1. My dreams of opening a cake shop have been indefinitely put on hold whilst I follow up other areas of opportunity. However I have not stopped baking…

2. The Royal Moose is reborn! The silver lining of the sadness that has been caused by my dear friend Jordi returning to Canada once more, is that we are starting our baking blog back up. Please follow us there! I will try and post my posts on here as well, but I will undoubtedly forget, and if you go to The Royal Moose then you get Jordi as well, who is, quite frankly, excellent in all ways.

3. Due to my ever-expanding areas of interest, I have decided to no longer limit myself to writing about food and baking, but will in fact be making a more regular effort to write about lots of things, including music and books and my long-held but frequently ignored desire to learn how to sew, as well as the monthly videos I have started making. YEAH. Also there will be lots about how much I love the sunshine. Because I do. You can see some of that here.

One blog is never enough. Maybe I will finally be satisfied with having three and trying to remember to post on all of them. You can hope…

I always took autumn fruit for granted, as something that just came with my house. But many years ago the plum tree was cut down, and about a month ago I moved out, missing the blackberries completely, without apples readily available, and not even knowing if the pear tree gave us any fruit this year. So I’ve had to make my own autumn fruit season instead. My first discovery were figs. Figs are something which I have always been unsure of – something which until a few weeks I don’t think I had ever consumed (which meant that I kind of assumed I wouldn’t like them). But figs are GREAT. The first time I bought them I didn’t know whether they were supposed to be soft or not, so picking them out from the market was an interesting process (I decided in the end that as the majority of them seemed to be squidgy, it was reasonable to assume they were supposed to be like that). I took them home and baked them in honey for 10-15 minutes and then ate them with goat’s cheese. So good. After that I made fig jam, which I’ve yet to try, but looked pretty good (and was super easy, my first jam-making experience).

Plum and pear crumble is something else I have been making and consuming on a reasonably regular basis, and I’m planning on making more pear based things in the near future.

Greengages, which are technically only in season during August and September, are still hanging around on my local market, which makes me so happy, because greengages are one of my favourite fruits, but they’re so rarely available to me. I found an excellent recipe for greengage and elderflower muffins in my Scandilicious recipe book, and they were fantastic. The recipe says you can substitute the greengages for plums, which I’m going to try next (I have a lot of elderflower cordial to use up).

In other news, today I registered myself as a sole trader. I am working through applications for the council to come and check my kitchen. I started a Facebook page. Self-promotion is one of my failings in life, so I don’t know how much it will be used, but if you want to like me, click here. All these things feel equally overwhelming and exciting, and I’m not sure where the next few months will lead, but hopefully they will be mostly good. Watch this space.

Greengage and Elderflower Muffins

12 ripe greengages

40ml elderflower cordial

3 medium eggs, beaten

150g caster sugar

200g plain flour

50g ground almonds

1 & 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarb of soda

1/4 tsp salt

200g creme fraiche

50g butter, melted

1. Line a muffin tray with paper cases and preheat the oven to 220C/Gas 7.

2. Quarter the greengages, remove the stones and place in a bowl. Drizzle the elderflower cordial over them, stirring to ensure they’re well coated.

3. Mix the eggs and sugar together. Put the flour, ground almonds, raising agents and salt in a large bowl and stir to distribute the raising agents evenly. Make a well in the middle and pour in the egg mixture, the creme fraiche and melted butter. Stir 4-5 times to mix everything together, and then tip in the greengages in their elderflower cordial. Mix 4-5 times more. Don’t overmix the batter.

4. Fill the cases three-quarters full, then sprinkle extra sugar on top (brown is definitely best).

5. Bake on the upper-middle shelf for 10 mins before turning the heat down to 190C/Gas 5 and baking for a further 5-10 mins or until the muffins have risen well and are brown on top. Cool on a wire rack. These keep for a couple of days in an airtight container, or you can freeze them in foil for a couple of months – reheat from frozen at 150C/Gas 2 for 15mins.

