Raspberry And Coconut Loaf Cake

Hello! For the eagle eyed of you out there, I have been a little slooow with the blog posts of late. I actually have a backlog of travel posts that I have been meaning to put up for some time, although that time just never seems to come about (although, you are very welcome to check out my Instagram over here!! -----> unless you are viewing this on your phone, in which case, I have no idea where you would find it, nor would you really care, I'm guessing *nervous laugh*).

So this weekend I decided to bake something. Yay! So off I wandered, to the local Co-op (no, they did not sponsor this post) for ingredients. I found their baking magazine, I found eggs, and I found their coconut and raspberry loaf cake.

Strawberry, Lime And Basil No-Bake Cheesecake

I have to admit, I've been off the cake market for some time. I'm not having a cake affair, I promise (I am not cheating on cake with vegetables!), but I have been busy with exams and work and the like.

Cake, will you be my best friend again??

I've entered my recipe into the Rix Aga Inspired Recipes Competition for June! The theme this month is strawberries, so I think I'm in pretty good shape here :) 

Easter bunny frosted lemon & orange Pimm's cake (with step-by-step instructions)

Did you give up anything for Lent? My housemate and I decided to do coffee (her) and chocolate (me), and whilst I was all "yeah as if you'd be able to go without caffeine for two months muahaha".... it turned out I couldn't go without cocoa for two days.

But I digress. This easter cake has no chocolate. It's orange and lemon and teeny bit of Pimm's in it, because, why not, and spring is almost (sort of) here (sometimes)! Hurrah!

However, the ingredients do call for a large quantity of icing sugar. Like, about 2 kg of the stuff.

Two days later, I've still got the sugar shakes.

*shakes about the room a little*

Anyone for Pimm's?

Go on, ask me what time it is.

Do it. Pleaseeeeeee. Now. Ask me ask me ask me.

...

Oh, what time is it, you ask?

Well, I think, it might just be.....

...PIMM'S O'CLOCK!!

Chocolate Mousse 'Mirror' Cake

Okay, so I thought it was my blog's 100th post today. Turns out, its the 99th. But I'm celebrating anyway.

A few weeks ago, I made a chocolate mousse 'mirror' cake that I saw in Patisserie Valerie, and it was just so pretty that I just had to make it. (See it here, what do you think? Do you think I did a good job? Yes??). 

The idea of being a 'mirror' cake is so that the chocolate glaze on top is meant to so so shiny that you primp in front of it. This didn't exactly happen with my version, but I'd rather not see my face covered in flour and chocolate anyway! 

But if you want the real deal, you should probably check out Pat Val. I've fallen in love with their mille feuille cake.

Oh oh and good luck to those running the London marathon today! I can see you out of my bedroom window and I am cheering you on!!!

Matcha Green Tea and Raspberry Cake

Follow me on Twitter (@puddingpielane)! I have finally made the transition and I'm (shock!) quite addicted (shock!). Well, it's really just another excuse for me to post food photos everywhere. 

It's just a good thing my photos are so beautiful. Ha.

Strawberries and cream cake

Is anyone else gutted that James didn't win the Great British Bake Off?? James, you were my favourite. So to keep in theme with the baking, I've given some pointers on how (I do this) to channel your inner baker. This doing the following:

- Think about food all of the time.

- Think about baking food all of the time.

- Think about scoffing, ahem, 'taste checking' all of that food you've just baked. All the time.

- Write a food blog...? ...Nope, just me? Am I alone on this one?

Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake Brownies (Green & Black's recipe)

So I don't know how long (if at all!) you've been following my blog, but I've kinda cheated.

Blackberry & Almond Meringue Cake

Quickly! Quickly! Make this before summer is over! 

Lemon Getting-What-You-Want Cake

A few weeks ago I found a (fiction) book called 'Meet Me At The Cupcake Cafe', by Jenny Colgan.

Chocolate and Orange Tart

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I'm not back at uni and swamped with work so have been running around like a headless chicken (actually, I wish. I have been sat at my desk buried in my notes like a bookworm). This is probably why it's taken me about a week to write this post. I keep writing a bit, going back to do some homework, coming back to this, and then wondering what on earth I was on about...

Happy New Year! (Lady Baltimore Cake)

Happy New Year! 

Firstly, may 2012 bring you happiness and joy and all that jazz :)

Secondly, I shall sum up most important (um... well, kind of) I have learnt (through food, because after all, this was what my blog was originally about... "a journey of self discovery through cooking, chocolate and Other Important Things") in 2011:

1) The longest I can go baking tee-total is 2 months. After that I start having spasms and everything starts looking round and spongey and smells of vanilla.

2) A cake can make good bribe. "I'll bake for you if you let me copy your essay!" (then give them a Sainsbury's Basics fairy cake with a bit of homemade frosting. Muahaha.) Not that I've ever done this.

3) If you ever think 'you need to get off facebook and put your face IN A BOOK. Then made a book cake, and put your face in it. 

4) I discovered bento boxes. And I liked it.

5) You can write with 99% dark chocolate (see?). So when you become a top secret MI6 spy you can write notes with chocolate and then eat the pen. No danger of fingerprints being caught then.

Bento Box: Walrus(es Law)

The title of this post is dedicated to all those Economists out there... you know who you are!

(It's something called Walras' Law, which says that excess supply in one market must be matched by excess demand in another so it balances out. Kind of like Ying-Yang. Kind of not.)

