Karaoke Cake - Happy 30th Birthday Jon!

I seem to be riding a wave of 30th birthdays at the moment -  they started to creep up slowly over the last year or so, my own 30th was just six weeks ago, and they still keep coming.  Last weekend was Jon's turn, who is the lovely and supertalented boyfriend of my very good friend Karrie (you can see the cake I made for her 30th here).

Jon chose to celebrate his birthday with a karaoke party so the obvious choice was for me to make him a karaoke themed cake.  I found out from Karrie that they have a very distinctive pink karaoke machine so I  looked up some pictures online and immediately saw it would make a great eyecatching cake.

This was actually quite a straightforward cake to make, but I think its simplicity and boldness makes it a really effective design.  I started off with a square cake in my new favourite flavour - courgette and cinnamon with lemon curd buttercream (and I know I'm tooting my own trumpet here but it's really good!).  I then cut it into a rectangle and covered it with white sugarpaste to make the box.  I made the basic shape for the microphone from marzipan and left it to firm up overnight.  In hindsight I probably should have given the marzipan a couple of days as it was still a little soft but it worked ok.

The next morning I made the dials for the top of the box, by cutting a fat sausage of white sugarpaste into equal slices and then re-shaping a little by hand to make them neat and even like fat extra strong mints:

Easy peasy.  To fix them to the cake I used a short length of dry spaghetti and some edible glue.  The spaghetti probably wasn't 100% neccessary here but as the cake had to make the long trip up to North London on public transport I wanted to make sure that nothing was going to fall off.  A few details with my knife and edible pen and the cake was already starting to take shape:

Next up was the microphone, which was a very fetching tone of pink which needed plenty of colouring paste adding to beef up the colour.  I got to a point where it wouldn't go any more pink so I couldn't quite get it the fluorescent colour of the actual microphone (and to be honest too much colouring might start making you feel fluorescent if you ate too much).  I started by covering the top of the mic, which I did in two halves.  First I painted the top half with edible glue and shaped the pink over the top:

Then I cut round the middle, turned it over and did the same again for the bottom:

Then I added a strip around the middle to cover the join.  I created the textured effect by pressing dimples into the paste with a round ended tool while it was still soft.

I covered the main part of the microphone with the pink sugarpaste and attached it to the top with a piece of dry spaghetti and some more edible glue.  I then rolled a long sausage of black sugarpaste to create the cable and fixed it all together with the same method (who would have thought dry spaghetti would be so useful in cake decorating??)  The cable needed a bit of support while it dried so I propped it up with a small pot to stop it from coming out of the cake.  And with that the cake was finished:

The cake went down really well at the party and it all disappeared within about 10 minutes which is about as big a compliment as I can get.  Happy Birthday Jon, thanks for inviting us to your party - your version of One Week was worth the trip up to London alone :o)

I'll have a pint of cake please

I get a few unusual requests for cakes sometimes, which actually suits me down to the ground as I love flexing my creative muscles to make a cake that is a bit out of the ordinary.  Over the last week I have made two cakes on a tipsy theme - a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a packet of Marlboro Lights for a 40th birthday cake, and a giant pint of Guinness cake which I made for Melissa to celebrate St Patrick's Day on Saturday.

  

 
As I'm writing this post I'm getting hungry again and might just have to cut myself another slice of the Guinness cake before I tell you how I made the cakes....
 
I've made the vodka bottle cake before, so it was quite handy that I already had the label prepared.  Usually I can find a suitable picture on Google Images but in this case I had to make it up from scratch which took more than 2 1/2 hours that I hadn't budgeted for - oops.  Luckily after some good searching I was able to find the Marlboro images I needed, and with a bit of photoshopping I sent the pictures off to be printed into edible images at a local company in Newhaven.  I got some slightly strange looks when I picked them up and had to assure them it wasn't a cigarette flavoured cake!
 
