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.

Pasteis de Nata (or for those of us who don't speak Portuguese, Custard Tarts)

So it was my Mama's birthday and she had decided to have a very very little party with a buffet dinner.  I of course didn't offer to bake, I simply (a) assumed that I'd be helping anyway; and (b) took it as red that I would be baking something so cut-to-the-chase and asked "what" she wanted me to bake and not "if".  She started off pretty vague so I thought "ok I've not done a chocolate cake, so I'll do a chocolate cake" and then she told me that her friend who makes an amazing chocolate cake was coming too.  I figured that even if she wasn't bringing cake, I just couldn't put a first attempt in front of her (not yet anyway).  Back to the drawing board.

My mum (as I have said before) is a pretty picky eater and I've so far nailed 2 desserts I know she loved - the Lemon Meringue Pie and the Creme Caramel - but felt kinda inspirationless.  Not good.  I said she started off vague when I first asked so I asked again but at a better creative-juices-type-moment (we were in Paris for a couple of days - me, hubster, Pose and my folks - and I was hoping Paris might give her some inspiration).  This time she completely threw me.  I was expecting maybe some type of cake, or little mousse-type-cakey-thing or even some sort of patisserie.  But no.  She turned around and said "Portuguese Custard Tarts".  RANDOM?! 

But.  Her birthday.  Her choice.  I agreed.

Now I'm not a massive fan of regular custard tarts so I've never made them.  I certainly had no idea what the difference is between regular English custard tarts and their Portuguese cousins.  So I had to do some investigating. 

I googled "Portuguese custard tarts" and promptly came up with a recipe on The Telegraph's website and figured "its the Telegraph its got to have done its homework right?".  Well.  Judging by the comments on the recipe from one particular lady, no.  The suggested recipe was apparently practically blasphemous - the custard all sorts of wrong and the puff pastry a big fat NONO!  I decided to leave it.  I then ran through a couple of other recipes that had come up in the search and all of them used puff pastry.  Bad start.

The search had however given me the actual Portuguese name for the tarts so I did another google search for "Pasteis de Nata".  This time we had better success.  I toyed with searching for Portuguese language recipes and then translating them using google translate but they just didn't translate well (and my Portuguese is right up there with my Spanish.  Crap).  And then suddenly a ray of sunshine hit my computer and highlighted this little gem...

The recipe - Pasteis de Nata courtesy of David Leite's website Leite's Culinaria (plus, of course, my commentary!)

For the dough:

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon sea salt

¾ cup plus two tablespoons water

16 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, stirred until smooth

For the custard:

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 ¼ cups milk, divided

1 ⅓ cups granulated sugar

1 cinnamon stick

⅔ cup water

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract (homemade!)

6 large egg yolks, whisked

Powdered sugar and Cinnamon for dusting

1. Start by making the dough. In a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, mix the flour, salt, and water until a soft, pillowy dough forms that cleans the side of the bowl, about 30 seconds.

2. Generously flour a work surface and pat the dough into a 6-inch square using a pastry scraper (I personally don't have a pastry scraper and coped fairly well) as a guide. Flour the dough, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest for 15 minutes. 

3. Roll the dough into an 18-inch square (I struggled with this - I simply don't have the counterspace! - worked out ok though, nothing dramatic happened). As you work, use the scraper to lift the dough to make sure the underside isn’t sticking.

Yes I mastered shapes in school, and YES I KNOW that's not a square...

4. Brush excess flour off the top, trim any uneven edges, and using a small offset spatula dot and then spread the left two-thirds of the dough with a little less than one-third of the butter to within 1 inch of the edge (I started using a spatula but found it really difficult to spread the butter, so abandoned the spatula and just used a knife...worked much better).

5. Neatly fold over the unbuttered right third of the dough (using the pastry scraper to loosen it if it sticks), brush off any excess flour, then fold over the left third. Starting from the top, pat down the packet with your hand to release air bubbles, then pinch the edges closed. Brush off any excess flour.

6. Turn the dough packet 90 degrees to the left so the fold is facing you. Lift the packet and flour the work surface. Once again roll out to an 18-inch square, then dot and spread the left two-thirds of the dough with one-third of the butter, and fold the dough as in steps 4 and 5.

