Showers and sponges: cakes to reveal a baby’s sex

Just a quick post today on an article I very much enjoyed in today’s Observer. As a nation, we often jump on the bandwagon carrying the latest craze from across the pond, however ridiculous that load maybe. Be it dieting on baby food, religiously baking cupcakes or keeping fit to Zumba, we’ll eventually be taken down.

And I have a feeling the next one will be no exception. We’ve already succumb to baby showers, but taking it one step further, American mothers-to-be are now revealing the sex of their baby to their loved ones with a rather over-dramatic (in my humble opinion) cake cutting ceremony. Friends and family gathered, the knife comes out and the cake is sliced: pink sponge for a girl, blue sponge for a boy. It’s way too much for me!

Some parents are even asking the doctor who carries out that all important scan to seal the sex of the baby in an envelope, which is then passed straight to a cake-maker, so at the party, the sex is a surprise for even the parents. Seriously, is nothing private any more?

The Observer tells of some early UK adopters of this crazy craze, looking forward to watching how this one pans out…

So it's a girl then?

Iron Cupcake: Leeds

Sunday night cupcake tasting at the Adelphi? Go on then.

Forget the Sunday night blues, this evening I swapped homework for home baking, paying my first visit (why have I never been before?) to Leeds’ own iron cupcake competition.

Not quite yet brave enough to enter, tonight I played the roll of judge.  Armed with my ‘eater’ badge and favourite foodie friend in tow, I made my way around 13 batches of cupcakes, each with their own take on this month’s theme: Easter.

The cupcakes were to be marked on both appearance and taste and each interpreted Easter in a different way; from hot cross bun and simnel cake cupcakes, to sticky gooey, chocolatey Easter egg cupcakes. But they all got me in the mood for spring (and made me feel very nicely full.)

The winning cupcakes were a chocolate, Cadbury’s Creme Egg concoction, all put together in a delightful chick-tastic display that had clearly taken a lot of time and effort. They were yummy. But my personal favourite were a lemon and white chocolate variety, with colourful, flowered decorations. Coming in a respectable third, the lovely lady who baked them let me take the last one home!

Iron Cupcake competitions originated in the states and the lovely Zoe runs the Leeds-based battles with the help of her delightful mum, who even hands out baby wipes at the end for all those sticky fingers! Fabulous. The competitions are held monthly at the Adelphi in Leeds and I’ll certainly be there next month – although not sure yet whether my badge will say ‘baker’ or ‘eater.’

What I have learnt this weekend: people who bake professionally are the nicest people in the world.

These were my favourite...but the others were yummy too!

This Christmas I should have asked for…

Why is it that for weeks and weeks in the run up to the festive period when that dreaded question is asked; “what do you want for Christmas” all I get is a mental block. Brains are racked, websites scoured and friends interrogated, but Santa’s list gets more difficult to compose every year. Then, as soon as the turkey is troughed and tree taken down, a barrage of gift ideas spring to mind with a whole year to wait for them to arrive under the tree.

And today I decided that I should have asked for a waffle iron. These clever gadgets have featured during a number of festive TV shows I’ve watched whilst enjoying a cheeky tipple and have left my mouth-watering! Please remind me that this needs to be at the top of next year’s gift list.

Happy new year all!

My 2012 Christmas present!

Lorraine Pascale stirs up record viewers

You may remember my recent post about Lorriane Pascale being the top contender to fill Jamie Oliver’s shoes as the face of Sainsbury’s?

Well, her new series started on BBC 2 last night, Home Cooking Made Easy, and I’ve definitely decided she’s the woman for the job. Who cares about promoting a healthy lifestyle to a family supermarket? That woman’s dishes look delicious! If I was Ms Sainsbury’s I’d be snapping her talented hand off!