The cake itself is a vanilla madeira cake made from two 5" round cakes that I filled and cut in half to create the main bottle shape:
  

 
Then it just needed a small amount of shaping with a sharp knife to create the domed top and to make sure the sides were smooth and even.  Once carved, the cake was then covered in a thin layer of buttercream:
 

The neck of the bottle was made from a sausage of marzipan, then I covered the whole thing in grey sugarpaste and trimmed neatly:
 

 
The cigarette packed was made from a rectangle of cake cut to just smaller than the image and covered in white sugarpaste.  I've learned the hard way to always use plenty of icing sugar underneath so that when you come to move it to the board the sugarpaste doesn't stick to the surface.
 

 
The surface of the sugarpaste is dampened with a little water before fixing the edible image (see my Monkey Street Art post for top tips on using edible images):
 

 
The bottle label is added to the cake in the same way and the cigarette packet is secured to the board with a little icing.
 

A few finishing touches and a happy birthday message in royal icing and the cake is finished:
 

I think making this cake gave me the inspiration for the Guinness cake, and I instinctively knew that the recipe I had to use was Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake.  I'm not a huge fan of chocolate cakes, but this one is a little bit different - moist and dark, with a hint of bitterness coming from the Guinness and then lashings of cream cheese icing really makes it a special cake.  Nigella's recipe is for a 9" round cake, which I split between a 5" and a 6" tin to give the basis of the famous pint glass shape.

 
This is quite a damp cake and not really suitable for carving, but I had my heart set on making this cake work and just took shaping the cake very slowly, glueing crumbs back on with a little more icing to fill in any holes.  Usually you can freeze cakes before carving to make it easier, but I didn't want to risk the cream cheese icing in the freezer.   I also stuffed cake crumbs on top of the layers of icing to make as stable a surface as possible for the sugarpaste as the icing isn't as firm or stable as buttercream (so also not really suitable for a carved cake like this!).  Before I started carving I placed strips of greaseproof paper just under the edges of the cake which protect the board from crumbs and smears of icing.  It doesn't look very pretty at this stage, but it's now got just about the right shape:

Then for a thin layer of icing so that the sugarpaste will stick and once that's smooth you can carefully remove the greaseproof paper and you will have a nice clean board underneath:

And then time for the sugarpaste - I like to use Renshaw Chocolate Sugarpaste which has a lovely chocolate flavour.  I covered this up to nearly the top, then covered the top part with white sugarpaste for the head of the pint.  I then cut through both layers of paste and removed the excess to give a nice clean line:

All that was left was to add the logo using some edible gold paint and some superwhite mixed with a dash of water to create the white for the writing.

And it just so happens that this is excellent timing as I am celebrating my blogiversary this week - one year of writing the Brighton Bakery blog.  Thanks to everyone for reading, and I hope you all have a pint of cake to celebrate with me!

I'm back... although unfortunately this time it's on the wrong side of 30

Hello again dear readers, sorry for the radio silence over the last couple of weeks!  Thanks to my lovely wife Melissa, I seem to have been able to drag out my big 3-0 birthday celebrations for way longer than I deserve - the highlights of which were an amazing trip of a lifetime to San Francisco and an 80's theme birthday party last Saturday. 
There was much debate on my part, and speculation on the part of others, as to what type of cake I should make for my 30th birthday.  I had some grand plans for a topsy turvy 3 tiered Alice in Wonderland cake, but with only 25 people coming to the party there would have been way too many leftovers for my waistline to handle (and if there is cake in the house, I can't help but eat it).  We also had a few friends coming down to stay with their little ones and I didn't want to spend all my time decorating, so I scaled my ideas back to something simple, but iconic, that would fit in with my 80's party theme.
 
I had the idea of incorporating an 80's computer game, and really wanted to do the NewZealand Story which was my brother's and my favourite game growing up, but I decided that was a bit too obscure and instead went for the classic 80's arcade favourite that everyone would know, Pacman.
 

 
Of course this wasn't just any plain old cake, I wanted to try something a bit different and have a more unusual flavour that maybe people hadn't tried before.  I adapted one of my favourite loaf cake recipes for cinnamon and courgette Cake into an 8" square tin.  Scaling up recipes can be a little tricky, and I was a bit worried how it would turn out as sometimes it doesn't work quite how you expect it to.  Luckily, it baked into a lovely moist cake, although it was a little bit too dome-shaped so I had to trim a lot off the top to make it level.  Next time I'll use less baking powder and either line the outside of the tin (like you would for a Christmas cake) or else I might invest in some of those bake even strips.  Needless to say that the leftover cake trimmings didn't go to waste....
 