And to any budding Economists out there (you know who you are!) I challenge you to make this bento box before you apply for an Economics degree, see how dedicated you are ;)

Blueberry American Pancakes

****If you stumbles across here because of pancake day, here are 10 facts I found out, courtesy of *ahem* The Mirror. Full link here*****

1. The first recorded pancake race was in Olney, Buckinghamshire in England in 1445.

2. The first pancake recipe appeared in an English cookbook in the 15th century. And it’s a tradition that continues all over England. It is said to have originated in Olney as a housewife was so busy making pancakes that she forgot the time. When she heard the church bells ringing for mass she ran out of her house, still carrying her pan and pancake. Olrney still has a pancake race every year.

3. The largest number of pancakes tossed in the shortest amount of time is 349 tosses in two minutes, which was achieved by Dean Gould at Felixstowe, Suffolk in 1995.

4. The longest race in the quickest time was held in Melbourne, Australia. Jan Stickland covered 384m in 59.5  seconds on 19 February 1985.

5. The largest pancake ever made and flipped measured 15.01m wide, 2.5cm deep and weighed 3 tonnes. It was made in Rochdale, Greater Manchester during August 1994.

6. It is customary in France to touch the handle of the frying pan and make a wish while the pancake is turned, holding a coin in one hand.

7. On Pancake Day in Newfoundland, Canada people place items in the pancake batter before it is cooked to tell the future for family members. If it happens that boy receives item for a trade, it means he will enter the trade but if a girls receives item from a trade, it means she will marry a person from trade.

8. Maple Syrup was originally a sweet drink, discovered by the Algonquin Indians who collected sap from Canadian sugar maple trees and then boiled to produce the delicious beverage.

9. Taking the easy way to make your pancakes is not a new thing. The first ready-mix food which was sold  ommercially was Aunt Jemima pancake flour. It was invented in 1889  in St. Joseph, Missouri. It wasn’t very popular at the beginning.

10. Pancake Tuesday is known as Carnivale in Italy which comes from the Latin for ‘goodbye to the flesh’.

***************************

I decided one weekend to go all out, and cook breakfast. It took two hours. Two hours of my precious weekend time when I can have a lie in and don't have to think about stocks or exchange rates and stress about the red numbers on the computer screen.

...nope, I think I was still doing that. Its's an infection! Like chicken pox!

But it never goes away!!!

Bento box: Froggy faces

It's Kermit The Frog! Or as my friend said when I asked him what he thought I had made this time, 'oh, that's obvious, it's Kermit The Toad'.

It's like that time when my other friend was reading the paper and asked 'what's a Wayne Rooney?'.

I love my friends :D

Brown Sugar Fresh Fruit Cake

Sorry I've been so rubbish with my blog lately. I thought that after I'd finished my exams, I'd have loads of time to bake and blog and read things and occasionally do Other Meaningful Things.

But I was wrong!

Investment banking internships take up a lot of time :(

Especially when you have to be in work by 6.45am. (And no, we don't get to leave at 5pm). However, I quite like what I'm doing and learning...

I think.
I hope....
I pray.

I mean, I better, since I have 8 more weeks to go. So, sorry for not catching up with reading your blogs out there, but don't sorry I still click through and drool over the photos! :) Oh, and thanks for those recommendations about places to eat on my last post, hopefully one day I'll actually get to try some of those places out!

Meringue Roulade With Chocolate

I'm worried that since exams I've gotten less... funny :S I mean, not that I'm saying you guys were falling-off-your-seats-lolling about at my blog (yes, lolling, not 'haha'-ing, because if so, you are living in the dark ages), but I'd just run out of sarcasm (mostly pointless, sometimes witty) and jokes (mostly at myself, sometimes at someone else) to keep even myself entertained :O

I blame it on the exams. I blame it on the stress. I blame it on the lack of sugar I've been eating recently.

But it's fine, this meringue if full of it! I'll be back to normal in no time!

Fruity Fishy Cakey...Thingy

"I'm a little yellow fish, in the deep blue sea, won't somebody save me?"

That song takes me back to the days of B*Witched and N Sync, and when people wanted to Reach for the stars. Basically, before the days when 16 years olds sang about babies. 

And then I was going to say I'm bringing some old skool cool into baking, but then that just sounded weird.

SO.....

I mean, it's not like I'm obsessed with fish or anything, it just happens that I made sushi cake a while ago, and this recipe is from the Green & Black's cookbook. So obviously I had to make it!

It did say I could make it any shape I wanted to, so why didn't I made a chicken? Or a sheep?

Chocolate Crusted Lemon Tart

I get cranky if I haven't baked for a long time.

When I'm cranky, I don't want to bake.

Well. Thank god I managed to break that vicious cycle.

Chocolate, Pear and Ginger Tart

I'm kind of cheating again, I did make this tart in January when I met up with some friends, and it was my 'thank you for hosting present'. And then when I got home I was going to blog about it, because it was from my Green & Black's cookbook!

But then this phenomenon called laziness took over and I decided to take a nap instead.

I mean, it's not like I've been sleeping for the last two months, I just never got round to it ;) But it's perfect because I've performing in a dance show tomorrow and in between pirouetting around the stage at trying to calculate multiple game theory equilibria (sadly not simultaneously, now THAT would be time saving), I haven't really had time to bake (I know, I know, if my cake tin had emotions, it would be weeping from neglect).

But anyway, here it is, in all of its ginger and pear and chocolate glory, ready to be baked by wonderful people like YOU! :)