The (toy) story so far...

So what cake would a three year old boy want?
Well it bl***y better be this one is all I can say!

So at first glance you could be forgiven for thinking I'd spent hours carefully moulding icing into intricate figures but this is a bit of a cheats cake this year, in that I bought the Toy Story mini figures ,

So i decided to take a break from force feeding my kids various vegetables in their cakes and went with an old faithful recipe from Nigella Lawson, Buttermilk Birthday Cake.

This cake is ideal for any birthday cake you want to make in a special mould as it holds its shape brilliantly, or if you need a firm cake which will hold its shaped.
But you don't have to wait for someone's birthday - it's a great recipe to cook with the kids at any time …
Recipe

Serves 10
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt

200ml buttermilk (or 75g yogurt mixed with 125ml semi-skinned milk)

125g softened butter, plus extra for greasing
200g caster sugar
3 large free-range eggs
icing sugar and ready-to-roll icing to decorate

(I used double this quantity as I wanted to be sure there was plenty of cake.)
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. Grease and line a 23cm square cake tin.
Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate and salt together. Mix the buttermilk (or yogurt mixture).
Cream the butter and sugar together. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a little of the flour with the last one. Gradually add the rest of the flour with the buttermilk, one after the other, until thoroughly mixed.

Pour into the tin and bake for about 30 minutes or until well risen and pale golden brown. Loosen the sides of the cake with a round-bladed knife and turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

When cold, drizzle with icing sugar mixed with lemon juice – get the kids to help - and decorate with ready to roll icing.

I bought pre-colour icing too to make the toy blocks.

For the floor I made a fairly thick fondant icing and added food colouring to make a light brown floor colour. I spread it thinly on the cake board and when almost set, scored the lined to make floor boards. After some drying time I painted in-between the floor boards with black food colouring and added some nails.
It was then just a case of assembling the pieces of cake and covering with icing sheets and a duvet.

The head board was made of ginger bread (see below) and cut out using a handmade cardboard template.
Ingredients
350g plain flour
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g butter
175g soft brown sugar

1 egg

4 tbsp Golden Syrup

Method: How to make gingerbread

1. Mix together the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda.
2. Rub in the butter until it looks like breadcrumbs.
3. Add the sugar.
4. In a separate bowl mix together the egg and golden syrup then add to the dry ingredients.
5. Mix together until it forms a dough. Tip out onto a clean, floured work surface and knead for a minute or two until it is smooth.
6. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.
7. Roll out the dough to the depth of a pencil (approx 5mm) and cut out around the cardboard template.
8. Lay the biscuits on a greased baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.
If the holes in your cut out have joined together during baking, you can cut them out again using a sharp knife before the gingerbread cools completely.
Store the gingerbread in an airtight container to avoid softening and add to the cake just prior to serving.

Chocolate beetroot muffins

Discovered this recipe a few years back, as I'm not a huge fan of beetroot and was looking for palatable ways of using it up when we got it our veg box. The muffins are surprisingly light and using the beetroot makes such sense as, like carrots, they're a high-sugar root vegetable. It's from Jill Dupleix originally, but I've made a few minor adjustments but I'll give the more standard recipe here.

Preheat the over 180C (or 160C fan). Put 12 paper cases in a muffin tin.

Sift together:
75g cocoa powder
180g plain flour
2 t baking powder
Stir in:
200g caster sugar

With a food processor, blend 250g cooked beetroot until as smooth as possible.
Add:
3 eggs, one at a time
1 t vanilla essence
200ml corn oil

Pour the wet beetroot mix into the dry mix. Mix until smooth and combined.

Divide between the muffin cases and bake for 30 mins.

Cool on a rack, then dust with icing sugar for serving.

http://www.bhf.org.uk/default.aspx?page=11876&sc_cid=00077&utm_source=Frontpage&utm_medium=Promobox+3&utm_campaign=Beetroot+benefits+40358

American Vanilla Cupcakes

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients
2 medium eggs
160g caster sugar
300g topped, tailed, peeled and finely grated courgette
180g white rice flour
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method
1) Pre-heat oven to 180 C / 350F/ gas mark 4. Arrange paper cases in muffin tray
2) Whisk eggs and sugar in a large bowl until pale and light – this should take about 5 mins and beaters should leave a trail across the mixture add the courgette
3) Sprinkle over half the flour, along with the baking powder and salt and whisk for 30 seconds. Add remaining flour and vanilla extract and whisk until combined.
4) Ladle the mixture into the cases so it comes 4/5 of the way up the cases. Place in the middle of the oven for approx. 30mins.