7. For the last rolling, turn the packet 90 degrees to the left and roll out the dough to an 18-by-21-inch rectangle (again a struggle on my kitchen counter but we survived), with the shorter side facing you. Spread the remaining butter over the entire surface.

8. Using the spatula as an aid, lift the edge closest to you and roll the dough away from you into a tight log, brushing the excess flour from the underside as you go. Trim the ends and cut the log in half. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours or preferably overnight.

9. Then onto the custard. At this point I would also put the oven on, turning it up as hot as it can go. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour and 1/4 cup of the milk until smooth. Set aside.

10. Bring the sugar, cinnamon, and water to a boil in a small saucepan and cook until an instant-read thermometer registers 220°F (100°C). Do not stir (I actually don't agree with this. I made a couple of batches of the custard to use up all the dough and with the second batch I went more the caramel route used in the Creme Caramel recipe steps 2 and 3. This worked much better).

11. Meanwhile, in another small saucepan, scald the remaining 1 cup milk. Whisk the hot milk into the flour mixture.

12. Remove the cinnamon stick then pour the sugar syrup in a thin stream into the hot milk-and-flour mixture, whisking briskly. Add the vanilla and stir for a minute until very warm but not hot. Whisk in the yolks (careful the mixture isn't too hot when you do this or the eggs will scramble. Thankfully we were fine), strain the mixture into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside.

13. Now you can start assembling the pastries! Heat the oven to 550°F (290°C) (as I said up by step 9 I would actually put the oven on earlier than this mainly because most conventional ovens are unlikely to go this high, so whack it up to the max heat early on and try to get the oven super hot). Remove a pastry log from the refrigerator and roll it back and forth on a lightly floured surface until it’s about an inch in diameter and 16 inches long. Cut it into scant 3/4-inch pieces. Place a piece cut-side down in each well of a nonstick 12-cup mini-muffin pan (2-by-5/8-inch size). Allow the dough pieces to soften several minutes until pliable. 

14. Have a small cup of water nearby. Dip your thumbs into the water, then straight down into the middle of the dough spiral. Flatten it against the bottom of the cup to a thickness of about 1/8 inch, then smooth the dough up the sides and create a raised lip about 1/8 inch above the pan. The pastry sides should be thinner than the bottom (I did this for the first batch and the pastry was a little too thin I think, then for the second batch I used my pestle to start the process off - this made the process slightly easier and the pastries came out much better).

On our LEFT, batch no.1 and on our RIGHT, batch no.2 (much better right?)

15. Fill each cup 3/4 full with the slightly warm custard. Bake the pasteis until the edges of the dough are frilled and brown, about 8 to 9 minutes (don't expect the custard to brown much unless you have a super hot oven, apparently this is the secret to the browning).

16. Remove from the oven and allow the pasteis to cool a few minutes in the pan, then transfer to a rack and cool until just warm. Sprinkle the pasteis generously with powdered sugar, then cinnamon and serve. Repeat with the remaining pastry and custard. If you prefer, the components can be refrigerated up to three days. The pastry can be frozen up to three months.

They tasted good to me but I have no point of reference since I've never eaten Pasteis de Nata. I have eaten English custard tarts though and these were much better (well anything's better, like I said, I don't like English custard tarts - too eggy). As for the party these went down phenomenally well. I was told that they brought back memories of Lisbon! I'd say that's a pretty damn good endorsement! 

My favourite endorsement though was from my little sister's boyfriend. I suddenly heard from the corner of the living room "Oh my god, this is delicious!" and looked over to see this 6ft guy perched on a toddler-sized-chair with a look of joy on his face. It was hilarious.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

My friend M is pregnant and has so far had to endure horrible extreme morning sickness and its really taken its toll on her.  She arrived into the 2nd trimester and the sickness had finally subsided only for her to be diagnosed with SPD (sounds like something gross right?  Wrong!  Now get your mind out of the gutter).  So having gotten out of the sickness woods she's now in the pond of pain instead.  Being the wonderful, caring, sharing sort of gal' I am (and modest, totally totally modest) I suggested I came over to her house for our girls to have a play date and for me to let her put her feet up for a couple of hours and of course bring some baked goodies.  So since I keep telling everyone that I'm more than happy to take requests, having seen the posts on making Lemon Meringue Pie she asked if I could make her a Lemon Meringue Pie.  I said I'd see what I could do.

This did not fit with my whole "new recipes" concept.