I decided to fill the cake with my favourite icing - Italian meringue buttercream laced with lemon curd.  The 45 minutes it takes to make it is SO worth it, I can't get enough of the stuff, and it was the perfect combination with the cinnamon and courgette cake which has lemon zest running through it. 

I covered the cake with a light grey sugarpaste, followed by a very thin square of black sugarpaste and a grey button to make it look like an 80's computer monitor:
 

 
Next I rolled very thin sausages of blue sugarpaste to make the lines.  I know that to be 100% authentic, these should have been double lines, but sometimes it's better to capture the essence of what you are recreating rather than an exact copy.  Well that's my reasoning anyway!
 

 
 Next up was my favourite bit, the monsters!  I cut these freehand and added tiny circles of white sugarpaste for the eyes, finished off with edible black pen for the pupils.  I love how they look in the direction they are moving:

 
Then to finish the cake off, I needed to add the dots.  I had originally planned to use royal icing, but I find it really annoying to make and I had also uncovered some silver dragees in my decorating box and thought they would be perfect.  And very reminiscent of 80's party cakes.
 

 
I have to say that the cake went down really well at the party (although maybe that's due to the amount of homebrew people had consumed...), in any case, the birthday girl was very pleased with it, and I've saved the final piece for my 11 o'clock treat tomorrow.
 

 
I'm also very happy that although I may have turned 30 and should officially have grown up by now, I can still have a big kid's birthday cake :o)

The art of a great food photograph

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by Suzanne Goldenberg, a freelance photographer and journalist who offered to take some photographs to try and pitch a Brighton Bakery showcase article to local foodie magazine, Edible.  Naturally, I jumped at the chance for a bit of free publicity and we discussed a few different angles for the piece.  One of the key things that sets us apart from other cake makers is that we offer a range of vegetable based cakes, so that seemed like a good option and I set my mind to work thinking of the best veggie cakes to bake for the photoshoot.
 
Suzanne pitched the idea to her editor and while the article was given the go ahead, it couldn't be seen as promoting just one company due to advertising regulations.  So instead Suzanne planned to write a general article, with a reference to Brighton Bakery and some local cafes that also offer vegetable cakes.  What a shame.  Still, all publicity is good publicity, as they say, and I had a nice chat on the phone to Suzanne about the benefits of using different vegetables in cakes.  I also offered to make a cake for her to photograph for the article as I was really keen to pick up some tips about taking a good food photo as I really have no idea what I'm doing.  I was sure that a certain father in law of mine would be very happy to help out with any cake leftovers...
 
So last Friday I baked a firm favourite from our market stalls, Courgette and Cinnamon cake.  I thought it was a good option as it has a lovely texture where you can see flecks of courgette and lemon zest and it's set off by a pretty zigzag lemon icing on top which I hoped would add interest to the photo. 
 
Suzanne arrived a couple of hours later with a few props in tow - a white board to reflect the light, a small tablecloth, two chopping boards, some pretty plates and a cake knife and fork to dress the scene.  I was surprised that she was happy to take the pictures in our basement kitchen as I didn't think there was enough light, but by angling the white board it lifted the shadows and the photos came out well.
 
We did a few different set ups, one with the cake in its tin, un-iced on a rustic wooden board, then I quickly iced it and Suzanne took a few more shots of the whole cake on the board.  We both new that the best photos would probably be once the cake was cut, so I cut two generous slices which gave us lots of options for the set up.  Different angles, a slice of cake on a plate with a fork, slices stacked up in front of the rest of the loaf, Suzanne busily snapped away dozens of pictures, all very slightly different.  I asked loads of questions along the way and picked up some good tips.  A key thing is that she used a 50mm prime lens, which we might have to invest in - our zoom lens just can't get close enough to pick up the detail that hers can.  The 50mm lens also allows you to open the aperture very wide and take lovely pictures in lower lighting conditions, which would be a real benefit in our house! 
 
