Adventure in Berlin

This time last month I was recovering from my trip to Berlin with Lancs NW Senior Section. We had travelled to Berlin to take part in the NW England region’s “Adventure in Berlin” – a day of running around the city, visiting checkpoints, collecting stickers and doing activities. Our group arrived a few days early to get some more sightseeing in too. This also went towards my Queen’s Guide Award as I was First Aider – plastering up blisters and keeping heat stroke at bay!

Mars Bar Loaf Cake

Before I knew it, it was time for August’s Clandestine Cake Club. This time the theme was “Cakes from Near and Far”. This was because we had extended our invite to members of other clubs and also one special guest, Lynn Hill, founder of the whole thing! I got a chance to chat to her briefly about the virtues of big cakes and she signed my copy of the Clandestine Cake Club book. The weather was lovely and the venue suited sitting outside. We also had the treat of a community choir to serenade us while we munched.

After a failed attempt at sourcing flavours from the Far East (more on those in the future I hope) I finally settled on somewhere even further away – Mars! The recipe I used can be found here.

Method

This was a bit like the chocolate cola cake in that it involved melting the butter and chocolate first and then adding it to the rest of the cake ingredients. When pouring the mixture into the tin, bits of Mars Bar were added in layers. Then it’s into the oven for a usual amount of time.

The icing is also made be melting yet more Mars Bars and cream together then pouring it over the cake. The final touch was some chopped Mars Bar on top.

Results

My cake got a lot of positive comments at Cake Club. It may have had something to do with the snazzy sign that I made for it; just to make sure everyone got the reference! Also it was very very very chocolaty which always goes down well. The small piece I ate (because you have to pace yourself) was pretty yummy.

Because I only iced it hours before the meeting and it was a hot day the icing was very drippy and sticky. Also the outside was a little darker than optimum. (I have now purchased an oven thermometer and hope that this means I can stop blaming the oven for my mistakes.)

Score: 7.5/10

Brioche Rolls

With a rare free weekend I decided it was time to tackle something a bit more tricky and a little less cakey. I decided upon Lorraine Pascale’s Brioche Rolls. I like brioche bread and the instructions ran to two pages!

Method

First, lots (6!) eggs are beaten into flour, yeast and sugar. I used my electric mixer with the dough hooks. Then quite a lot of butter is mixed into the dough, gradually in several lots. As the instructions say this is one of those recipes where it you don’t panic when it looks horrible, keep mixing and it’ll get there and it did. Once it was done the dough was a lovely and soft and smooth.

The dough is then separated and made into the roll shapes. I used my big muffin tin to mould them into. The rolls have a little bobble on top; a bit like a cottage loaf. Then they were left to rise for several hours. The warm weather we’ve been having lately means that I didn’t have to put them anywhere special, just on the kitchen counter!

After the rolls had risen they were washed with a little egg and placed in the oven to bake.

I put half the dough away in the freezer to bake at another time.

Results

My first, and really stupid, mistake was that I had bought salted butter. I’m not even sure why salted butter exists. I missed out the extra salt in the recipe and hoped that it would be ok. The taste wasn’t great and rolls were pretty salty. In some ways it kind of worked, a bit like where you get salty and sweet popcorn in the same bag.

The mixing process would have been a lot easier if I had a stand mixer. The dough was really tough and needed a lot of mixing – it was a good arm workout!

I think the rolls were in the oven for a little too long. The outside was possibly a little too brown and inside was not as soft as the brioche that you get in the shops. Presentation wise my rolls were definitely not as petit or neat as Lorraine’s. But they looked good in a big and chunky rustic kind of way. I’ll have to see if I can get the freezer batch in a better way.

Score: 5/10

Double Lemon Drizzle Cake with Poppy Seeds

The hot weather this month inspired me to bake a cake that is fresher than you average chocolate concoction and so I went for a lemon drizzle with a difference. I love lemon and poppy seed muffins so thought that I would try out this similarly flavoured cake from Delia. The recipe can be found here. I bought the biggest and poshest lemons I could find. Also, I made this bake at my baking assessor/mentor Rodina’s Liverpool flat.

Method

The recipe is a standard all in one with lemon zest, lemon juice and poppy seeds added in. A lemony syrup made of lemon juice and sugar is poured over the cake when it’s still warm. Finally more sugar and poppy seeds are sprinkled over the top.

Results

The flavour of this cake was VERY lemony. However if I was to make it again I would make quite a few changes. Firstly, although the recipe called for large lemons, I think the ones we got were far too large. This meant that the mixture was very sloppy. Also the flour that we used was from a basics range. I’d never noticed the difference before, but this stuff was really fine which I think also added to the thinness of the batter. This meant that the cake didn’t rise that much, and with the excess syrup it got very crumbly. We didn’t have a loaf tin either so I had to make the cakes in two smaller round tins. Finally I think that there were far too many poppy seeds in/on it.

Score: 5/10

Soundtrack: The build up to the Wimbledon Men’s Final (Go Andy!)