Like I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of Lemon Meringue Pie.  I am, however, a fan of cupcakes and I'm aware I've not made any cupcakes yet for the blog (or even in the last few years).  I got to thinking.  Why not make a filled cupcake and use the meringue topping as the "icing"?  Yes, I know.  Not exactly controversial and certainly not new judging by my google recipe trawl, but given I haven't tried making cupcakes in a while it was certainly a bit of a gamble.

I am no good at gambling.  I get too excited if I start winning and then start placing stupid bets.  Like over Christmas.  We rented a house in Mystic, CT (absolutely gorgeous - I'd certainly recommend!) for a little reunion with a couple of my hubby's old college buddies and our respective broods and drank, gossipped and played poker once the kiddos were all tucked up in bed.  The second night I, the rookie loud mouth, somehow pulled a full house out of my **** and took most of the chips.  20 mins later I had somehow lost all my chips and was peeved I hadn't pulled another amazing hand out of the ether since I was now clearly the greatest poker player on Earth.

Anyway, massive digression.  Point is this time my gamble paid off.

The recipe - Lemon Meringue Cupcakes (adapted from a post on the Nigella Lawson website)

For the cupcake: 

215g self-raising flour 

60g caster sugar 

1 egg 

1 egg yolk 

1 pinch of salt

1/2 cup milk 

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 

90g butter, melted and cooled 

3 tablespoons lemon curd

For the meringue topping: 

2 egg whites 

125g caster sugar 

Makes 12 cupcakes 

1. Preheat the oven to 200C or gas mark 6 and place 12 cupcake cases in the holes of a 12-hole cupcake pan.

2. Melt the butter.

Oooh, melty melty

3. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and stir in the sugar. Make a well in the middle of the sugar/flour mix. 

4. In separate bowl add the whole egg, egg yolk and a pinch of salt and beat together. Then stir in the milk, vanilla and melted butter (I note that the recipe I used as my base said "add milk" but didn't actually say how much milk to add. After having a momentary melt-down I had a quick trawl on the net and came to the conclusion of adding a 1/2 cup which I list above in the ingredients). 

5. Pour the egg mixture into the well in the flour mixture and mix on a low speed until well combined. Divide the mixture into the cases and bake for 15 minutes.

Yes I admit it.  I betrayed Berta and used Mummy-Dearest's dinosaur-yet-still-brilliant-30-year-old Kenwood.

6. Remove the cupcakes from the oven (but leave the oven on) and let the cupcakes cool for a few minutes. Do not take them out of the tray though! Using a small sharp knife (like a pairing knife) cut a hole out of the middle of each cupcake - about an inch deep (there is no further use for the cuttings so by all means have a bit of snackage action).

         

7. Using a teaspoon fill each hole with the lemon curd. 

8. (Having obviously washed out the mixing bowl for the mixer - be careful to make sure the soap is all washed out of the bowl and the bowl is dry as these can affect the meringue) Using the whisk adaptor for the mixer, beat the egg whites until they are light and frothy. Gradually add the sugar, whisking well after each addition until the mixture is stiff and glossy. 

9. Spoon the egg whites into a piping bag and using a fairly wide nozzle carefully pipe the egg white in a spiral, starting at the edge and ending in the centre with a nice peak. Put the cupcakes back in the oven for 5 minutes, until the meringue is golden.

Ok, I've not used a piping bag in a couple of years so forgive me for not being  "perfect"!

10.   Serve!

These are super yummy, especially fresh from the oven.  The cupcakes are really tasty and light - given Posie's usual cake-aversion she managed to get her hands on the "holes" and ate them all!  As bad as it may sound I was so happy she enjoyed them I didn't mind (plus she was helped out by Grandad).  They went very quickly and I only had 2 left to take into the office.  I felt rather miserly but at the same time I'm always eager to get external opinions on what I've baked so figured I'd let them duke it out over the last 2.  

The only irritation is that my mother's oven doesn't work properly and bakes a little too hot so it made the peaks of my meringue slightly cajun...

Carrot juice tastes like evil

Its only since I became an "adult" (and I use that term with not just a grain of salt, but a ruddy great bucket of it) that I began to like carrot cake.  Actually it could have just been that the thought of putting carrot...in a...cake (!?) sent me into a great sadness ("why god why!?!?").  I mean vegetables...in a cake....that's just wrong on all levels.