I’m really bad at using the cookery books I already own – working in a bookshop doesn’t help this – there are always new books with new recipes in. I’ve resolved to spend Monday going through my existing cookery books in order to stop myself from buying one I’ve now got my eye on – Rachel Allen’s Bake. The other day I made the poppy seed cake from this book, and it is excellent. Kitchen disasters happen though, and mine for this one was that I completely messed up the icing – let me just say that the picture of this cake in the book is fantastic, and I was so disappointed when mine basically ended up looking like it had been topped with scrambled eggs. The icing was vanilla buttercream, but wasn’t your conventional icing sugar + butter, instead it was a custard + butter. I have never made custard before, and this certainly wasn’t a good first attempt. It didn’t help that I was cooking dinner at the same time as trying to make this icing, so my attention wasn’t fully on the custard any way. It seemed to be going reasonably well until I added the butter too early and it went lumpy and disgusting. Also probably not helped by the fact I decided that I should just use a spoon instead of a whisk. Error.

Despite all of this, and the rather buttery consistency of the icing, it still tastes pretty good. I added some lemon juice and lemon zest because I thought that would be a good added flavour (I am a fan of lemon & poppy seed muffins), and it certainly does.

150g butter, softened

100g caster sugar

3 eggs, beaten

100g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

75g poppy seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 170C, gas mark 3. Butter a 20cm/8in cake tin and line with greaseproof paper.

2. Cream the butter in a large bowl or in an electric mixer until soft. Add the sugar and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs, beating well between each addition.

3. Sift in the flour and baking powder, add the poppy seeds and stir until combined.

4. Spoon the mixture into the tin, bake for 25-30 mins or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

5. Allow the cake to stand for 5 mins before carefully removing it from the tin and on to a wire rack to cool.

Icing

150ml milk

125g caster sugar

2 egg yolks

175g butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Place the milk and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a gentle boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

2. Whisk the egg yolks in a small bowl, then pour the milk onto the yolks, whisking continuously. Return the mixture to the pan and cook over a low-medium heat, stirring all the time with a wooden or silicone spatula until it thickens and the mixture just coats the back of a spoon – this may take around 10 mins. Do not allow the mixture to get too hot or it will scramble. Pour into a bowl or jug and allow to cool slightly.

3. Meanwhile, place the butter in a bowl and whisk until soft and light.

4. Gradually add the almost cooled (room temperature) custard to the butter, whisking all the time, until it is combined. Add the vanilla extract and mix.

Spread icing over cake, or cut in half and use it to sandwich the cake together.

The day before I moved, I received my third Foodie Pen Pal parcel. I can see that this process will never get old, because already I’ve received such diverse things from each person who has been my FPP so far. Anna was my pen pal this month, and filled my box with so many wonderful goodies. I told Anna that I was a baker, but I really wanted some savoury stuff, having only received sweet items before, and she truly delivered on that! The first thing was loads of homemade shortbread, which was delicious and buttery and I enjoyed enormously.

Next, a small sourdough loaf, which Anna recommended I eat as toast with the beautiful Scottish Chanterelle mushrooms she sent (and I did).

Anna had recently been in Devon, and visited the South Devon Chili Farm, where she bought me some orange chili chocolate – which is fantastic, and has a real kick to it! She also gave me some tiny tiny chill peppers from her chili plant (much less spicy than the chocolate!). 

Finally there was a dried sausage made in a local smokehouse (yay for local food!) which I have been working my way through, putting on pizza and eating with bread. I love charcuterie meats, and this was great. Thank you so much Anna!!

I had a housewarming party on Saturday, and as a result spent the day in the kitchen preparing plentiful amounts of food for my guests. I made lemon and rosemary chicken, potato wedges, broccoli and stilton quiche, spelt bread, sugar saucer cookies (which I had sent to my Foodie Pen Pal, Nick), and salted caramel tart. I wrote about the salted caramel tart on my other (now abandoned) baking blog, here. It’s one of my favourite things both to make and to consume, and I think everyone else felt the same (on the consumption part). Having my own kitchen is wonderful and inspiring and makes me want to bake all the time (which is great except it means I never want to come to work anymore).

My friend Seb has resolved to start making all his own bread, and I think I am going to join him on this – tomorrow is going to be a bread baking afternoon. The spelt loaf I made for the party tasted great but looked awful, so I’m going to work on that a bit… as well as returning to the safe white bread recipe in Nigel Slater’s Appetite. More updates soon.

