Sadness cake

If, like me, you tend to answer questions about your hobbies with “not applicable” then you’ll know how nice it is to find someone with actual interests who you can spend time with and who gets you involved. Or at least makes you leave the house more than once a week. But sometimes you don’t get enough time with that person to even put them off you, which is annoying as that’s one of my key skills (some people would say I really don’t need that much time but I would say to them: “it’s my blog, shut up.”). Absence makes the heart grow fonder but that only really applies when there’s an end to the separation, and when there isn’t it’s sad. So I’ve decided to make chocolate mousse cake my Sadness Cake.
All together now: Ahhhhhh.

I originally made this as a test run for a birthday cake for Ben, but when you’ve filled up someone’s kitchen with Spurs cakes and shortbread you start to worry that they’re going to think you’re trying to give them diabetes or are, in fact, a creepy feeder.

I found the recipe on the BBC food website and as it seemed like a trained ape could do it I went out and bought the following:

300g of dark chocolate
6 medium eggs
55g of caster sugar
150g of unsalted butter (softened)

You’ll also need a cake tin with a removable bottom.

The best bit of this for me was cracking the chocolate in to lots of little pieces. If you’re making this as a sadness cake I suggest therapeutically smashing the bars on the kitchen counter repeatedly, primal screaming optional.

Actually there’s lots of smashing in this recipe, as you need to break the eggs and separate them. Though I’d probably stick to doing this gently to try and keep bits of shell in the mix to a minimum. Then again they’re pretty sharp so depending who you’re making it for maybe leave them in as a sort of organic powdered glass…

ANYWAY for anyone as dim as me when it comes to cooking you separate the yolks from the whites by pouring them both back and forth between the two halves of shell, the whites run off into a bowl and you’re left with the yolk which you need to dollop in another.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl big enough to fit over a pan of simmering water without taking a swim. I think if it’s in the water it’ll crack and being the ever-cautious person I am I used a casserole dish just in case. Give this a bit of a stir once in a while.


Now it’s time for the boring, or depending how rubbish your life is, fun part: whisking the egg whites. You absolutely have to do this with an electric whisk or you’ll end up like this guy. It takes an absolute age to get them into stiff peaks but as soon as you think it’s not working they suddenly magically happen and you realise you do have a reason to live.


A bit more whisking now, this time the egg yolks and the sugar. A hand-whisk is fine for this as it doesn’t take too long for the two to go the lovely pale yellow you’re after.


By now your chocolate and butter should be a delicious runny mix that would be perfect to do all that food-and-bedroom stuff with except that no one really does it as midnight machine washes and sleeping on a bare mattress is hardly the end to a perfect evening. And anyway if you had someone to do that with you wouldn’t be making a sadness cake, you’d just be rubbing it in for the rest of us.


Add the depressing chocolate mix to the yolks and sugar and stir it in before gently folding in the egg whites. I thought this had gone hideously wrong, as it looked revolting.


Soon though it looked like proper moussey cake mix and I patted myself on the back. Pour this into the (greased) cake tin and put in a pre-heated oven at 180°c/gas mark 4 for 20 minutes.

This picture should explain why I made two:


My big mistake was taking the cake out of the oven after 20 minutes, sticking a knife in it and panicking when it came out goopy. So I shoved it back in for another ten minutes. Then another. Then another. The cake rose so much it was in danger of escaping the cake tin when I gave up. I ended up with a slightly burnt chocolate moonscape.


This collapsed in on itself on one side while I left it to cool. I instantly bashed out another, which I whipped out after exactly 20 minutes, but my mum accidentally took the first go into the office to get a verdict before I made it for Ben and he didn’t get to see his 32nd birthday. Weirdly everyone loved it.

My taster for the second cake was my friend Asha who gave it a big thumbs up, and the girl knows chocolate. She sensibly stuck to tiny slivers but I devoured a huge chunk.

These were happier times for my sadness cake but after extensive research I can report it works wonders with a pint glass of Freixenet, Lost In Translation and a fast-growing mountain of sodden tissues.

