why wouldn't you!?

Recipe - PB&J Cake Pops from my own head

Ingredients

Cake pops:
¾ cups plain flour
½ tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
¼ cup full fat milk

Filling:
Peanut Butter
Jam

Icing:
Slab of chocolate covering for cake (or chocolate,  but I had cake covering in the cupboard (as you do))

Equipment:
Cake pop maker
Cake release spray
Sticks (for the cake pops, I don't mean random sticks from the garden obvs)
Tray covered in baking parchment

(makes about 15 cake pops)

Method

1. Turn on the cake pop maker and spray the inside with a little cake release spray.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
3. Using a food mixer (or not, your call) beat the butter until pale and fluffy, then gradually beat in the sugar until its fully incorporated. 
4. Next, reduce the speed and beat in the egg, the egg yolk and the vanilla. 
5. Reduce the speed again to low and gradually add the flour and milk (alternating) to the mix until its all blended.
6. Spoon a little of the batter into each cake "hole" (about ¾ of the way), then dollop a little peanut butter and a little jam into the centre.  Spoon a little more of the batter onto the top (so its about to go over the brim).  Close and cook for about 6mins. 
7. Once the cake pops are cooked, carefully ease them out and put on a wire rack to cool.  Make more batches.

The perfectionist in me is disappointed in the lack of roundness, but what are you going to do eh?

8. Break the chocolate covering into even(ish) chunks and melt in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water (or microwave it - I just don't have a microwave and yes I am ok with that). Once its all melted, take it off the heat.
9. Carefully put a stick in a cake pop (its a bit fiddly as the filling makes them a little unstable) and even more carefully dump into the melted chocolate and cover the whole thing in chocolate.  Put the cake pop cake side down onto the baking parchment.  Repeat with all the other cakes and let cool.

10. EAT ALL OF THEM AT ONCE.  

Yes that's a steering wheel.  I had a cake pop for breakfast.  Don't judge me.

This was all a bit of an experiment not least because I'd never used a cake pop maker before so I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.  Personally I think the texture of the cake was a bit close so I'll probably switch up the recipe a bit.  It could also be that the PB&J center affected the bake (ooooh I sound all Mary Berry!).  Regardless it'll need some refinement work which will mean a lot of tasting and then more tasting.
 

Damn.

Mini-Vicki-Union-Jackies

I wouldn't say I'm usually a massive monarchist but the Diamond Jubilee unearthed my patriotic side.  I think its got something to do with Pose - I want her to understand and be proud of her heritage so I was trying to explain to her about her country and our Queen.  I think she understood and by the end of the Jubilee weekend she was chanting God Save the Queen and asking me to sing the national anthem on repeat.  It was super cute.

Anyway, on the Friday before the big Jubilee weekend my team and I decided to have a little Jubilee afternoon tea and of course I wanted to make cakes of some description.  Now what cake to make?  What cake indeed?!  It would have to be a traditional Victoria sponge, and who better to look to for a recipe fit for a queen?  The queen of cakes of course, Mary Berry!  I have to say I was dubious about how good she is until I tried this cake and W-O-W.  That woman seriously knows her stuff.  Of course I had to put my own stamp on it...

The recipe - Mini-Vicki-Union-Jackies (adapted from the great Mary Berry's recipe)

For the sponge:

225 g (8 oz) softened butter

225 g (8 oz) caster sugar
4 large eggs
225 g (8 oz) self-raising flour
2 level tsp baking powder

For the filling:

300ml whipping cream

200g fresh strawberries

For the decoration:

Ready-to-roll white icing

Red food colouring

Blue food colouring

Strawberry jam for "glue" 

Icing sugar for dusting

Makes 9 Mini-Vicki-Sponges and 12 Cupcake-Vicki-Sponges (see next post)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/Fan 160°C/gas 4. Grease the tins.  

A baking shop has opened near my office (a baking shop? huzzah! yet more ways to spend when I should be saving....), I bought this little muffin pan especially for this recipe.  Its a silicon tray.  My first.  That's right, I just popped my silicon cherry for the queen.

Anyway, I love it and its perfect for little bite-size cakes!

2. Measure the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder into a large bowl and beat until thoroughly blended. Fill the mini-muffin tray about 2/3 full and then divide the remaining mixture evenly between the 12 hole cupcake tin and level out.

3. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes or until well risen and the tops of the cakes spring back when lightly pressed with a finger. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes then turn out and finish cooling on a wire rack.

