Wimbledon Cake

I thought, as we were half way through Wimbledon week - go Andy, go Laura - I would make the "Wimbledon cake".
I had high hopes for this, as it is the cake on the front of the book. Unfortunately, mine did not look quite as perfect. having said that, it did taste good!
The main problem with my cake was that it did not seem to rise very much. As with the Nusskuchen cake, the eggs were divided up, and the egg whites folded in at the end. This time, I whisked the whites for longer, in the hope that the cake would rise more, but unfortunately not. It looked rather like a pancake when it came out of the oven. The recipe does not contain flour, just semolina, sugar, eggs and orange juice and rind, so I guess it was never going to rise a great deal. Still, it was thick enough to slice in half, and fill.
The filling is particularly nice as it has passion fruit, along with cream and strawberries. In the end it actually turned out to be pretty good, and received a score of 8.5
Mary says that the cake must be eaten on the day of filling - fear not, we have managed to follow Mary's advice!

Nusskuchen

I have only just made this cake this morning, so have no idea what it tastes like. In fact, I have run out of time, as we are on our way to my brother's house for a BBQ  and this is dessert! Will fill the rest of this in when I get time!

We had a lovely time at Tim & Wendy's, and the dessert went down very well.
As far as the Nusskuchen goes, it was fairly straight forward to make. Having said that, I did skip the bit about baking the hazelnuts, and just used chopped roasted hazelnuts instead. I blitzed them in the food processor to make sure they were small enough. The cake didn't rise very much, but it tasted nice. I put more chocolate than was suggested on top. 50g just didn't seem enough. It was not a spectacular pud, but it was very nice. It scored 8.0

Little Gems

 As you may guess from this picture, I did not have much to do with making these little gems. Ellie and her friends made them last Monday evening in preparation for a school cake sale.
They were quick and easy, and actually, despite their size tasted delicious. They were especially good with the jelly tots on top. Well done girls!
Not sure what score we gave them, probably 8.0
The girls also made some anzac biscuits for the sale, and I made some iced lemon traybake and banana loaf. Apparently it all went down well with the kids.

Classic Sticky Gingerbread

I made this over a week ago. I took it to school to give to all the Friday morning helpers, who were helping prepare for the Summer Fete. Incidentally we managed to make a profit of over £2600 last Saturday, which I was delighted with. It was extremely hard work, but worth it in the end. Hopefully I can concentrate on my baking again!
Back to the gingerbread. It was very tasty and went down well. I didn't have quite enough black treacle, so i made it up with golden syrup, but it didn't seem to matter.
It was actually the first time that I had used the multi sized cake pan that Ad gave me for my birthday. It was good to know that the measurements were exact for my tray bake. It produced a good bake. The only problem was my impatience! As I was getting it out the tin, before it was fully cooled, I managed to break the cake up. Still, it mean't that there were lots of bits of cake to try out, and there was enough respectable looking cake to cut up and serve to my helpers. We would give this cake 8.5.

Marmalade Cake

Tom finished his GCSE's today!! Hooray, 10 weeks off school!!!!! (Help!) Not sure quite what he is going to do with himself, having said that, he is always busy making something. Perhaps I can get him baking with me.
Anyway, to mark the occasion, I decided on the spur of the moment  to bake him a cake. This one was really quick and easy, and I had it in the oven by 9.30am this morning.


It tasted nice. Not outstanding, but perfectly good enough and Tom really  appreciated the thought. He gave it an 8.0.  Well, I am off to Zumba now, in an attempt to burn off the excess cake!!

Florentines

Well, that wasn't too long to wait was it?! I thought as I had a few minutes spare, I would post this. I made these florentines on Friday, and as planned, gave some to my Dad for Father's Day. I did speak to him yesterday, but he had not yet tried one, so I can't tell you if he liked them. Having said that, we gave them 8.5, so I am fairly hopeful that he will.

 They were very simple to make, and actually, although Mary says "you need patience and accurate scales to make them" (I have one of those, you can take your pick, which you think) I found them very straight forward.
The end result is a lovely chewy biscuit. I think they should have been a bit more crunchy, but then it was quite warm, and I stored them in the fridge to stop the chocolate melting, so that might have made them more chewy. Anyway, no one seemed to mind, and they have all gone!

English Muffins

I had the great idea on Sunday afternoon that I could make muffins for tea. I can't remember whether this was before or after the disastrous swiss apricot cakes. Anyway, I set to work, and the first part of this did not take long. I made the dough in my mixer, although I think it struggled a bit. It's making a slightly different sound when it mixes now!
The dough was then rolled out, and the circles cut out and put on floured baking trays. I then left them to rise. Apparently they are supposed to double in size. Mine didn't, even after half an hour in the airing cupboard. It didn't seem to matter though.
Now, one of the things that I have learned is read the recipe right the way through before you start. This avoids any great surprises. Did I do this - no! As a result, I was left cooking muffins on the hob for about half an hour before tea, while the kids got hungry. They took 7 mins per side, and needed to be cooked in two batches. I used two frying pans, and still had to do two batches.
We gave them 7.5, which was not bad. As you can see, they looked quite authentic, but they were slightly denser than bought muffins. Unfortunately, given the time that they took, I would probably not make them again.
It wasn't the best of baking weekends, but I have to say that that has not been my usual experience, thanks to Mary.
I am hoping to make Florentines for my Dad for Father's day. Keep watching this space, and the blog might eventually appear!

Apricot Swiss Cakes

I made these as a quick bake on Sunday afternoon. Don't they look delicious? Wrong!!!
I think, in spite of their looks, these are the worst cakes so far. We even ended up throwing some away, which is unheard of.
The problem with them was the texture. The flavour was ok, but the texture was described by some in the family as "claggy"! You certainly needed a drink to be able to manage them.
For a laugh, Tom decided to put a whole one in his mouth. It was the quietest he'd been in ages!!!
Surprisingly, the recipe does not contain eggs, just butter, icing sugar, SR flour and cornflour. Normallly I like to find recipes without eggs, but I wouldn't inflict these on our neighbours! I think the closest thing I would describe them to would be a Viennese biscuit, but they were just too dense. It might have been me, maybe I was out of practice, but I wouldn't bother with them again. They received a pathetic 4.5!

Cappuccino Cake

 Firstly apologies that it has been 2 weeks since I wrote my blog. I expect you were eagerly awaiting photos of my birthday cake!!
I have been very busy with preparations for Ben and Nathan's school summer fete, which is in less than 2 weeks time -gulp, and I have not had much time for baking.
Last time I typed up, this cake was in the oven. Well, here it is. I did get candles, but this was the pre birthday picture!
It was very straight forward to make. Basically it is a chocolate sponge mix with a coffee and cream topping and filling, hence the cappuccino name.
It was very pleasant, and we gave it a score of 8.0

I had a good birthday, and having asked for a 7 x 7" baking tin, Adam went above and beyond the call of duty and bought me a 12" multi size cake pan, which means I can bake all sorts of square and rectangular cakes - Fantastic - the only problem is that I have not had time to use it yet. May have to wait until after 22nd June!