Buttercream icing

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!

As I’m a nice person or something I decided to make Ben some Spurs-themed cupcakes. And thankfully after working at a men’s magazine I have an address book full of Real Men I could email to double check that Tottenham’s colours are (sort of) white, blue and yellow.

The last time I tried to make buttercream icing it wasn’t great – I had to add a load of milk and it was so soft it was more like mousse. But whenever I make cupcakes I worry that they taste like Ryvita, so I decided to try again. I dug out my mum’s The Dairy Book Of House Management (1969) which, as a guide to life, has everything from rules to training your budgie to wheat wine (mmm delish), seemed like it would be able to talk me through combining sugar and butter. And guess what? IT DID.

You need:
4oz of unsalted, softened butter
8oz of icing sugar

As I also added food colouring (and after trying a bit some vanilla essence) so stuck in another tablespoon of sugar.

Put everything in a bowl and shove an electric whisk in there. At first everything looks a bit weird and lumpy, like it will never work:


But soon it’ll look like actual icing, which for someone like me is astounding. I found it easiest to spread the icing on the cupcakes with a knife and then artistically sculpt it into what I can only describe as a rustic style.

Chocolate Cupcakes

As the owner of several bras I like chocolate. I also like cake. Especially tiny cakes that fit in my mouth whole. So the word ‘chocolate’ coupled with ‘cupcakes’ gets my attention pretty well.

The BBC food website churned up a recipe for some easy looking chocolate cakes which handily only needed ingredients I already had lying around.

These were:
1 egg
50g of softened, unsalted butter
8 tablespoons of milk
150g of caster sugar
125g of plain flour
25g of cocoa powder
1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder

After you’ve stuck the oven on at 180°c (gas mark 4) sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder together into a big bowl. In goes the butter and the sugar and then you beat this until you’re arm falls off or everything is well combined, whatever happens first. If it’s the former I’d like to inform you all that anything tried off this blog is done at the reader’s own risk.

Whisk in the egg and a couple of spoonfuls of the milk. Once that’s all mixed together add in another couple of tablespoons and whisk again. Keep this up until all the milk is in. I used skimmed but I think this left the finished product a bit dry so use semi at least. Your batter should be smooth and thick by this point. Mine was a bit lumpy but I’m not claiming to be Mr Kipling.


Spoon the mixture into some cupcake cases – probably around a tablespoon and a half or so. Too much and they’ll look like melted mini Quasimodos like my first batch.



These go into the oven for around 15 to 20 minutes and are done when they’re spongy to the touch or pass the skewer test (stick one in and it comes out clean: cooked cake).

Leave these to cool and then eat six in quick succession until you realise you need a lie-down.

Blueberry muffins

Nigella and I have fallen out.

You wouldn’t think so from the picture above. You’d think “Mmm! Home-made blueberry muffins! Made by following a Nigella Lawson recipe to the letter.” Unfortunately then you’d want to eat them. And you’d take a bite and think “BLUUUURGH! What have I just put in my mouth? Sweet mother of Christ what is this?! How long until I can get rid of the taste of salt?”
And the answer is about 10 minutes.

As Waitrose had an offer on blueberries I got two punnets when I was buying ingredients for my cheesecake. So to use these up I thought I’d give muffins a whiz. I found a recipe on www.nigella.com and as they’re described as ‘the best blueberry muffins’ I got cooking.

And they probably would have been the best blueberry muffins had I not read ‘3 / 4 tsp salt’ as three to four teaspoons of salt. To be fair I only used two but if you want to say three quarters say ¾. God. Some people…


Here is the recipe for a competent person:

300g of blueberries though I used around 400 to finish them off
280g of self raising flower
67g of sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder
THREE QUARTERS OF A TEASPOON of salt
2 eggs
4 tablespoons of butter, melted
175ml milk

Wash the blueberries in a sieve and place them on a floured tea towel. To coat them slightly bundle them up and give them a gentle shake around. Leave these to dry for about half an hour though I found mine fine by the time I had finished my batter.

