Christmas Cake

I was going to make an impressive Christmas Cake extravanganza - like the previous year's ice castle arrangements complete with lights and things, however, we got overtaken by the season and it just didn't happen!  I did, however, make the usual selection of cakes for gifting, although only remembered to take a photograph before we gave the last one away, so only have the one photograph...

Similarly, I made a huge pile of mini sweet mince - some iced, some topped with stars and some with no topping, and only remembered to take a picture of the last one!

December Birthday Cake for Hubby!

I asked him what her would like for a birthday cake and he said the Nigella recipe ginger cake - fair enough - his birthday, his cake.  here it is... complete with gingerbread reindeer and pine trees!

It's been a while since I've been here!

I can't believe it's March already and I haven't put on the Hubby's Birthday Cake, the Christmas Cake or the Birthday Cake I made for my child!  In the meantime here are some cupcake things I got for my Birthday in November!...

I also got these pyjamas...  http://thesweetcupcakecompany.blogspot.com/2009/09/cupcake-pyjamas.html

and a couple of cupcake aprons!

But for the most part I spent a lovely day with friends drinking tea and eating cakes!

Eggless apple cake

The recipe for this cake was eggless, and would have been dairy free, but instead of using coconut milk (which I didn't have) I used regular milk.  I also filled it with cream which is not specifically dairy free... the recipe book recommended some branded dairy free whip stuff which really didn't sound very nice at all.  The recipe for the cake made three layers in the tins that I had, but given the depth it would have looked out of proportion and been very difficult to cut.  The cake was very appley, nice and spicey and I had sprinkled some granulated brown sugar on the top which made it reminiscent of the country slices made by a certain Mr K which we used to have on train journeys when I was little.

Cheesecake

Tempted as I was by the Nigella cheesecake recipe, I made the recipe out of the new cake book - it worked very well and the cheesecake was delicious.

I tried to find a link to the cheesecake song, which is hilarious, but I couldn't find it - I'll dig it out and see if I can get the details as it's well worth a listen (it's here! ignore the video though - I don't know what that's about).

The cake stand that the cheesecake was on was a recent aquisition from everyones favourite swedish furniture supplier...
You can also glimpse the crispie cakes I made aswell - these aren't getting a separate mention as they were very simple and not overly glamorous, but did provide another dairy free alternative.

The guest slot...

For my own cake-fest I have to confess I didn't do all of the baking - special mention goes to my Mum who is the Queen of Scones, and who also provided an enormous lemon meringue pie (made with real lemons and NOT the lemon-bath-pearl thing from the packet mixes...), and the swirly topped chocolate cake.  We didn't manage to get a picture of the lemon meringue pie as it was put out last and eaten first before we could snap it with the camera, but we did get the scones and the cake!

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!