4.  While the cakes are cooling (they're little so this is pretty quick) make the filling.  Take the strawberries and roughly cut them up, then mash them with a fork.  You are not aiming for mush though, you are aiming for a crush!  Whip the cream till thick and holds its shape.

When the cakes are completely cold, you can start decorating.

5. Cut the cakes in half horizontally; dollop some crushed strawberries onto the bottom layer; dollop whipped cream on top of the crushed strawberries; carefully place the top layer onto the cream and press carefully down.

6. Dust the work surface with icing sugar and roll out some of the ready-to-roll icing and taking a cookie cutter or anything you can find - I used a fluted cookie cutter donated by mother - and cut out a circle for each cake.

7. Spread a thin layer of jam onto the top of the cake and carefully place an icing circle on top.  Smooth over with flat fingers to ensure it is stuck down.

8. Put a couple of drops of red food colouring into a dish and add a little icing sugar to it (to thicken it).  Using a CLEAN thin paintbrush, paint a cross and four diagonal lines onto the icing.  Taking a separate dish, put a couple of drops of blue food colouring in and add a little icing sugar to it.  Paint blue triangles in the spaces between the red diagonal lines (make sense??? Look at the pics....)

TA DAAAAAAA!

I really loved these little cakes.  I was SO SO SOOOOO proud of them.  The cake was super tasty (Mary Berry really knows her stuff), the icing wasn't overwhelming, the filling yummy and they looked freaking awesome!  A perfect little cake for our little Jubilee afternoon tea.

I'll leave you on tenterhooks to see what I did with the Cupcake-Vicki-Sponges....in the meantime you can consider what on earth a "tenterhook" is!?

I'm a GIANT

I've always been obsessed with things that aren't the "right" size be it miniature things (like mini-jaffa-cakes where I can pretend I'm a giant) or things on the enormo scale (so mancakes and fishbowl cocktails).  As a kid I remember watching "The Borrowers" and "Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory" (the original of course! Can you imagine it...going into that room with the chocolate river, the giant lollipops, the edible tea cups, the enormous gummy bears....) and obsessing over the possibilities of chocolate chips the size of my head.  Seriously, as a kid this was my idea of heaven but then I was a sweetie fiend.  My mum used to find sweet wrappers stuffed in my Popple whilst I proclaimed my innocence and blamed Teddy Ruxbin. 

This past Sunday was Mothering Sunday in the UK so my sibs (and my Pa) and I had the fateful discussion about what to do for Ma.  Every time we've attempted to go out for Mothers Day it has always been tricky, usually because we have to cater to my Nan's very strange foodisms and it stresses my Mum out (Nan refuses to eat butter (but carries her own butter knife in her purse)* or anything she deems as fat but will quite happily tuck into any sort of cake and will eat cream on its own).  Not to mention I'm a football widow on Sunday anyway and the thought of dealing with Nan, my Mum's angst and my Tasmanian devil is enough to make me run for the hills.  I therefore put the kibosh on it straightaway and suggested we cook at home and I'd also bake.  Job done.  And then true to form I went a step ahead and suggested we also do afternoon tea...so I've roped myself into making little cakes too.  Why do I always get so ahead of myself and over commit???

No afternoon tea would be complete without scones.  In fact, I'd personally feel cheated without them!  So last Sunday the first thing I set about making was the scones.  Not just any scones though.  We were going to be eating a few cakes and since I do love things in miniature, I made bite size scones. 

Again, I'm too lazy to type the recipe up so the recipe is below.  I'm not sure where its from, I know its from one of my mum's old tomes and I have a feeling its a Delia but I'm just not sure.

I made the recipe as directed although I have to say the dough was pretty sticky so I ended up adding more flour.  Hubby claimed this made the resulting scones more savoury and like American style biscuits but my family said they enjoyed them.  Perhaps this is the difference between the English and American palate (listen to me sounding all knowledgeable!).

I don't have any cutters so I used a shot glass
(I have no cookie or cake cutters but I have a ton of shot glasses - standard)

Serve warm and fill with jam and clotted cream!

I took 8 of the little scones, placed them into an airtight container and put them in the freezer for Sunday.  I then simply let them defrost for 24hrs and served them up with the afternoon tea (see later posts).  They fared pretty well in the freezer so look like a good recipe to make ahead of time if need be.

I also did a little taste testing and personally, I thought they were nom.


* I am not even joking.  She got flagged at Heathrow airport for carrying a knife - on her way to my wedding - in the USA - post 9.11.01 - and then had her knives (yes PLURAL butter knives, they found another one in her HANDBAG) confiscated.  Don't even try to understand my Nan. Tip.Of.The.Iceberg.