Preheat the oven to 170°c/gas mark 7 and sieve the flour, sugar, baking soda and THREE QUARTERS OF A TEASPOON of salt in to a bowl. Once you pour the wet stuff in you only want to stir it ten to fifteen times or the muffins will be very tough so rather than having layers of flour etc mix it around now.

Beat the eggs in another bowl adding in first the butter and then the milk. Make a well in your dry ingredients and quickly stir everything in as much as you can with those few precious strokes. Don’t worry too much about lumps and throw in the blueberries, folding them in once or twice.

Dollop about a spoon and a half of the batter in to muffin cases, filling them up about two thirds of the way. Put them in the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes until they’re golden brown on top. Put them on a rack to cool and unlike mine eat them when they’re room temperature.

Cheesecake #2

The first thing I ever consciously decided to make and the first thing I wrote about on here was a cheesecake. It was a horrible, floury mess that hadn’t really set and it made me think that this whole idea was stupid and awful. Which, of course, it is - but that hasn’t stopped me so far. Since then as soon as anything starts to go even slightly wrong I am taken back to the dreadful moment I tasted that bloody cake and I have to take a deep, cleansing breath before I can carry on.

I am neither a very good nor very competent cook: I leave ingredients out by accident, my oven doesn’t work very well and I tend to leave stuff on the stove for too long while I finish a cigarette. However the last few things I have made have turned out at least half way decent and this has given me a bit of a confidence boost. Ready to face my nemesis I bought some cream cheese and rolled up my sleeves.

For blueberry cheesecake you need:
150g of blueberries
500g of low fat cream cheese
75g of unsalted butter
397g (one tin) of condensed milk
3 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
The zest of one lemon
200g of digestive biscuits

To make the base you need to crush the biscuits. I think the best way to do this is to put them in a sandwich bag and break them up by hand. It’s probably easier to use a rolling pin but what could be better than an edible stress ball?

On a low heat melt the butter in a large pan but don’t let it get too hot. Pour in the digestive crumbs and stir it all up. It seems like a tiny amount of butter but you only need to dampen the biscuit bits to get them to stick together. Spoon the base into a shallow nine inch cake tin (or whatever size mine is) and press it down very firmly. I used a wooden spoon for this as you can get right against the edge and flatten it out. Shove this in the fridge for 20 minutes to chill. The one thing I’m not looking forward to about summer is being unable to shove things (beer) outside to keep cold when I need space in the fridge.

Heat the oven to 170°c/gas mark 3 and while your base is taking up valuable booze space in the fridge mix the cream cheese in a large bowl until it’s soft. This takes all of 30 seconds and after that whisk in the eggs, lemon zest, vanilla and condensed milk.

Condensed milk is one of the most horrible things I have ever seen. It looks like very sweet living room paint and it just oozes. I have no idea why it was ever invented. Yes it keeps for ever but God, why would you want it to?

At this point the first cheesecake I made was a thick, creamy mix that smelt exactly like something you’d get in a coffee shop (or with a pube in it from my local Co-op). This time I just had a slightly yellow cream. This worried me a bit but remembering how promising the last one seemed I pushed this to the back of my mind and kept whisking.

Pour this onto the base and scatter the blueberries over the top. I plopped mine in as I’m clearly easily amused and liked the way they bobbed. I used far fewer blueberries than 150g but looking back I probably should have used at least that as they are what sweetens it.

Put your cake in the oven for an hour, a tiny bit longer if it’s still not firm. When you take it out place it on a rack to cool and definitely put it in the fridge for a while.

Mine seemed rather sticky on top and I couldn’t get it out of the tin. Though this was down to my sheer incompetence rather than the cake. As I started to slice it - and badly scratch my cake tin in the process - the fear set in. My hand shook as I tipped a wedge onto a plate. I watched on tenterhooks as my mum took a bite. “Ooh. Tastes a lot like flour, doesn’t it?" she lied. As my face fell she cackled and proceeded to hoover up two large pieces.


