Cakey Bakey Recipe…

So, the cake turned out, and tastes quite nice.  Hopefully my friends Demon will enjoy it, and won’t mind that there’s a piece missing – which I had to cut out for the sake of the blog.  Of course!

Anyway, this is the very first time I’ve ever blogged a recipe, so you’ll have to bear with me if it’s not the best written one ever.

Ingredients.

For the Orange Cake.

3 Eggs (medium)
175 grams castor sugar (either white or light brown work)
175 grams self raising flour
175 grams of butter/margarine
A little splash of milk.
A dash of orange extract to taste – or even better, the rind of half an orange.

For the Chocolate Cake

3 Eggs (medium)
175 grams castor sugar (wither white or light brown work)
125 grams self raising flour
50 grams of chocolate powder – I used Bourneville drinking chocolate
175 grams of butter/margarine
A little splash of milk

For the Chocolate Butter Icing

Butter/margarine to taste
Icing sugar to taste
Drinking chocolate to taste

For the Chocolate Ganache

500 ml Double Cream
1 whole block of Dr Oetker plain chocolate

Method

I won’t lie.  I love this recipe because a) the weights are really easy to remember and b) it’s really easy to make.  When doing this mad chequered effort, I always start with the orange cake.

Start off with greasing up your baking tins or, adding baking paper to them.  Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (I don’t know the gas mark or Fahrenheit, sorry)
Cream the butter and castor sugar together until smooth and well, creamy.  Add one egg at a time, with a spoonful of flour in case it starts to curdle.  When that’s mixed together and quite liquidy, add the rest of the flour and mix to form a batter.  Add the orange extract (or peel if using) and a little splash of milk if the mixture is too stiff.  Pour/spoon into your baking tin and place to one side while you prepare your chocolate cake.
Use exactly the same method as above adding the flour and chocolate powder at the same time.  Again, only add the splash of milk if the batter is too stiff.
When all the batter is in the tins and level, place into the oven on a middle shelf, and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a fork comes out clean when inserted into the cake(s).  Leave the cakes in their tins until cooled and then turn out onto a cooling tray, removing the baking paper.  Leave to cool a while longer, and then remove the risen tops using a sharp and long knife, or if you’ve got one, one of those levelling tools

.  

While the cakes are cooling, prepare the butter icing.  I apologise now for the lack of measurements for this, but I never ever use them – I just go by eye and taste.  Pop in a couple of spoons full of softened butter, pour in a fairly large quantity of icing sugar and finally add a good amount of drinking chocolate powder.  Mix together until it’s a light brown paste and tastes chocolatey and sweet.
Set aside until needed.

Start to prepare the chocolate ganache.  In a small(ish) saucepan, heat up 500 ml of double cream.  Keep your eye on it though, so it doesn’t boil over.  Break into chunks the Dr Oetker plain chocolate and put into a large(ish) bowl.  When the cream is simmering, take off the heat and pour over the chocolate.  Stir until all the chocolate has melted and the cream is a chocolatey colour.  Leave to thicken to a desired consistency (I put it in the fridge for 10 minutes until it was quite thick) and then, if needed, whisk to thicken slightly more.  Set aside until needed.

To assemble the cakes, take a large cookie cutter and making sure it leaves an even amount of cake all around the outside, press down and cut through both the chocolate and orange flavoured cakes.  Now repeat this with a smaller cookie cutter.  Take the middle ring of the chocolate cake and place in between rings of the orange cake – and the middle ring of the orange cake in between the rings of the chocolate cake.

Spread the chocolate butter icing over the top of either one of the cakes and then place the other on top.  Pour the chocolate ganache over the top of the cake – starting from the middle and let it flow over the edges.  Finally, decorate with whatever you have – I chose crushed up flakes.

When you cut into the cake, it should have a chequered effect!  Hopefully!

 

 

And… Relax…

This morning started off with a phone call from the MiL sounding harassed.  She wanted to know what time we would be taking the female shaped monster over to her house as her cousin (practically the same age give or take a couple of months) was nagging like crazy asking where she was.  While in the middle of getting dressed I assured the honorary monster (also female shaped) that we would be there soon, and please stop nagging Nanan.   Well, of course then the male shaped monster wanted in on the action and as my mum had a new mobility scooter delivered on Thursday he was more than content to go there and so with the hubby working late shifts this week, I have been left to my own devises this afternoon and evening.

Now, what could I do?  I’ve recently been paid (as has the hubby), got all the bills paid (shock horror! I remembered!) and have some spare cash.  I could head into town to a rather wonderful Indie Club which serves cocktails (but has a lot of stairs which are difficult with the crutches), or I could find out if there’s any pub quizzes on locally…  Or, I could stay at home and bake a complicated cake and then get bored with the nothingness that is British TV on a Saturday night.  No brainer really.  Stay at home and bake it is then, which, I weirdly find more relaxing then getting ready for a night out.