This time it was a little different – the one I’d made for Ryan was in loaf form, but I wanted to make a proper round cake with icing etc – I found another recipe, this time using ground almonds. It was so quick to make, and this one only took 40 mins in the oven, which was even better. I had meant to do the glaze for it last night, but whilst waiting for it to cool decided it would be a good idea to watch the West Wing in bed, after about 20 minutes of which I fell asleep, only to wake up three hours later and find it was 1am. Not really icing making time for me…

Luckily the glaze is as fast to make as the cake, so this morning I got up, heated some cream and melted the chocolate in it, and bam, done. I think chocolate torte will now be my go-to emergency cake, because not only is it quick and easy, but it tastes really good too.

Sweden was incredibly beautiful. It was good to spend some time away, and now I’m back and ready to bake more. I love autumn, and I’m really looking forward to being able to make lots of apple, pear and blackberry based things soon.

Recipe for Glazed Chocolate Almond Torte

300g dark chocolate

250g butter

5 eggs

4 tbsp sugar

100g ground almonds

150g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

Glaze

100ml whipping cream

125g dark chocolate

1. Preheat the oven to 160C or Gas Mark 3. Melt the chocolate and the butter in a saucepan until smooth. Let it cool.

2. Beat the eggs with the sugar until foamy. Add the ground almonds, flour, baking powder and melted chocolate and mix. Grease a 23cm cake tin and pour in the batter. Bake for 40-45 mins. Let the cake cool in the tin and then remove.

3. Heat the cream in a saucepan over low heat and add the chocolate. Stir until melted and smooth. Pour the glaze over the cake and serve.

So my second Foodie Penpals parcel was from Cara. I got my parcel quite early in the month, thanks to Cara’s apparently far better level of organisation than mine. Having requested baking related items, Cara put together a lovely parcel for me - it contained: butterfly cake cases, edible butterfly decorations, lemon cake mix, a book of Favourite Norfolk Recipes, and most importantly, fudge!

I finally got around to using the cake mix the other day, and made a delicious lemon cake, topped with lemon buttercream icing, and of course, the butterfly decorations. I haven’t got around to using the recipe book, but hopefully on my return from Stockholm I will be making more time for baking, and therefore have time to use some of the recipes from it. I like that I’m getting locally themed things from my Foodie Penpals so far, it’s nice to receive things which are specific to certain parts of the UK.

Last night I made my third cake for Outspoken Delivery, thanks to the kindness of my friend Catherine. This time a guinness cake was requested, and I happened to find a recipe for such a cake in my Scandinavian baking book, Scandilicious, by Signe Johanson. I was disappointed that I’m not going to get the chance to eat any of this cake, because it smelt fantastic, and can only imagine it will taste just as good. Unfortunately my oven was being its usual unreliable self yesterday, which meant the supposed 35-45 minute cooking time turned into 1hr 15. Not overjoyed with that. But contemplating the possibility of baking it in two tins next time which will hopefully mean it will cook quicker. Or of course I may have moved in to a new house and will have an oven that actually works. This recipe calls for a special Norwegian cheese called brunost – the only place I could find it was in a Scandinavian store in London, and to buy 250g of it when I only needed 30g seemed a bit pointless, as it was fairly expensive. The recipe says you don’t have to use it, so I have opted not to.

250ml Guinness

250g butter

75g dark chocolate

50g cocoa powder

30g grated brunost (optional)

30ml espresso or strong coffee

150ml soured cream

2 medium eggs

350g light brown muscovado sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

275g plain or spelt flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

1/4 tsp sea salt

ICING

125g butter, softened

150g icing sugar

150g full fat cream cheese

3-4 tbsp whisky

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas Mark 4 and grease a 23cm round cake tin.

2. Warm the Guinness, butter, cocoa, chocolate and brunets in a medium saucepan over a low heat until melted together and foamy. Remove from the heat, stir in the espresso and soured cream and set aside.

3. Beat the eggs, sugar & vanilla in a bowl until pale golden & fluffy. Mix the flour, raising agents and salt together in a small bowl. Gradually whisk the Guinness mixture and dry ingredients in to the beaten eggs in stages, alternating between wet and dry and whisking as you go until everything is mixed together in a dark, smooth cake batter.

