Gingerbread Ambulance

Rachael's working this evening (yep - New Year's Eve), fixing all sorts of drunken injuries at the local A&E, so I offered to make an A&E-themed cake for her and her colleagues to make things a little more bearable. I wanted to wire up a woo-woo siren and some flashing blue lights to a push-button on the cake board but I was told that might be a little bit near the mark...

Here's the model I based the cake on. It's a Mercedes Sprinter in case you were wondering. And no, I'm not an ambulance nerd - I had to look it up :-).

I like to draw my cakes before I start baking so I know what I'm trying to make (even if the drawings are a bit "industrial"). It sort of helps me to keep it in check if it starts going a bit weird half-way through.

To make the gingerbread, gently heat an unholy concotion of brown sugar, butter and cream. Stir until fully melted and combined.

Mix the dry ingredients - plain flour, baking powder and some ground ginger, then mix it into the treacle. I like to add a bit extra ginger so it has a little kick to it. Once it's all combined you have to work quickly as it will slowly harden as it cools.

Roll the mixture out into sheets about 5mm thick, cut them to shape and then bake them until they just start to darken around the edges. I'd made some templates for the individual parts so I cut them to shape before I put them in the oven. However, they spread slightly as they cook so I trimmed them up again when they came out. Again - work quickly because they harden very quickly as they cool down and you'll end up cracking the pieces if you're not careful.

Once the pieces have cooled, glue them together with a thick icing. I had to trim a couple of pieces down more so they all fitted together properly.

I made a chocolate sponge cake to mount the ambulance on, which also meant it would go further.

Christmas Dinner 2009

Last year me, my brother and my cousin cooked Christmas Dinner for the family. It went down pretty well so we were allowed to do it again this year. We took the safe option last year though, so we thought we'd mix it up a little bit this time around. We kept it traditional, but added some interesting twists.

The main centrepiece was a multi-bird roast - a grouse inside a poulette inside a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey. It was pretty gruesome work preparing it, but the end result was unbelieveably tasty.

This was the starting point for the multi-bird roast, all bought from Borough Market a couple of days beforehand.

First step was to fully debone the birds since we're wrapping them inside each other. I left the bones in the legs and wings of the turkey so it held some of its shape.

The leftover bones. Gruesome, although they made an amazing stock to use in the gravy - even my vegetarian brother tried it!

Next, we stacked the deboned birds up biggest to smallest with a layer of stuffing in between. Yeah, I know - right now this doesn't look much better than the piles of bones.

Finally, wrap it all up and sew the skin together on the turkey. I.. I'm still not sure I really want to eat this.

However, after adding a bacon lattice and cooking for about 7 hours it suddenly looks pretty appetising. Fortunately it also tasted pretty amazing so it was worth all the effort.

Not to be outdone, Cousin Matt also cooked a joint of beef to perfection.

Sourdough Starter

So I was reading Wikipedia and somehow I ended up on a page about sourdough, and how the main ingredient is a living culture (some of which can be decades old in the right hands). I figured it'd be quite cool to have something like that hanging around as a fridge pet so I decided to make some.

It's started by making a flour and water mix which is left to grow natural bacteria. You can kickstart the process with a natural booster - in this case a bunch of red grapes from the local Turkish newsagents on Mare Street.

Give them a quick wash to evict any grubs living in them, then (and this is where it gets weird) stuff them into a stocking so you can remove them from the dough easier later on.

Mix up some strong white bread flour and water - I'm starting to think I should have probably sifted the flour here so it didn't end up quite so lumpy.

I *definitely* should have sifted it *before* mixing.

Add the grape stocking. It doesn't look very promising right now, but I'm really hoping it will sort itself out over the next few days...

A couple of days later I came home to this. Those bacterias have been busy little mischief-makers. The question now is: what to do with it?

Halloween 2009

It's nearly Halloween again, which means it's time for the annual Halloween cake. Yay!

This is the basic plan. Don't laugh - I was a little bit tipsy when I drew it :-)

Ok, so once I'd sobered up a little bit I did some research so I wasn't shooting blind...

...and while the cake was baking I made a couple of wings from some crepe paper coat hangers.

I bought a special ball cake mould for this mission. According to the instructions you can make all sorts of balls with it - footballs, basketballs, tennis balls. In fact, anything *round*. Wowsers.

The two halves of the cake glued together.

A quick bit of decorating later, and it's starting to look like the original drawing. (Or hopefully a bit better than that).

A few sugary features later, and the cake is complete.

Vending Machine Cake

I made this cake for a colleague who was leaving work a couple of weeks ago. There was a standing joke that the company who operated the on-site vending machine would probably go out of business if she ever left, but it still seems to be there for the time being.

A photo of the original, real-life vending machine, just in case you can't tell the difference later :-).

The cake - it's a chocolate sponge with a chocolate buttercream filling.

Iced and ready for decorating. I was going to try mixing the colouring into the icing, but it came out a murky grey so I decided to paint it instead. It worked pretty well, but I think I needed to leave it a bit longer to dry properly.

The finished cake. The 'glass' is a piece of perspex I bought from a local farbication company, and the stuff inside is more icing painted with food colouring. I quite like the end result.

Florentines

So I was planning for a picnic on Blackheath Common last weekend and I wanted to make some biscuits to nibble on.

I had a quick fan through the great Green & Black "Unwrapped" chocolate cookbook (buy it from Amazon) and a recipe for florentines caught my eye.

There was a company called Fudges at the Taste of London this year who were giving out samplers of their florentines and they were pretty amazing, so I jumped at the chance to try and make my own...