Like most photographers, Suzanne is very particular when scrutinising her pictures, and is happy if she gets just 3 or 4 good ones from a shoot (and I'm sure she took well over a hundred photos).  Here's her final selection:

photos © suzannegoldenberg.net

And here's the link to Suzanne's article on the Edible Magazine website: Courgette Muffin Anyone? 

I love how our battered old wooden chopping board has come out in the pictures, and the rustic water icing really sets off the cake with a lovely contrast.

We only got a brief mention in the article, but it was great to see how Suzanne worked, and we already have a cake photography project planned for next year, so it was well worth the price of a couple of courgettes and a little bit of time.  Thanks Suzanne x

A quirky character cake for Sheena

Sometimes Melissa and I can be a bit rubbish at remembering things, especially important dates like friends' birthdays.  No matter how many times we mention it and remind ourselves in the weeks before the event, the date will fly right past us until that forehead-smacking moment when we realise it's too late.

So when it's a really good friend's birthday that escapes us (sorry again Sheena!), we usually make up for it by making an extra nice cake. 

I had borrowed this great book in the library called Fun and Original Character Cakes and I had been waiting for an excuse to make this really cute cake that appears on the front of it.  Sheena and her husband Nathan have just had a beautiful baby boy called Murphy, so we thought that Sheena deserved a little pampering in return for the sleepless nights she's been having with the little one.  This cake seemed to fit the bill.

The cake was a beetroot and chocolate loaf cake which I based on a Diana Henry recipe.  I was a bit worried about how the cake would turn out as we had a power surge that blew the fuse for the cooker right in the middle of baking it.  Luckily we replaced the fuse quickly and it didn't make any difference to the final result.

The book gives step by step instructions for making all the decorations.  I made a few tweaks to the design, mainly making it into an old fashioned roll top bath shape on a chequered floor.  The original design has a round bath which is covered with black sugarpaste, but I try not to use black very much as it has so much colouring added it doesn't taste very nice.

About half way through making the cake, Melissa and I had a little panic that Sheena might be offended by giving her a cake with a hippo on it.  At this stage I'd already spent hours making it and they were due to arrive soon so there wasn't really time to change plans.  I just had to hope that it would be cute enough and she would appreciate the effort we had gone to.  And the main thing that matters is the taste right?

Luckily Sheena loved it, and really liked how long Miss Hippo's eyelashes were.  She took the cake to her family gathering the next day and they all gave really great feedback.  What was interesting was that the cake actually got more chocolatey and moist the following day -  I think that might be because of the beetroot.

There are some other quirky cake designs in the book that I really want to make.  I guess I'll just have to wait to miss another friend's birthday to try one out ;o)

Wimbledon Cupcakes - a birthday gift for Laura

I was a wee bit late with my edible birthday present for my friend Laura this year - mainly because she'd just kindly volunteered to take one of our large carrot and honey cakes off our hands that we had left over from the Kemptown Carnival and I was in danger of enforcing cake overload on her and her boyfriend.

So a couple of weeks later I flicked through my recipe books to try and find something special with a little twist that would match Laura's bubbly personality.  I couldn't see a recipe for a champagne cake which was my initial thought, but a strange connection fizzed in my brain as Melissa had the tennis on in the background and I stumbled upon a recipe for strawberries and cream cupcakes my lovely new Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache cookbook.  They perfectly encapsulate Wimbledon in cake form and I love how the cases look like little tennis skirts.  I have no idea if Laura even likes tennis but hoped that she would love these cute little cakes and they seemed too topical to resist.  I knew the hidden strawberry jam in the middle would be right up her street so tennis fan or not they would still make a great gift for her. 

These cakes also have the added bonus of being better for you - they have no fat added to the cake batter but instead use grated courgette and ground almonds giving them a wonderful flavour and texture.  But what I think makes these cakes special is how all the elements of the cake, mascarpone icing, fresh strawberry and strawberry jam in the middle all balance and work together really well to become greater than the sum of their parts - if you close your eyes you're transported to Wimbledon sitting on the freshly cut grass of Murray Mount eating strawberries and cream - divine.