4. Pour the batter in the tin and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 35-45mins (or 1hr15 if your oven is completely rubbish), or until the top of the cake feels springy and firm to the touch and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out cleanly. Allow to cool in the tin for 15mins then remove from the tin and leave to cool completely before icing.

5. Cream the butter and icing sugar together until fluffy, then add the cream cheese, 3 tbsp of the whisky and a tiny pinch of slat and beat until smooth. Taste to see how strong the whisky flavour is and add more to taste. (I thought 3 was plenty). You can either ice the cake straight away or put the icing in the fridge to firm up before spreading evenly over the top of the cake.

Time to sleep now. Airport in 7 hours. Stockholm in 10. Back soon…

I decided to go to Stockholm for a few days, so that’s happening on Thursday. Between now and then I will be posting about my second month of Foodie Penpals and a Guinness cake I need to make before I go away. Once I return a more regular pattern of updating will take hold, because I need to get into better habits. 

It had to be a carrot cake, simply because this cake has been praised (and rightly so) by many people when made by both me and Laura. The recipe comes from Peyton & Byrne’s British Baking book, which incidentally, is one of the best baking books I have ever come across, full of British classics with easy to follow recipes and always excellent results. They definitely aren’t the kind of recipes you want to be using when you’re in a rush though – these are not quick cakes, but cakes that take a bit of time and love, which are always worth the wait. The carrot cake recipe is definitely a good one to start with….

Laura’s cake required extra decoration, which meant I used some of the leftover icing, added red food colouring to it (which as a result made it pink (sigh)), and wrote BYE all over it using the icing pen my friend Emily got me for my birthday. There is an amusing in-joke that me, Laura and our friend Julian have about the repeated saying of bye, (which I won’t explain here) and her leaving has allowed the repeated use of this joke until she threatened to hit me. It only seemed appropriate that her cake carry that joke too.

My second endeavour of yesterday was a rather more ambitious one. Commissioned again by my friend Catherine to make a birthday cake for one of her colleagues at Outspoken, I decided to do something ridiculous and difficult because it was the first chocolate cake recipe I found that I wanted to make. This is definitely the first cake recipe I’ve ever seen that involves the use of Coke, it was also the first three-tiered cake I’ve ever made. Not as straightforward as you might think when you’re an idiot and you put the tins too close under each other in the oven and then spillage occurs. As a disclaimer I’d just like to point out right now that this cake turned out absolutely fine and nothing went disastrously wrong apart from the reasonable amount of cake mixture that ended up on the bottom of my oven. These things happen. There was also so much mixture that I ended up making four layers for the cake, and still had some mix left over. This was lucky actually, because I took one of the cakes out of it’s tin too early before it had cooled properly and it promptly split in half, so I had a spare one to use rather than having to attempt a rescue mission. As I say, these things happen….

This recipe comes from the Outsider Tart’s Baked in America book. In the book they give recipes in imperial, metric and cups, but to save time, I’m just going to write it in metric (also some of the measurements are a little off perhaps because 6floz does not equal 80ml ever)

340g unsalted butter

350ml Coke (not diet!)

65g mini marshmallows

85g dark chocolate, chopped (it says unsweetened, so I just took that as dark chocolate)

530g plain flour

115g cocoa powder

2 1/4 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3/4 tsp salt

675g sugar

80ml canola or other flavourless oil (I used sunflower, which was as flavourless as I could find)

1 tbsp vanilla extract

5 large eggs, at room temperature

300ml buttermilk, at room temperature

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Butter three 9 inch cake pans, line the bottoms with baking parchment.

2. In a medium saucepan, place the butter and Coke over a medium heat until the butter melts. Add the marshmallows and chopped chocolate and stir continuously until the chocolate and marshmallows are melted – the latter takes longer than you’d think, but constant stirring will help expedite things. Let the mixture cool for about 10 mins.

3. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarb and salt. Set aside.

4. In another large bowl (they say in an electric mixer. I don’t have one, I used my human strength), thoroughly combine the sugar, oil and vanilla (on a medium speed in a mixer). (Reduce the speed to low if using a mixer) add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and stir until evenly incorporated. The mixture should have a consistent colour. Alternately add the flour and the buttermilk in 3 or 4 additions, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and mixing only until just combined. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared pans.