Ingredients

• 50g unsalted butter
• 125ml double cream
• 125g granulated sugar
• 40g glace cherries, washed and quartered
• 150g blanched almonds, chopped
• 50g flaked almonds
• 100g candied orange peel (or cut mixed peel)
• 50g plain flour
• 250g dark chocolate (at least 60% cocoa solids)

Equipment

• Medium saucepan
• Mixing bowl
• Sieve
• 2 baking sheets
• 7cm biscuit cutter
• Palette knife
• Wire rack for cooling

Recipe

To make the sticky biscuit base gently heat 50g unsalted butter, 125ml of double cream and 125g granulated sugar together in a saucepan.

Once they've melted together bring it to a boil, then remove from the heat and mix in 40g of quartered glace cherries, 150g chopped blanched almonds, 50g flaked almonds, 100g candied orange peel and sift in 50g plain flour.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C then butter 2 baking sheets and cover with a light coating of sifted plain flour.

Put large teaspoons of the mixture onto the baking trays, leaving plenty of room between them as they'll double in size while they cook. Bake them for 5-6 minutes then remove from the oven - they'll spread out a bit so coax back to their original size using the biscuit cutter.

Put them back into the oven for another 5-6 minutes until the edges start to change colour, then remove them and let them cool on the trays for a couple of minutes. Once they've firmed up a bit move them to a wire rack using a palette knife or similar and allow to cool fully.

Wait for the biscuits to cool completely then heat 250g of dark chocolate over a saucepan of simmering water. Mmmm, chocolate...

Cover the biscuit bases in the melted chocolate and put them in the fridge to cool. Serve with a jug of Pimms in the park.

Overall they were pretty tasty. The chocolate melted a bit quickly, but then it was a really warm day and we'd been in the park a couple of hours before we started munching on them. I'd suggest keeping them in a cool bag to avoid disappointment.

Oh, and the picnic went well. There were a few other things I made that I'll post in the next few days.

Mexican Tuna

I went on a little picnic to Regent's Park the other day and took some home-made Mexican tuna sandwiches. They were a bit of a hit and I've been asked for the recipe, so here it is...

Ingredients

This recipe makes quite a lot - probably enough for about 6 rounds of sandwiches so scale it down if you want less.

Also, I like it quite spicy so put less chilli and cayenne pepper in if you prefer a milder taste.

Things you'll need are:

• 2 tbsp olive oil


• 1 clove of garlic, chopped


• 1 red chilli, chopped


• 1 small onion, finely diced


• 1/2 a red bell pepper, finely diced


• 1/2 a green bell pepper, finely diced



• 2 small tins of tuna in oil


• 1 small tin of red kidney beans, washed


• A few large dollops of mayonnaise


• 2 tsp chilli powder


• 2 tsp cayenne pepper


• 2 tsp dark soy sauce


• salt and ground black pepper

Recipe

• Heat the olive oil in a frying pan on a medium-high heat, add the chopped garlic and chilli for 30 seconds, then add the diced onion. Once the onion starts to soften add the diced red and green bell peppers, stir-fry for a couple more minutes then remove from the heat before the onion starts to brown. Allow to cool.



• Drain the tins of tuna and empty them into a bowl. Add the onion and pepper mix and all the remaining ingredients (kidney beans, mayonnaise, chilli powder, caynenne pepper and dark soy sauce). Mix together and season to taste.

If you've done it right it should look something like this:

Serving

My favourite way to serve is on fresh sliced bread with salad leaves and cucumber.

Fig Trifle

I met my parents at Borough Market at the weekend with my brother and while we were there we bought some fresh figs from one of the stalls. We weren't quite sure what we were going to do with them but they looked too nice to pass up on.

My brother found a recipe for a Spanish-style fig trifle so I made it:

The ingredients.

First, soak some sponge fingers. The recipe called for sherry, but I used the rumtopf I made last year instead as I've still got loads left.

The figs. Cut them in half, drizzle with honey then bake for 10 minutes until soft and caramelised.

The custard is made with milk which is heated in lemon rind and cinnamon. Strain the milk after heating.

The other half of the custard is egg yolks, sugar and cornflour. And yes, I broke a yolk - I managed to salvage it though.

Add half the figs to the bowl, then put more sponge fingers on top and soak in more sherry / rumtopf.

Arrange the other half of the figs around the bowl then pour in the custard and chill.

Finally, add some whipped cream and toasted almond flakes. Enjoy...

831.208244 miles

I cycled to the New Forest with my brother at the weekend and did about 200 kilometres in 3 days. About 130 of them were on the first day because we forgot to book a campsite and the only one with free space was a bit further than we'd hoped.

Now, if you remember this post then you'll also remember this picture...



... which meant I got a nice little surprise when we stopped at the top of one particularly long and gruesome hill and I looked at the "Total. Distance. Ever" setting on my cycle computer:



Expect another photo in another 12,040 kilometres :-)

Twin Towers

One of the companies I work for got bought up by a larger company a while ago and the legal merger officially completed a week or so ago. I got asked to make a cake to mark the occasion - nothing fancy, just something for the department to scoff while the dust settled.

The two companies both have quite distinctive head office buildings in Frankfurt so I thought I'd try to reconstruct them in sponge cake. It's not my finest work, but I think it's my tallest:

The Silver Tower

The Silver Tower, owned by Dresdner Bank AG - a German high street bank. If the cake looks like it's about to fall over that's probably because it is...

This is what it should look like, courtesy of the Google 3D warehouse model of it.

The Commerzbank Tower

The Commerzbank Tower, owned by, er, Commerzbank - another a German high street bank. This one looks a bit more stable, but even so I'd steer clear in case of falling cakework...

Here's the 3D model for this one as well.