Last Sunday because the male shaped monster was using a cake tin to hold his cars in, I got the mad urge to bake a cake.  A chocolate and orange chequered layered cake in actual fact.  Never had I made one before but I knew the principle.  Neither did I have the right tools to make it proficiently but I persevered and improvised.  The final outcome resembled The Leaning Tower of Piza  than an actual chequered cake, but it tasted nice.  Not to be put off, I searched high and low for large round cookie cutters to ensure lovely same sized circles for the inside of the cake.  Nothing doing, unfortunately.  Not to be put off though, The Range had some heart shaped cookie cutters of fairly decent sizes and a couple of heart shaped tins, so I bought those and decided to attempt the mad complicated cake in a mad complicated shape.  As you do.

Anyway, earlier today I heard that one of my friends demons (she has two boys and we became friends because of our constant references to The Monsters and The Demons) had had his foot run over by a car.  Fortunately, his foot isn’t broken as the car was going very slowly.  It’s just bruised and he is understandably incredibly shaken and in serious need of some new boots.  And some cake to cheer him up.  That’s where I come in.  Don’t think he’ll be too impressed to know that it’s a heart shaped but if it tastes as nice as the last one did, I’m pretty sure he’ll get over the fact that it is in the shape of a heart.

The rest of the evening will be spent relaxing to Muse – the band which kicked me up the arse and encouraged me to start writing again – and laughing at Let’s Dance for Comic Relief.  After that, I may or may not dye my hair ginger.  That completely depends upon how much the dodgy foot is up to standing for a length of time in the shower.  Then, if the cake doesn’t look too much of a disaster after I’ve iced and decorated it, I might even blog the recipe, after I’ve had my Social Media fix, and read a bit more of my book.

Tell me why, I don’t like Fridays?

Oh joy!  It’s Friday!  The last day before the weekend.  The day of the week everyone loves  Blah-de-blah blah.  Well, just to be contraire, I don’t like Fridays.  Actually, no, I’m not being contraire.  I genuinely don’t like Fridays that much.  It’s just another day of the week to me.  One that proceeds a day when the hubby’s at work leaving me with the monsters all day because they’re not at school.  Or, in a previous life when I wasn’t trying to be fake at being a full-time writer, another normal day before being stuck in a smelly call centre with people shouting down my ear all day.

So, anyway, Friday.  After the less stressful than normal start to the day as the monster rose before 8.20 am, I showered and plonked myself down in front of the laptop.  Well, to be more precise, curled up in a ball on the sofa, put the laptop on my knee, bought up various social networking sites and Word, and then proceeded to cringe.  I have a feature of around 1,500 words to write on a headlining act for a local festival programme, and try as I might, I can not do it.  I’ve been trying for about two weeks now.  Admittedly, for the majority of those two weeks I’ve been going out of my mind trying not to itch myself to death, but still.  Yesterday, I had a mini melt down, and nearly jacked it all in.  I mean, why should I call myself a Journalist when I can’t even write a feature to my own brief?  After a few tears (well, OK, a lot of tears), tantrums and general feelings of woe, the hubby half talked me round.

This morning, after staring at Word for 10 minutes, and distracting myself elsewhere on the internet,  I couldn’t deal with it.  Deciding that part of my block could well be down to being stuck in quarantine for the last ten days, I ventured out.  Dressing in some funky Converse style pumps, jeans and a beautiful swing jacket, I blinked into the sunshine and made my way down the 100 or so yards to the local cafe.  Once there, I promptly started outlining a story centered around a dream I had last night, before promptly realising it was pretty much the same as a novel I read last year.  Instead, I had some much needed adult conversation, proved my will power is strong, drank my coffee and came back home.

Once home, I quickly sunk back into the depressive state I was in yesterday.  I surfed Facebook, looked at Twitter and played Draw Something.  I morosely stared at Word some more. Then, out of the blue, I got a craving for something sweet.  Or, to be honest, I wanted to binge on food.  Lots of food.  Luckily, I’m far too skint to go to the shop and buy a load of crap, so I decided to attempt some recipes my friend had posted on her blog.  http://middleclassvalue.wordpress.com/.  The first one that came to mind was a lovely, simple peanut butter cookie recipe and then a soup one too

Feeling quite smug that I’d found something worth while to distract myself with, I assembled the ingredients for the peanut butter cookies.   I noticed a couple of pre-packed cookie mixtures, so I decided to make those as well, just for good measure, and to impress the hubby and the monsters.  Unfortunately, while I was reaching for them, an evil bottle of red food colouring decided to attack me.  Suffice to say the result was a rather gory looking scene all over the kitchen floor, the Brother in Laws laptop, and my beautiful new jacket.  After a few deep breaths, I got on with and produced three batches of cookies.  Plain, double chocolate chip and the peanut butter efforts.   After that, I still felt somewhat, flat, so decided to make the soup.  And then, eat the soup.

My fake housewifery duties done, I returned to staring morosely at the Brother in Laws laptop, now resplendent with reddy-orange streaks on the screen where I attempted (not very well though) to wipe the evil red food colouring off. That’s when this came.  Or, well, the idea of this to be honest.

So, that’s why you’re reading this slightly weird blog.  There’ll be more to come.  If I can be bothered.