Bakeathon for Picnic In The Park tomorrow

Yes the time is nigh and I've got my apron on and sleeves rolled up for a full marathon day of baking in preparation for tomorrow's market stall.  Already ticked off the list are the Sticky Jamaican Ginger Cake, Cinnamon and Courgette Cake and Nigella's delicious Italian Almond and Carrot Cake, and as I write there is a Luscious Lemon Trickle Cake rising nicely in the oven.
As you may have come to expect from me, this is no ordinary Lemon Cake I'm baking.  The surprise ingredient in this one is.... mashed potato.  I admit, this may sound like a cake catastrophe in the making, but I trialled the recipe as a thank you gift for our lovely friends Sheena and Nathan at the weekend and it was a real success.  The potato keeps the cake beautifully moist and it also happens to be naturally gluten free which is a bonus for the stall tomorrow. 

Even though this cake's a winner on the plate, getting it there is another matter.  This recipe is like a naughty toddler that doesn't want to do what it's told.  Perhaps it was the fact I was trying to make the cake with a hangover the morning before we were off on a 4 night camping trip and still hadn't packed that was the problem.  The mixture kept splitting when I added the eggs and I had to employ my secret trick of using the hairdryer to warm the outside of the bowl of the mixer to help it emulsify (this was advocated by my tutor at pastry school so I'm not completely barking!).  Then the mixture took about half an hour longer to cook than the recipe said it would and so it helped make us nearly an hour late to meet our friends for lunch.  I gave it some stern words that it had better behave as I strapped it in to the back seat of the car and prayed that it would be good on the 4 hour drive to Wales. 

Luckily it was and Sheena and Nathan seemed to love it.  Potato is such a mild flavour that you really can't detect it at all and it gives it a wonderful texture.  But if you're still a sceptic why not come by tomorrow afternoon to Queen's Park and try a slice?!

It's nearly ready to come out the oven so I must sign off and get back to the kitchen - 48 muffins, 32 brownies, 16 flapjacks and a Wholemeal Honey Cake still to go :o)

More recipe trials - eggless chocolate cupcakes

To the untrained eye, it might seem like I am trying to avoid redecorating the spare bedroom today, but since the oven was already hot from the Sunshine Marmalade Flapjacks coupled with the fact it gave me an excuse to use my lovely birdie cup measures, I decided to tackle an intriguing vegan chocolate cake recipe I found on the internet yesterday.

There are quite a few versions of this cake on various websites, but the Suzanne Martinson recipe I plumped for was highly recommended on a forum so I figured it must be a good one.  What's handy is that you're likely to have all the ingredients in your cupboard already, even the egg substitute, which by the way is vinegar.  Yep, I agree it sounds disgusting, but if you know me by now, this only made me more curious to try it.  I already have quite a few cake recipes on the list for the next market so I thought I would try this recipe as cupcakes instead.

Try as I might, I just couldn't imagine how using cider vinegar in place of eggs in a cake recipe could possibly taste good let alone still deliver the indulgent richness a good chocolate cake really needs.  But like Alice down the rabbit hole I went and if they were going to go wrong then nobody needed to know.  The first thing I was pleasantly rewarded with was how simple and quick it was to make the batter - no bingo wing busting creaming butter and sugar, no worrying about the mixture curdling as you add the eggs, just sift together the dry ingredients, stir together the wet ingredients then mix.  Easy peasy.  Then finally add the magic ingredient of  the cider vinegar which curiously fizzes up as it reacts with the baking soda and makes you feel slightly like a mad scientist.  Then the only stressful bit is making sure you get the mixture in the oven as quickly as possible after adding the vinegar.

I was suprised that the cakes rose much better than I had expected in the oven, and just 20 minutes later I was rewarded with 11 brunette beauties (in hindsight a couple were overfull so this mix would make 12 comfortably). 

Because I have the winning combination of being both greedy and impatient I had to try one while it was still hot from the oven.  Curiouser and curiouser, these cakes are really good!  Who would have thought it.  I might even go as far as saying they are better than most chocolate cakes I've tried - they're moist, rich and chocolatey, not too heavy and you would never know they were made with vinegar instead of eggs.  I also tried one once they had cooled down in the name of quality control and can confirm that yep they are still yummy. 