If anyone would like to adopt me into a safe and loving home I would be very grateful.

Cupcakes

I’ve been appallingly lax recently when it’s come to cooking. This started because I went on a bit of a healthy eating kick, stuffing my face with salad, fresh fruit, raw veg and, because it’s surprisingly rather tasty, chocolate Slim Fast. I also gave up smoking and realised that if I started making flapjacks or similar I’d end up eating my body weight, growling and clawing at anyone who came near me unless they had ten B&H clutched in their sweaty paw to exchange for safe passage.

Unfortunately the diet has hit a wall. And that wall is made of pizza, Sainsbury’s ready-meals and large quantities of McDonalds – which we all know has miracle properties when it comes to curing hangovers. And I’m too busy trying to keep twelve cigarettes continuously lit and balanced in my gob to bother pre-heating the oven.

This week though I am really going to pull my socks up. No more Butterkist sea salt organic popcorn! No more ‘I’m a bit hungover so I’ll take the lift rather than the stairs’! No more… no more full fat Coke. I’m not looking forward to it so I’m going to ease myself in with cupcakes.

Ingredients:
4 eggs (free range of course, dahling)
225g of sugar
225g of self-raising flower
225g of unsalted butter, melted

Preheat your oven to 180°c, or two hundred if it’s a bit rubbish like mine.

Put the eggs and the sugar in a bowl and whisk together until the mixture is nice and fluffy and light. I used caster sugar rather than normal sugar – this is because I’m a bit of a rebel and definitely not because I picked up the wrong bag in the supermarket – but it doesn’t seem to have made a difference. Add the flour and the melted butter bit by bit, folding it in. From many hours spent in front of the telly I know it’s best to not over mix flour in to cake batter as it means you end up with a heavy cake. I had a bit of a panic because it seemed like I was folding the flour in forever but when I made a second lot it was far easier when the flour was sifted.

The recipe I used suggested using a tartlet tray but as (surprise!) I don’t have one I just used two cake cases and this worked just fine, and after some experimenting I found out a single one did too. Anyway, do whatever you like I’m not your mum. They go in the hot oven for 10-15 minutes until the tops are a lovely golden colour and if you stick a knife through them it comes out clean and not covered in cake goo.

Mine do seem quite nice but of course the test is taking them in to work tomorrow. The boys in the office have scoffed down the several large tins of shortbread I’ve taken in so I’ll have to see if they like these.



There’s also the issue of icing. I attempted a chocolate butter cream icing to go with the cupcakes/fairycakes (I don’t know the difference. I’m not even sure there is one.) but it went a little skew-whiff.

The recipe I have is very simple. It’s just:
170g of icing sugar
110g of butter
55g of sifted cocoa powder

Apparently these just get whipped together and make a delicious cake topping. I tried this and ended up something that was basically some brown lumps in powder. I popped the bowl in the microwave for thirty seconds to melt the butter in case that helped but it just turned it in to goop. So I chucked a bit of skimmed milk in, got stuck in with the electric whisk and it tastes divine but is very, very light so I haven’t been able to put it on my cupcakes yet as it wont set enough for me to put them in a tin. Instead it’s sitting in a plastic pot in the fridge and hopefully can be spooned on to the cakes just before they’re eaten. But not by me of course. A moment on the lips etc etc.

Cheesecake

Today I decided to do something stupid. That stupid thing was to make a cheesecake.

I got the recipe off the Waitrose website which handily let me know that Philadelphia cream cheese is the best thing to make this with. I won’t bore you with the Waitrose cooking instructions as I found them more confusing than a Pynchon novel. I have read them about nine times and I still have no idea what they’re telling me to do.

For the crust you need:
50g of caster sugar
150g of plain flour
Grated zest from ½ a lemon
Seeds from ½ a vanilla pod
1 large egg yolk
125g butter, diced

Typing this out I realised I put in 150g of butter and forgot the lemon zest.