"You gotta plan these things. Even if it's just a post it on your desk at work when you should be doing something else. Some people doodle when they are dodging work, I apparently draw penis cakes"

Before I even begin, firstly I apologise for failing in my task of blogging each week and not posting last week.  I was afflicted with a plague!!  Well not quite that dramatic but I got the flu and wasn't a well bunny.  I did bake albeit in a hazy, flu induced state and following that promptly went to bed for a week.  Secondly, I have to forewarn you that this post features the word "penis" and penis shaped objects.  'Rents and in laws, I sincerely apologise if this causes any offence...

I also apologise about the photos in this post (a) there are A LOT; and (b) blogger seems to be taking editorial decisions for me and uploaded several the wrong way round.  Oh well.

My lovely friend, the Ginger Ninja, was turning 30 and for her surprise party our friend M and I decided wouldn't it be nice if we baked her a birthday cake...in the shape of a penis...with ginger pubes.  I know I know, we are truly caring sharing sorta gals.  We discussed, at some length, whether to use a penis shaped cake pan or whether to carve a cake into shape and how to create the ginger pubes - I was all about trying to spin sugar and was really looking forward to having a bash at it.  I had been ridiculously excited about attempting this cake for weeks. 

Anyone would think my friends and I have a some sort of penis obsession.  For another friend's wedding we decided that the hen party wouldn't be complete without a penis piñata, so one of the other bridesmaids painstakingly constructed a colourful penis piñata.  The first attempt didn't work.  The balloons she had used to do the paper mache started losing air so the whole pinata became...ahem...flaccid.  Of course we found this hysterical and many many (many) jokes followed on a pretty common theme.  The second one came out awesome although the hens got a little too carried away whacking it.

ANYWAY, I know, I'm so far off track here....

Finally the cake baking week came and unfortunately poor M was unwell so I threw myself into the task with great gusto.  After much um-ing and ah-ing I decided to make 3 cakes - 2 round and 1 oblong which I would then trim as necessary.  I had considered making 1 big sheet cake and then cutting that down but couldn't bear the thought of throwing so much cake away.

Seriously.  I planned it on a post-it.

Seriously.  I planned it on a post-it.

So, I left work that night announcing to all that I needed to leave on time because I had to go home and bake a penis cake.

Having researched a couple of recipes I settled on a basic sponge recipe I found on the BBC's Good Food website.  I have to admit that I settled on this recipe because when I   looked in the fridge I realised I had forgotten to buy more eggs and didn't have much baking powder left.  I was conscious that the recipe for 1 cake probably wouldn't be big enough, so having 5 eggs at my disposal I recalculated the recipe (the recipe called for 3 eggs, so I divided each ingredient quantity in the original recipe by 3 then multiplied the result by 5 - very scientific - I am very smart - Stephen Hawking cowers in my presence).  I have set out the amended recipe below but also provided a link to the original recipe.  To be honest, because of what I was attempting to create, other than the basic cake ingredients and the oven temperature the recipe instructions are all from my very "special" brain.  I have included plenty of construction pics though since my brain doesn't quite know how to explain itself sometimes.  Case in point - I was explaining to 2 colleagues the other day what my wedding dress looked like (very pretty) and managed to make it sound more like something from "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding".

The recipe - Penis Cake! (with thanks for the recipe from BBC's Good Food website)

For the cake:

292g unsalted butter, softened

292g caster sugar

1⅔ tsp baking powder

2½ tsp vanilla extract (I actually make my own vanilla extract, its easy peasy)

5 eggs
292g self-raising flour
2 tsp red food colouring 

For the filling:
Seedless raspberry jam
Vanilla frosting (I cheated and used Betty Crocker Vanilla Frosting)

For the icing:
500g fondant icing
9 drops of pink food colouring
Tube of white writing icing

You will also need:
1 x 8in/1.5qt glass loaf dish
1 x 1qt glass bowl (if you have 2, even better)
6x1in wide long pieces of baking parchment
1x8in wide long piece of baking parchment

1. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4.  Butter the loaf dish and bowl, line the bowl with 3 of the 1in wide pieces of baking parchment (you may need a little extra butter where the paper overlaps) and line the loaf dish with the with the larger piece of baking parchment:

2. Beat all the cake ingredients together in a large bowl (if possible one with measurements on it) until smooth.  Unfortunately I didn't soften my butter enough (read: at all) so my batter was a little lumpy.  Given what I was making, it did kinda give me the "ew" factor.  Pour 1/3 of the batter into each dish and level out. 