5. Bake for 35-40 mins or until a knife inserted into the centre of each comes out clean. It’s best to rotate the pans after 20-25 mins of cooking time has passed.

ICING

(Unlike the previous recipe, this icing quantity is exactly the right amount)

340g milk chocolate, chopped

175g dark chocolate, chopped

340g sour cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt all the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally to hasten the melting. Remove the bowl from the heat and whisk in the sour cream and vanilla. Let the icing cool to room temperature, stirring every once in a while – avoid the urge to beat it to cool it faster as that will change the texture. Timing will vary depending on how warm the chocolate was before adding the sour cream, but for the most part, you’ll be ready to go in about 30 mins. It sets pretty fast, so if it hardens just gently reheat it over a pan of water again.

That’s the cake all wrapped up and ready to go. Despite the somewhat stressful cooking of it, it did turn out fine, I just hope it tasted as good as it looked.

Next time – making cake for Ryan because I made him late leaving work. Tip: don’t bet people cake that you’ll manage to let them leave on time.

I wasn’t very helpful when Sophie asked me if there was anything I liked – I think all I said was that I preferred baking, so I was excited to see what she had chosen for me. Here is everything together:

The first thing I noticed was the fudge. I am a lifetime lover of fudge – the crumblier the better in my opinion. This fudge is absolutely delicious, and even better because each piece is a different flavour (I’ve managed to stop myself eating all of it so far…)

Then there’s local Pembrokeshire honey, and Welsh raspberry conserve. I love honey, not least because it tends to keep my hayfever at bay. It’s great to have locally made honey as well, because most honey that is sold in the UK is imported from elsewhere in the world – so supporting local honey producers is really important for helping the declining bee population. And raspberry is my favourite jam.

And still more things! Oatcakes with Caerphilly cheese, incidentally (or perhaps not) recommended to be eaten with Laverbread! (Which if you didn’t know is a Welsh delicacy made from seaweed).

Lastly, but far from least, Sophie made me Welsh cakes! I’ve never had them before, but they were delicious! They’re kind of like flat scones, apart from with currants and spices in them, and they’re so soft and tasty and mmmmmm. So good. Gone way before the fudge. 

So there you have it, my first Foodie PenPals package. I’m excited to continue now, this has been so good!

On a more general note, baking has been non-existent of late, as I have been doing things such as travelling to Somerset to go to the best wedding ever, drinking a lot of wine, and mourning the ever-nearing day when my dear friend Laura moves to Paris. But I have leaving cakes and birthday cakes to make, so hopefully baking will be back on my poorly managed schedule by the end of the week.

I never got around to taking a photo of Herman. There are still pieces of him left, but it’s just not the same now that he isn’t whole anymore. He did taste incredibly good though. The recipe asked for more cinnamon than I am personally comfortable with (I don’t especially like cinnamon except when in small amounts so it’s not the overpowering taste. However this does not stop me wanting to try that stupid challenge where you eat a teaspoon of cinnamon and have to try not to throw up), so I put less in, but due to whatever, there were still bits of it that tasted very heavily of cinnamon. I worked around it, it was still awesome. So I wouldn’t mind if another Herman worked it’s way back around to me at some point in the future (Laura this is not an invitation for you to return one of your parts to me). 

Herman was the only cake that I baked this week, but I received other cake, and plenty of baking-related items for my birthday – cake tins, cupcake cases, icing pens, etc (as well as lots of other lovely things). The first cake I received was made by Laura and Julian, chocolate and banana flavoured, which was lovingly decorated with an owl (made of banana and chocolate buttons) by Laura. I don’t know what it says about me that the majority of things I received were either owl, cat or cake related. 

I also received vanilla berry cake with lemon icing from my sister today, which was equally awesome.

Something I received from my Scandinavia-loving friend Ffi today, was a Scandinavian baking cookbook – including lots of exciting bread recipes, like chocolate soda bread, and Kefir spelt sourdough – and cake and pastry recipes, such as Swedish princess cake, “success tart” and Danish sesame and poppy twists. All look incredibly good.