Battenburg / Stripey Cake

Here's a couple more cakes I made this week:

I shunned the traditional pink & yellow combination in favour of corporate colours. Extra brownie points with my client there :-).

This one nearly didn't happen. I forgot I had cake class last night so I had to quickly bake a cake in 2 tins so it cooked quicker, then cut them both in half to cool down quicker as well. I also took some ice to class in a sandwich bag and cooled the separate cake layers individually with it when I got there. It took about 45 minutes to mix, bake, slice and then get to college. Then we only had about an hour in class yesterday so I had to make some buttercream to glue the layers together, coat it in marzipan, colour the icing, roll it and cover the cake and then clean up after myself. Thankfully, I just about finished in time but it was all a bit of a rush.

Watermelon Cake

I've been waking up in the morning lately and the first thing that's been popping into my head is "a cake, right, in the shape of a watermelon", so I made this in the hope it would make the voices go away...

The stripes on the icing are something called "lustre dust" - it's a very fine powder a bit like poster paint powder, but edible. You can either mix it with water (or vodka if you prefer) to create a liquid paint or just brush it on dry, which is what I did to get the mottled effect.

I put a cheeky little surprise inside the cake - yay for red food colouring! I also bunged a handful of raisins into the cake mix to represent the watermelon seeds.

Hopefully that'll make my mornings a little less obsessive, at least until the voices start whispering the next design. I'm turning into a cake-baking puppet to my subconscious :-(

Scrap Club

I'm breaking the first rule of Scrap Club by talking about it here. I'm also breaking the second rule but, well, in for a penny, in for a pound...

My brother got tickets for an event on Saturday in a semi-legal event space behind Peckham Library. It's basically an abandoned workshop - think what a Kwik-Fit or similar would look like if you removed all the equipment and interior partitions.

When you get there the first thing you see is a great big pile of broken office equipment and kitchen goods like so:



The second thing you see is a bull pen made from railings, and a table with hard hats, safety goggles, gloves and loads of hammers, pipes and crowbars...



The rest of what happens should be obvious, but just in case anyone isn't sure:



and



There were about a hundred people there so it gets split into 10-minute sessions with about 8 people in the ring at a time. Here's my brother taking a filing cabinet to task:



and me following up on it in the very next session (I'm the one in mid-swing):



There wasn't much left of it by the time we were done with it:



All of this was accompanied by a live electro-band making weird deconstructed industrial ploinking and blooping noises on some rewired keyboards. I got some video as well which I'll post as soon as I've bothered to set up a YouTube account.

The whole thing was very odd. Once you get into full flow you kind of lose track of what's going on around you - there's just you, a hammer and whatever you're hitting. You sort of zone-out and get obsessed with smashing up whatever your target is, and you end up with a stupid grin when it's all over.

They only do a few of these events a year, so check the site for the next one. I'll be keeping an eye out for it and trying to get tickets for sure.

http://www.scrapclub.co.uk

Video Update

Valentine's Cake 2009

The cake decorating classes are coming on, although I got told off for making sugarcraft flowers last night instead of doing piping like we were supposed to be doing.

I'm quite pleased with the results though. The cake's a lemon sponge covered with marzipan and then sugarpaste icing. I went for the classic look rather than the usual novelty cakes...

Ridic Choc

My cousin made an unbelieveable chocolate cake over Christmas and as it's someone's birthday at work today I thought I'd give it a go myself. I can't remember the proper name for the cake, but we've dubbed it the Ridiculous Chocolate Cake (or Ridic Choc for short) because of the amount of chocolate in it. In fact, the recipe even comes with a health warning that you should limit how often you make it!

The cake's made in two parts - a kind of firm brownie base and a soft chocolate mousse topping. It's a bit of a labour of love, but the end result is well worth the effort.

The Ingredients

The ingredients. Except for the Coke and the toothpaste. Oh, and you need some icing sugar as well.

The Base

Melt some sugar, butter and a load of chocolate together in a bowl over simmering water. It's important to keep the mixture dry as the smallest amount of water will make it seize - even using a wooden spoon can cause problems as it may contain moisture that will leech out into the chocolate.

The melted result.

Mix in some icing sugar and some whisked eggs.

Bung it in the oven for half an hour, and then let it cool (but leave it in the tin). The result is a crispy outside with a soft inside, sort of like an inside-out Dime bar.

The Topping

Melt another load of chocolate over hot water for the topping.

Mix in some icing sugar, egg yolks and butter to make a smooth goo.

Whisk some egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then do the same with some cream in another bowl.

Fold the egg white and cream into the chocolate mixture. The air trapped in the egg white and cream forms the basis for the mousse. Pour this over the base and chill in the fridge overnight.

The Result

People dived in before I had a chance to take a proper picture - this was all that was left after about 2 minutes. The edges are a little rough as you're supposed to use a hot knife to separate it from the tin, but all I had was some plastic cutlery from the canteen.

I made some Creme Anglais (basically, runny custard) to go with it to try and break up the stickiness of the cake - you can see that in a tub on the right of the cake. So far it's all been a bit of a hit but I'll have to wait a while to make this again.