I have to say though, the raspberry and chocolate glaze that Suzanne recommends for the top is pretty horrible and I'm glad I tasted it before ruining the cakes with it.  I don't think it really needs a glaze in any case.  I might consider adding some dark chocolate chips though for a bit of added texture.

So my only dilemma now is whether I promote these cakes as vegan on the stall - will this put non-vegan people off buying one?  I'll have to put my thinking cap on again to come up with a good name :o)

Kemptown Carnival - our first market stall a success!

I have to start off this post with a huge THANK YOU to everyone that came down to support our Brighton Bakery stall at the Kemptown Carnival yesterday.  We had a really great day, met some lovely people and even managed to make a profit so I think we can proudly say that our first market stall was a success.

After a marathon baking session on Friday using as much local produce as possible (sourced from the excellent Park Farm Shop on the outskirts of Brighton) we arrived to set up our stall with over 200 sweet treats for sale.  As this was our first stall we could only guess at how much to bring, but based on 10,000 people coming to the carnival and the hefty £110 stall fee to cover we hoped that 200 was a good number that would at least cover our costs.

We didn't get off to the best start when the table we had hired from the carnival turned out to be 4 times the size we had ordered, but luckily we had a lovely stall neighbours Brighton Peach who lent us a larger tablecloth and we were good to go.

It was a bit slow to begin with, but we figured 10am wouldn't be prime cake buying time (I think I might be in the minority of people that like cake for breakfast).  It was a shame that we were right at the far end of the street so we didn't get anywhere near the footfall of the stalls in the middle, but there's not much we could have done about that.  After lunchtime things really picked up and we had a pretty steady trade throughout the afternoon.  At about 4.30 we dropped our prices which really helped - maybe we had been a bit ambitious with our prices to start off with so we will definitely look at that next time as we did end up bringing a few things back home with us.

We had a few strange looks from people when they realised our cakes were made using vegetables, but once they tried some of the free samples of our beetroot brownies they were won over and they started to fly off the plate and ended up becoming our best seller of the day.  Our Lemon Marmalade Flapjacks and Sticky Jamaican Ginger Cake also went down really well.  But I was surprised that the Chocolate and Banana Muffins didn't really tempt anyone and the Chilli Chocolate Cake (which I thought would be a real winner) didn't sell very well either.  Maybe it was the prices, maybe the portion sizes or maybe it was the choice of products but we will definitely look at changing them next time.  We also had several people come up and ask us if we sold any vegan cakes so I will be doing some research and there will be a vegan option for our next stall.  Speaking of which, the next event we will be at is the Picnic in Queen's Park on 26 June (see how seamlessly I slipped that one in??)

Despite my best Apprentice-style selling efforts dropping everything to £1 for the last 20 minutes we did have quite a lot leftover so anyone stopping by at ours in the next couple of days will be leaving with a goodie bag of treats.  And even though we had leftovers, we managed to sell more than £200 worth of cakes which covered the cost of the stall and ingredients and gave us a small profit.  If we take into account my labour costs for baking and Melissa and my costs for running the stall on the day then it's not very impressive, but this was always going to be a learning experience and we knew we were never going to make a huge profit.  It was also about more than making money - we wanted to get our name out to promote the bespoke cake side of the business and as a marketing tool I think it went very well.  Lots of people picked up cards, we made a few contacts and I even got 2 minutes on the radio to plug our business so I think we can be pretty pleased with that.

So lessons learned, bring on the next stall!

Brighton Bakery at Kemp Town Carnival this Saturday!

I am very excited to announce that Brighton Bakery will have it's first stall at the Kemptown Carnival this Saturday 4 June.  As I write this post the delicious aromas of a Sticky Jamaican Ginger Cake that's in the oven right now are filling the kitchen and I will have to do my best not to eat all the produce before it gets to market ;o)

All our cakes will have a bit of a twist (as you may have picked up from reading this blog) - expect appearances from my Beetroot Brownies, Peanut Butter & White Chocolate Blondies and Apple Crumble Muffins as well as some new recipes including a Latin American Chilli Chocolate Fudge Cake I can't wait to make.