3. Bake for about 50 mins-1 hr until they are well risen and spring back when lightly pressed (or do the skewer test). Leave to cool for 5 minutes then turn out onto a rack (you may need to run a knife around the edge but the paper should help you pull the cakes out of the dishes) and peel away the paper.  

I agree, it looks pretty gross.

4. Butter and line the bowl with the 3 remaining pieces of baking parchment (you may need to wash the bowl to remove any crumbs first) pour in the last of the batter and repeat step 3.  

5. Once cooled, put the 3 cakes onto a large board and get ready for carving.  

6. Start by cutting a 1/4 out of each bowl cake (can I really use the real term??) and set aside.

Pac-man had never felt so ashamed (or exposed)

7. Arrange the bowls at the base of the oblong cake (I just can't bring myself to say it...).  You may need to carve a straight edge on each bowl to make sure they sit well together.  Then take the 2 cut-out quarters and arrange at the top of the oblong cake.

8. Now to get to shaping...flatten off the base of the "tips" so they sit flat on the board then do the same for the bowls. Next round off the top of each bowl and plug the space where the quarters were removed using the off-cuts.

9. Next onto filling.  Cut each piece in half so you can create a sandwich.  Brush off any crumbs (I used a pastry brush) and position the bottom layer on the serving dish/board.  Spread a layer of the frosting all over each piece.

Its got white stuff in it...heeheehee!

10. Carefully take each top piece, spread it with jam and layer it onto its corresponding bottom layer.  Its best to start with the oblong cake and build around it.  Again, brush off any crumbs and spread a very thin layer of jam over the top of the cake and let the jam set.

11. Now here comes the decorating part.  In my head I had firmly decided I would use rolled icing and was extremely confident I could do it.  My confidence wasn't completely unfounded though.  My mum is a very talented cake decorator and as I grew up she was often making wedding cakes and celebration cakes for various friends and family.  Most recently she made my bubba's 1st birthday cake (a duck pond complete with ducks) but she also made my wedding cake.  

This pic really doesn't do it enough justice.
It looked like a pile of wedding presents.

As I got older I often helped my ma with the cake decorating including wedding cakes and her cousin's 40th birthday cake - the infamous "boobs in a bra cake", which were scarily realistic (and you wonder why I felt so comfortable making the penis cake!? Who's feeling foolish now, huh?)  Point is I thought that mixing some pink icing to roll out and cover the cake would be a piece of cake (oooh, do you see what I did there?).  I was wrong.  The icing finally came into a ball and was a good looking colour, however the rolling was a different matter entirely.  Every time I rolled it out some part of the icing stuck firmly to the board and then completely tore when I tried to remove it (and yes, I did put a lot of icing down before I started rolling).  After several attempts, a LOT of swearing, a bit of crying and a teensy tantrum I ended up chucking the icing in the bin.  It just wasn't working.  Thankfully some foresight had made me buy 2 boxes of icing so after some urging by my ever-frustrated counterpart I decided to make spreadable/pourable fondant icing.  Simply follow the instructions on the packet and add the pink colouring (again look at the bottle for guidance), then carefully spoon the icing over the cake.  It should (although you may need to do a bit of coaxing) gently slide over the cake, covering it.  Patch up any exposed bits of cake with extra icing.

Amazingly the fondant clings to the cake really nicely giving it a a scarily realistic look!

Amazingly the fondant clings to the cake really nicely giving it a
a scarily realistic look!

12.  Clean the plate of any stray icing.  Take the white writing icing and, starting at the tip, write your greeting (unfortunately mine looks like I let my little-one do this for me and I was pretty disappointed with the writing) and you're done.

  

TA DAAAAAA - PENIS CAKE!

Unfortunately by the time I was done the flu had taken over and I was feeling really poorly.  No pubes would be produced.  Deflated, I promptly went upstairs and went to sleep for the rest of the day.  The husband told me I was restricted to bed rest so no party for me, however we compromised that I could drop the cake off.  We trundled off to the restaurant where I stayed to say "surprise" and "look what I made you!" and also to realise that my friend's parents were also at the party.  So yes, I'm the girl that presented a penis cake to my friend's parents.

The feedback from M was great though.  I hear it prompted a lot of laughter (including the parents) and nearly all of it was eaten.  Score!!  As a final point, it must be said that if you ever decide to make a penis cake try and transport it in something that isn't see through.  I just covered the cake in cling film and then felt like a massive weirdo walking into a very nice restaurant with what looked like an enormous penis on a plate.