Then there's the carrot factor.  A couple of weeks ago I was in Pret grabbing breakfast and saw a bottle of carrot juice.  It said "grab me" (it literally said "grab me" on the bottle) so I thought "sure, what the hell".  I mean how bad could it be?  My friend K is into juicing (vegetables not just fruit) and really seems to like her concoctions plus its meant to be super healthy.  I was also trying to be on a new year's health kick, the carrot juice just seemed to come along at the right time.

Sure.

I took a sip of the carrot juice and instantly regretted it.  It tasted like vomit.  Actually carroty vom.  I told myself off, I mean I'm an adult right?  It really can't be that bad, I'm sure I'll get used to it.  So I took another sip.  Still vom.  Another sip?  Yep, still carroty vom.  I gave up.  Carrot juice tastes evil.  I-kid-you-not.  It tastes like the carrot found out about the carrot juicing, topped itself then rotted in the bottle for a year.  I spent the rest of the day belching carrot juice and feeling like I would actually vom carrot juice.  It was vile.  Morning sickness was more fun.

Anyway I wasn't a fan of carrot cake until recently.  Now I realise that it doesn't taste vegetable-y (yes, that's a word, I just wrote it and spell check didn't correct it) or carroty vom, it actually tastes quite pleasant.

My NCT group were having a little meet up and I offered to bake (I'll take any excuse) and figured carrot cake would be a good option.  Now when I was pregnant and suffering from delusions of wanting to be the greatest-mummy-baker but being paranoid of making my unborn child fat, I bought the book Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood.  Sounds good right?  Well there's a catch.  All of the recipes try to sneak in vegetables and contain very little fat.  Sounds like I'm talking sh*t?  To my constant surprise the recipes are actually pretty delish (I've secretly served the title chocolate cake (that contains aubergine, yes A.U.B.E.R.G.I.N.E.) to dinner guests and they've been very complimentary (and I don't think they were just being polite).  The recipes also seem to be largely gluten free.  So...

The recipe - Carrot Cake

I'm too lazy to type this up!

Basically follow the recipe!  Well, unless you're me.  I misread how much lime to use in the icing and instead put in the zest and juice of 1 whole lime (not just half the zest and 2tsp of the juice).  That being said everyone said they really enjoyed the zingy icing.

The recipe doesn't go into any detail on how to go about icing the cake so I've put some pictures below:

1. Put a big dollop of icing in the centre of the base cake (my base cake was a little bigger than the top cake - I realised all too late that none of my 3 loose bottom tins are the same size!).

2. Using a palette knife, spread the icing out across the base.

3. Carefully place the top cake onto the bottom cake and repeat steps 1 and 2 for the top cake.

4. Make some little carrots!!  Using some fondant icing, mix a little water, a couple of drops of red food colouring and a lot of drops of yellow food colouring (alternatively just use orange food colouring!!) and mix into a pliable dough.  Sprinkle some icing sugar onto a board and pop the icing ball onto the board.

5. Now I tried 2 different ways to make the carrot decorations.  The first way I split the dough into 4 portions and then tried to shape the dough into carrot shapes.  This didn't seem to work too well and in fact looked like I was trying to replicate an earlier creation.  I wasn't thrilled with the results of the second way but I needed to leave for the meet-up so the second way was the only way...I started by flattening the ball with the palm of my hand.

6.  Using a knife cut 2 eye shapes out of the icing and cut each of the eye shapes in half again.

7. Taking the knife, make several horizontal gashes across the surface of the "carrots".

8. Next I added a ton of green food colouring to the left over orange icing (yes I could have started again but I HATE waste) and flatten the icing out.  Then cut the icing into thin strips.

9. Cut the long green strips in half and layer them on the cake like the roots of the carrot and place the carrot gently overlapping the ends.

10. Continue to do the same for the other 3 carrots.

The cake tasted really good, even if I do say so myself.  My icing carrots were a bit of a disappointment though.  The icing wouldn't set so the carrots got a little limp.  I'm not having much luck with fondant icing!

All that aside, the cake went down a treat at the meet-up and I was able to take some leftovers to the folks (they had offered to babysit for us that night and I felt I should take some cake by way of a thank you).  In fact, my father insisted I left him the last of the cake.  Sounds like a success to me.

"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.