If you're in the area it's free to get in so please come along and show your support - if you're not able to make it then wish us luck and do a dance for the weather gods to pray for sunshine :o)

See you there!  x

Could this be the weirdest bread recipe ever?

I like to keep a recipe scrapbook of cuttings taken from magazines and Sunday supplements and recipes I've made up myself - it's a great frugal tip for a free recipe book. I rediscovered the first recipe scrapbook I made when searching for something completely different in one of the boxes we are still yet to unpack despite having moved in more than five months ago. 

You may have noticed that I tend to lean towards the quirky and leftfield when it comes to the things I pick to bake.  Like a magpie that's spotted something shiny, if there's a recipe that uses unusual ingredients or that sounds so bonkers you wouldn't think it would work - that's the one I'll choose.  Roll on the bread recipe that calls for treacle, instant coffee, cocoa powder, carrot and caraway seeds among its 13 ingredients.  This recipe for Black Bread looks like it was cut out of the Guardian Weekend and I thouroughly recommend it for entertainment value alone.  Let me walk you through the bizarre instructions for this loopy loaf.

Black Bread Recipe
150g spelt, rye or wholemeal flour
7g easy-blend yeast
1 tsp muscovado sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tbsp instant coffee
75g treacle
3 tsp fennel, caraway or cumin seeds
50g unsalted butter
150g coarsely grated carrot, parsnip or celeriac
325g strong white flour
2 tsp fine sea salt
Oil
Sesame seeds

1. Whisk 225ml cold water and 50g of the spelt/rye/wholemeal flour in a saucepan, bring to a boil, tip into a bowl and leave until lukewarm.

2. Stir in the yeast and sugar, then leave, covered for 45 minutes.

3. Heat 100ml water with the cocoa, coffee, treacle, butter and fennel/caraway/cumin seeds until the butter has melted.

4. Leave until lukewarm then add to the yeast mix along with the grated veg.

5. Add the remaining flour and salt and stir into a soft sticky mess.
6. Rub a tablespoon of oil on both the worksurface and your hands, and give the dough a ten second knead.

7. Return to the bowl and repeat the ten second knead twice more at ten minute intervals.
8. Shape into a ball, put on an oiled baking tray, sprinkle with sesame seeds and put the whole tray inside a clean plastic bag or bin liner.  Leave in a warm place for 45 minutes to an hour.
9. Preheat the oven to 220C.  Cut a deep cross in the top of the dough and bake for 20 minutes, then drop the temperature to 180C and bake for 15-20 minutes more.  Voila!

The verdict - a really lovely, unusual loaf of bread.  I used caraway seeds which gave the bread quite a strong flavour, so I might try fennel or cumin seeds next time.  The texture of the bread was really lovely with a soft and springy crumb, perfect for sandwiches as it doesn't crumble easily.  It keeps very well - much longer than a regular loaf - although it doesn't really toast properly.  Not an everyday bread, but definitely worth the effort and it is now top of my list for the most bizarre bread I've ever made.

PS. In case you've not made bread before, to highlight how wacky this recipe is I will tell you that the basic bread recipe only uses flour, yeast and water, which you simply mix, knead, leave to rise and bake.  Boring!

Secret mushroom muffins

A few people have suggested that being in Brighton I should try offering some *special* cakes which might go down well with a certain local clientele.  I hope that I'm not disappointing readers of this blog by revealing that the secret mushrooms in these savoury muffins are good old chestnut mushrooms from the local greengrocer.

A little while ago my friend Big Nick sent me a picture for some broccoli muffins as a cool idea for the bakery.  I was so intrigued that I scoured the internet for the recipe and discovered one of my now favourite blogs kitchenist.com.  Ever since then, my mind has been running at tangents trying to conjure up my own variations on a theme.  This is my first attempt, adapted from Ele's broccoli recipe, and they weren't half bad...