According to The Guardian, the cake queen drew in 2.5 million viewers last night on BBc2, beating BBC1′s Panorama by nearly one million viewers.  I only saw the second half of it and to be honest I’m glad. I’ve already promised the boy we’ll sample the swiss roll bowl cake and the five spiced baked ribs are a close second. I don’t know when I’ll have time to try out anything else!

Looking forward to next week’s show already!

Baking bread

Baking bread from scratch has always felt to me like an activity reserved for middle-aged ladies who live in farmhouses, or home economics classes in all girl boarding schools. Don’t get me wrong I’ve always fancied giving it a go. The delicious smell of baking bread on a saturday morning would just be awesome and really stamp the seal of approval on my foodie status. But let’s face it, it was never going to happen. Until now.

At work, I managed to get my hands on a swanky, brand new type of bread mix (I’ll explain what it was at a later date) in a tasty cheese and chive flavour. It was one of the easiest things I’ve ever made and it tasted yummy!

All you need to do is simply add milk to the mix and knead the dough for 15 minutes or so. Then, prove the bread (Google kindly informed me that this just means leaving it under a tea towel.) Then, bake for 20 minutes and this is what you get….

 

Baking with kids again

Baking with an enthusiatic little one is lots of fun and although my little monkey isn’t technically “mine”, I can’t resist buying little bits and pieces to get him even more excited about food. My plan is to help mould him into a little culinary genius so that in ten year’s time we have the luxury of a homemade meal on the table as soon as the boy and I step in from work. So far it seems to be working!

This little gift went down a treat. A cheeky purchase from one of my favourite websites, we’ve had loads of laughs cooking and decorating rocket ship biscuits whilst making a merry mess in our very small kitchen.

Our retro spaceman baking kit is out of this world!

When baking, I’m often reminded that his favourite appliance is the blender (or whizzer) so our recipes often need to be creatively adapted to involve blending! Last weekend we made a pretty delicious banana milkshake in the “whizzer” with fruit, milk, ice cream and cinnamon to inject a burst of energy before we got started on the rocket ship and star-shaped biscuits! Fab!

Taking baking up a gear

Blogging about blogging is a personal pet hate of mine. However, when a colleague passed on the link to this fantastic food blog I just had to give it a mention. This cupcake queen takes experimental to the next level, making my efforts at creativity look pretty standard! Check out Bake it in a Cake, the blog which does exactly what it says on the (cake) tin.

It’s talented author has tried everything; baking a Twix into a chocolate brownie, doughnuts in a cake and even Cadbury Creme Eggs in buns – talk about a chocolate fix! Her recipes are easy to follow, photography is mouth-watering and her trusty followers even upload their own concoctions. 

I’ll be having a think about my own crazy concoctions this weekend. Will keep you posted!

Baking guilty pleasures

This stuff is my guilty pleasure.

Only cheating a little bit...

I can bake, quite well. From scratch and everything. But this just tastes so so good.

My other half was incredibly impressed when on the morning of his recent birthday he popped out to run an errand and I whipped up some birthday cupcakes in his absence. Presents and fresh banana and chocolate cakes awaited him… little does he know that they were only half homemade.

Happy Birthday!

Baking with kids

I recently had the pleasure of trying out this super easy recipe with a very enthusiastic little person who really doesn’t like getting his hands dirty! That challenge aside I think between us we made a rather good attempt at Robot Biscuits! As mentioned in a post below, this is a great way to use up leftover chocolate and other store cupboard staples.

Robot Biscuits

Not just fun for the kids...!

Make a simple gingerbread mixture by mixing; 225g of self raising flour, 1 teaspoon of ginger powder, 100g of brown sugar and 75g of butter. Rub until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs and then add 1 beaten egg and 2 tablespoons of golden syrup. Knead until a dough is formed then roll thinly onto the work surface. (If you don’t have a rolling pin…improvise!)

Not too child friendly but it did the trick...

Then, cut out the shapes for the robot carefully and bake at 170C for 20 minutes. Let them cool and then for the fun part…decorate as desired!

Happy baking!