Every Bunny loves chocolate cake

So with the usual amount of fuss and panic, the party preparations began. Just as every year the same repetion was followed, drastically searching for a different party provider that can do entertainment, food and fun all for a reasonable price for the amount of 'best' friends on the list this year and take the pressure of us parents. As always the prices were just too much and to meet the ever growing guest list, it was just more straight forward to do it ourselves!! (But 10x as tiring but as i'm a secret control freak its the only way really!)

Ok so the request this year was for another bunny cake and to make it different I decided that this year it shoud be chocolate. Time to fill the chocolate bunny cake with carrots. 'What?' I hear you shriek, 'what kind of idiot puts carrots in chocolate cake?'
Well this one does and so does Harry Eastwood author of Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache.
(as reviewed in my previous blog)

the recipe can be found here Bunny cake recipe.

This recipe didn't rise as well as others I have used in this mould, however, the cake was light moist and tasty, not a hint of a carrot and although not completely fat free because of the chocolate chips is considerably lower in fat. I also like the fact that the recipe can be gluten free, if rice flour and ground almond are used, which is always a useful option to have.

No complaints were received from any of the party guests and I was quietly content knowing they were getting a few additional nutrients along with their chocolate cake.

Have your cake and eat it

You don't get a waistline like mine through not eating cake, so imagine my glee when an old school friend recommended a recipe book which had virtually fat free cakes. Well as I have learnt, you don't get something for nothing in this life now do you - so what was the catch? Vegetables thats what. So needless to say I was more than slightly skeptical but intrigued enough to want to experiment.

With Mother's Day on the horizon, I put in a subtle request and low and behold the book miraculously appeared on my bed. So what is this incredible book?


Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood (1/4 of the Channel 4 Cook Yourself Thin team).






The book itself is truly beautiful, if a little gooey and girly, however the layout and photographs are clear and attractive. The author is a self confessed cake lover and believes that cake should be part of everyday life.

Her theory is that by replacing the butter with a combination of ground almonds (for natural fat content and texture) and by adding vegetables (for moisture and light fluffiness) no taste compromise will occur. This is a truly remarkable claim to live up to and a challenge i decided to take head on. (well it would be rude not to!)

My first trial had to be a chocolate cake, after all I needed the kids to be on board. So I set about grating the 250g of carrots required! (This could also be a great form of exercise and I could end up with one very large bulging bicep)

The recipe and method can be found in the Every Bunny Loves a Birthday and the quantities made 12 generous sized cupcakes, which I promptly smothered in chocolate butter icing , in case they tasted awful. Nervously, I drew back the paper case and peered at its contents, fully expecting to see a series of orange flecks, instantly recognisable to the discerning eye of a fully trained veg phobic (or child under 7), but nothing. No, nothing, no hint of a vegetable, no orange tint.

But what about taste? They couldn't possibly taste ok, could they? There would surely be a bit of an earthy taste and textural differences. Well, it has to be said I was truly astonished, but only speechless because I had soft moist chocolate cake stuffed in my mouth. These cakes were in fact some of the best cupcakes I'd made in ages.

Ok, so I could no accept that this recipe was fine and in fact grudgingly might say good, but we've all heard of carrot cake, so no news here, nothing to see. Lets move on to courgettes, after all that's just insane surely, they are green for a start, and no-one's going to eat green cake, are they? (not unless truly desperate).American Vanilla Cupcakes - well they sound fairly normal don't they - that is apart from the 300g of finely grated courgette it asks you to whisk in!

All I could think of was how on earth was I going to get this past the trainee mealtime micro-surgeons that regularly frequent my dining table. Its green, oh so green and the mixture's stringy and slimy!

In a vague attempt to hide the greenness I decided that pale green glace icing was the solution (that was bound to fool them).

However, after baking I was pleasantly surprised at the shade, they looked fairly normal with just a pale green hue, which I wasn't sure if I was imagining just because I knew the content. On close scrutiny I could see very tiny green flecks, barely visible to the human eye. (Note to self at this point to peel the courgette more carefully next time).

I ran these past the resident household quality control and they passed the test, in fact to quote one QA technician (age 5) 'you can't even taste the green bits with this lovely icing'. Obviously my eye sight is failing.

Recipe trial number three was a Victoria Sponge containing potato - sounds very strange and my immediate preconceptions were that it would have a very starchy flavour and would stick unpalatable to the roof of your mouth. So 200g of King Edwards later and I have a whisked sponge cake, with stringy potato evenly distributed through it. 20 minutes later and the results are in a seemingly perfect sponge! After filling with jam and butter cream and decorating with candles, it was served up as a 6th Birthday cake, with fingers crossed behind my back.

Luckily it was brilliant, moist and tasty, no signs of extra starch flavour.

So if you can get past the vomit inducing style in which this book has been written, to the recipes at the core you can encounter its true brilliance, an inspired book with real purpose and recipes that work.

I have yet to trial recipes containing ; butternut squash, parsnips, sweet potato and beetroot but will keep you updated with my findings..