Secret Mushroom Muffins Recipe
12 mushrooms (each one should fit comfortably within a muffin mould, but remember they do shrink a bit)
275g softened butter
50g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
300g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp fresh thyme, leaves picked
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
60g mature cheddar, grated

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.  While the oven is preheating, clean the mushrooms and brush with a small amount of butter.  Place the mushrooms face down in each hole of your muffin tray and pop in the oven for a few minutes until just tender, then set aside.
2. Using electric beaters, whip up the butter until very soft, then add in the sugar and beat again until light and fluffy.  Crack the eggs into a jug and break them up slightly with a fork, then add a little at a time to the butter, beating well after each addition.  If it starts to split then you can add a large pinch of the flour which will help bring it back into shape. 
3. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, thyme, turmeric and salt, then fold this into the butter and egg mix with a spatula, followed by the grated cheese.
4.  Make sure you've taken the mushrooms out of the tin (but you don't need to bother cleaning it), then place a heaped tablespoon of the batter in each muffin case.  Next stick a mushroom stalk first into each yellow pile and top with another spoonful of batter, spreading the batter out to fill each case and making sure the tops of the mushrooms are well covered.
5. Bake the muffins for about 30 minutes until golden brown and firm on top.  Don't worry if some of the butter bubbles out during cooking, I think this helps make a crispier crust.  Cool the muffins on a wire rack before serving as a decadent teatime treat or a mid-morning lunchbox snack at your desk.  Mmmm.

One thing I would remember for next time is not to use mushrooms that are too small as they do shrink when you cook them and I think it gives a better effect if they fill more of the muffin.  I also think the recipe would work well with dried thyme (but use just 1 teaspoon) if you don't have fresh thyme to hand.  It's also very easy to halve the recipe if you only want to make 6 muffins as they are at their best eaten within a day or so.

Watch this space as I have plenty more surprise muffins to follow - they all sound good in my head but I hope I can translate these ideas into good recipes...

Happy baking x

Purple haze

I was sitting on my new purple sofa, drinking Ribena, eating a purple beetroot brownie and looking at our newly painted purple feature wall thinking - maybe the purple has gone to my head?!

Beetroot...in a brownie??

Melissa and I both really like beetroot but for some reason they never seem to fit into any of the meals we're making (and I had also promised Melissa that I wouldn't make her eat the bright pink beetroot and vodka valentine's risotto again).  While we were at Shoreham Farmers' Market the other weekend Melissa and I had signed up to a local veggie box scheme and three earthy purple cricket balls from our first delivery had been sitting in our fridge for a few days calling out for me to use them in something good. 

I remembered a cookery programme I saw a while back when Diana Henry made a beetroot and chocolate cake that looked absolutely delicious.  I thought, if it could work in a cake, then why not a brownie?  So I googled "beetroot chocolate brownie" and top of the results was a recipe from BBC Good Food for a beetroot brownie.  It called for 500g of beetroot, which was exactly the weight of the three beets I had in the fridge, so figuring it must be a sign I decided to whip up a batch.

It always feels like a comedy recipe when you have to put on rubber gloves before you start but I have to say this is one of the weirdest recipe's I think I've ever made!  The gloves are necessary to prevent Lady Macbeth syndrome from the deep purple juices that seep out of the beetroot, which you peel, chop then microwave until cooked.  Then while they're still hot you stick them in the food processor with butter and a rubbley pile of bashed up dark chocolate chunks and blitz until everything has pureed and melted together.  I have to say it did not look appetising at this point...

You then whip up some eggs and sugar and fold in the mixture, adding flour and cocoa powder at then end.  What you end up is a pinky brown beetrooty chocoatey mush that looks like this:

Utterly unsure of how this was going to turn out I stuck the tray in the oven, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.  20 minutes later they were cooked to perfection but Melissa and I were both none the wiser as to whether they would taste any good!

Once they had cooled I cut them into squares and carefully lifted them onto plates (as they are quite delicate) for an after dinner treat.  The texture of the brownies was beautiful - they managed to be rich, chocolatey and moist but still quite light at the same time.  I was a bit unsure of the taste on the first bite as you can taste the earthy tang of the beetroot, but they are surprisingly really moorish.  Usually one brownie is more than enough for me but I would have quite happily polished off a second one.  And as they are only half the fat of a regular brownie it wouldn't be a total sin to do so....

Our friend Jo is down for her birthday tonight so we now have some beetroot birthday brownies for her to sample for an unbiased verdict :o)