Gingerbread Traybake

Back to Mary Berry's traditional cakes this week.  A gingerbread traybake with crystallized ginger in the icing.  A good, tasty, filling cake.

Victoria sponge

It is my birthday this week and as is tradition baked a cake to take into work with me.  

So often these cakes are chocolate monsters, so I decided mine should be a nice light Victoria Sponge filled with raspberry jam and butter icing.  This is one of the easiest cakes that I know how to make and always gives a good result.  If work don't like it, then I know someone who will.  

Jane's fruit cake

Personally I like a nice light fruit cake, but he likes it dark and heavy so this recipe is perfect.  I don't know who Jane is but this was a very easy cake to put together with a little help from Ken.  It then took 3.5 hr's to cook!
It's one of Mary Berry's so of course it worked fine and tastes good, if a little heavy for my liking.  

Crunchy lemon syrup loaf

Tomorrow is Children in Need and to help raise some cash for them the University is holding a cake sale.  I won't be buying as I am trying to loose a little weight, but that doesn't stop me from joining in - they still need something to sell.

Ideally I would make a chocolate cake like the one in the last post, but cakes like that don't work so well when wrapped in cling film, so I've made a crunchy lemon syrup loaf.  It is another of Mary Berry's recipes and one that is easy to make and tastes wonderful, if you like lemon.

I am particularly pleased with the loaf case, as it took me ages to find some and it worked perfectly.  Hopefully it will keep the syrup under control.  (this cake is very moist and can get very sticky.)

So if anyone is in Guildford tomorrow morning there will be cakes for sale in the Lecture Block from 1200.

Can't go wrong chocolate cake

Over the years I've had several chocolate cake recipes, that have worked well, but this is the best of all of them.  As the title suggests, it just can't go wrong.  As my recipe is a photocopy of a photocopy I'm not 100% sure who's it is, but believe its a Mary Berry recipe.

Basically everything is put in a large bowl and mixed together.  That's it.  The icing is equally easy and depending on how warm it is when applied to the cake can give a variety of textured finishes.  I like to pour it on hot so it dribbles down the sides.

I added Maltesers this time for decoration but forgot how hot the icing was and they soon melted and rolled off!  Doh!  Still it was a good cake for a party, even with milk chocolate Malteser skid marks!

Butterfly cakes with chocolate icing

I’m not very good at decorating cakes.  Most of my cakes are practical looking, with maybe a little sugar sprinkled on top or chocolate icing left to melt and drip off the sides.  I am more interested in it tasting good than faffing about with icing bags etc.

But I do remember having a go at piping icing on a Christmas cake as a kid.   And so when I saw a set of icing nozzles in a shop recently I had to get them.  But what to try icing?

I decided to make some plain butterfly cakes with butter chocolate icing; this way I could try piping the icing without it mattering too much if I messed it up.  It would also make them a little easier to transport for lunch.  I used Mary Berry's cake and icing recipe which made good little cakes, although I would have liked them to have risen a little better, and I found the icing a little soft so some of it did not hold its shape.

The cases are silicon and can be used again and again.  Brilliant.