Whoopie Pies

This was a new cakey experiment... apparently the latest thing from the US in the cake baking world - although based on an old tradition.  I have to say that I didn't feel the love in their creation as much as with cupcakes, but that I did think they looked cute when finished, and they certainly went down well at work! I found it faffy piping the cake components, and then faffy making the marshmallow based filling, but other than that it was fine...  I don't think I'll be making them again in a hurry though!

Manchester tart...

In between Christmas and now there hasn't been much baking in the cupcake-fest household - although I did make some functional goodies including a large tray of caramel shortbread (no picture though), a Madeira cake, and some plain flapjack.  However, I was inspired to make a Manchester tart the other week after seeing one on the Hairy Bikers/Bakers programme - the one on the programme included bananas which I thought was wrong, as the version I remembered from school was a pastry casing with jam on the bottom, then a good slab of custard, topped with coconut.  I made mine based on how I remembered it.  I confess now to *buying* the pastry case (although I think the aluminium tray gives it away) and the custard is made with powder, but there's a part of me that thinks that all of that contributes to what it is!

Russian Tea Cake - Different, interesting, but not entirely successful...

This cake had a lot going for it in terms of ingredients and make-up - it had cake in many many layers, custard and somewhat bizarrely, TEA.  The recipe said rooibos, but on the basis I don't like it I substituted Earl Grey (which I do like, I like very much!).  So, the idea was simple, bake the cakes (I managed to do two batches of four at a time in the oven, rather than the two at a time suggested by the recipe), make the tea flavoured custard filling, and sandwich the lot together.  So I did this, it looks pretty impressive in a kind of leaning tower of cake kind of way.  But, I have to say it was overall disappointing - the cake layers were dry, it was a nightmare to cut, and the custard, which actually tasted really nice, was like rubber.  For future reference I think I will cook the cakes for less time, consider soaking them with some of the tea, and omit the additional cornflour from the custard mixture, as I think this will help it all to 'sog' together a bit better.  This version didn't even make it to being the next day's dessert with custard it was so bad!  I knew I should have stuck to my original plan and made the Nigella Autumn Cake!

Custard Creams

This is Nigella's recipe and copied exactly in the Nigella style - even down to making the little pin prick pattern round the outside with a skewer (which does take ages...) if I had a smaller heart shaped cutter I would have just used that to make an impression in the larger heart shaped biscuit, but I don't, so pin prick it was!  These are my husbands favourite and this was the main reason why I made them - although I am a huge fan of custard and my small child clearly enjoyed them as he managed to pinch one or two from the table while we were setting up!