For the filling:
600g of cream cheese
180g of caster sugar
1 tbsp of plain flour
Grated zest of one orange
Grated zest of one lemon (it’s good I forgot this in the crust as I only bought one lemon)
Seeds from ½ a vanilla pod
2 large eggs and 1 egg yolk. I used the white left over from the crust, but I’m sure that’s fine…
2 tbsp of double cream


To prepare the crust you need to put the flour, caster sugar, lemon zest (whoops) and vanilla seeds into a food processor and ‘pulse briefly’. I don’t have a food processor so I used a bowl and a spoon and nothing but man power. I knew how to get the seeds out of the vanilla pod from watching Something For The Weekend most Sundays with a hangover. But I didn’t realise that they’re really quite sticky and you’re more likely to slice through your thumb than do this easily. For any one who doesn’t know; you have to slice the pod in half and scrape the seeds out with the blade of the knife. Well, that’s what I did anyway. By this point I was swearing a lot and decided to put Queen on to drown myself out.
Now add the egg yolk and the right amount of butter and use your fancy-pants kitchen equipment or be a man about it and use elbow grease to combine it.
This ends up as a big sticky lump that you then need to squash into a disk, cover in clingfilm and stick in the fridge for an hour. I had a fight with the roll of clingfilm and used a sandwich bag instead.

I used this hour to glare and mutter at the evil roll of clingfilm, drink a beer and text the Best Friend ‘I’m making a cheesecale!’. Always double check predictive text. And cooking instructions.

Next up is the filling. Put the flour, caster sugar, vanilla seeds and zest in a bowl and mix together until smooth. My cream cheese was straight out of the fridge which made this a bit tough at the beginning and while grating the lemon I got some juice in my eye, but you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. Add the eggs and the yolk/white one by one and make sure you blend it all together properly after each egg and then add the cream. My huge bowl of off-white gunk started to smell and look a bit like cheesecake at this point which was weirdly satisfying. Though I’ve just remembered that I forgot to put any cream in… Bugger.

Take the crust out of the fridge and roll half of it out until its 3mm thick. I suddenly realised that I don’t own a rolling pin so washed my beer bottle from earlier (look at me recycling) and used this. Every time the bastard stuff got thin enough it tore and then stuck to the kitchen surface even though I’d sprinkled flour absolutely everywhere. I finally got it done and shoved it on the base of the cake tin. You’re meant to use 20cm-diameter springform tin but I made do with a twenty one(!) cm diameter shallow cake tin with a removable base.
Once you’ve covered the bottom of the tin put it in a pre-heated oven at 200°c for ten to fifteen minutes until its set and a nice golden brown colour then leave it to cool on a rack.

When my little cakey base was cool I tried to put it back in the tin but it had grown a bit and cracked all round the edges. I ended up just forcing it in and covering any gaps with the crumbs which wasn’t very neat. Once you’ve got the bottom in the tin you need to line the sides with the remaining crust-dough stuff. I cut mine in to strips and overlapped the sides and then covered any holes left at the bottom with small bits of the dough, then trimmed the top to fit. Once you’ve done this you need to pour the filling in. It looked as though there was far too much for my tiny tin but it fit perfectly. Level the top and then put in the oven at 140°c for an hour.

Even though the filling was exactly the right amount I had loads of dough left over which was a bit strange and quite annoying.

After letting it cool and then sticking it in the fridge for a bit I took it out of the cake tin. The bottom was stuck to the base and the whole thing looked quite greasy. The cake itself was a bit soggy, rather than firm and spongy and the crust around the sides looked half cooked. I had half a mouthful which I couldn’t swallow as all I could taste was soapy flour but Sous Chef Mum had two slices. The whole thing took hours and the end result definitely wasn’t worth it. I’m sure that that’s down to my baking skills rather than the recipe though. I imagine that leaving out several ingredients didn’t help but boo to Waitrose recipe cheesecake. If anyone knows where I went wrong please do let me know.