Hummingbird at home

A couple of weeks ago a friend gave me a copy of the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook and since then I have been looking for an excuse (and the time) to try out some of the recipes. Well the time hasn't really materialised but it being Mr W's birthday today provided the ideal opportunity for me to dust off my apron and whip up some cupcakes as a birthday treat for him last night.

I had prepared well, buying the right size eggs, full fat milk and taking the unsalted butter out of the fridge to soften prior to going to Brownies. However things started to unravel slightly as I was carefully measuring out the ingredients and realised that I was a bit short of cocoa powder. Not a lot I could do about that at 8.30pm on a Tuesday night with limited time to bake the cakes in secret before Stephen got back from running club and so I carried on regardless. After some gentle whisking the mixture was ready for transferring into the cupcake cases - I was a little surprised at how runny it was and there didn't seem to be enough to fill the cases to the specified level, but I refrained from panicking and instead put the tray in the oven. 20 minutes or so later they were done and didn't look too bad, even if I say so myself.

I then left the cakes to cool, persuaded Mr W on his return from running club that upstairs was way better than downstairs and that I definitely wasn't baking, before whipping up the frosting. Vanilla flavoured due to the aforementioned lack of cocoa powder! After five minutes of whisking the frosting as prescribed in the recipe my arms felt quite tired from holding the electric whisk in place (thank goodness I hadn't had to whisk manually!) but the results were worth it - obviously I had to have a little taste before putting it on the cakes, a girl wouldn't want to posion her hubby! A sprinkle of chocolate sprinkles and the cakes were finished - time for bed!

Fast forward to this morning and birthday tea in bed - add a candle to one of the cupcakes, locate matches to light said candle, a little bit of out-of-tune singing and you have one happy birthday boy!

Baking bagels

Mr W has been eating a lot of bagels lately as an extra snack to help get him through the day without ending up totally exhausted and so today I thought I'd see if I could surprise him with some homemade ones....

Well, when I say 'homemade' I actually mean 'homemade with a bit of help from the breadmaker', but the thought was there.

This was the first time that I had ventured beyond the recipes in our breadmaker's User Guide to those in a breadmaker recipe book given to me many moons ago by my godmother. She gave me the book when we mentioned that we were thinking of buying a breadmaker, it took us at least another 2 years to actually buy said breadmaker and its been another 2 years of owning the breadmaker until I've actually been brave enough to try something different!

Things started well - adding ingredients to the mixing bowl in a specified order and selecting the 'dough' option on the breadmaker. A couple of hours later and the dough was ready to be shaped into bagels and these left to prove for 20 minutes. But then came the tricky bit - cooking the bagels in sugary water prior to them going in the oven. As soon as I put the first three in the pan of boiling water the join split and rather than being round like a bagel they instead looked rather like uncooked croissants. Not being one to panic I fished them out of the pan, turned the heat down prior to putting the next batch in and gave the join an extra squeeze together before dropping them in the water. Happily these all stayed semi-round and I gave the ones that split a little help in looking more like a bagel by pinning them together with a cocktail stick. 15 minutes or so in the oven and out came 8 golden bagels - not as uniformly shaped as those from the supermarket, but a taste test later this afternoon showed them to be perfectly edible. Now just got to wait and see what the bagel connoisseur thinks!

Mum's cakes

Everyone's skills have to come from somewhere and I have to say that, although a lot of my cake-baking has been picked up along the way, the definite inspiration for my baking efforts is my Mum. And I was reminded this weekend that I definitely still have a long way to go.

When I was small (and probably even not so small) I can remember there always being cake in the house and in the last couple of years I have been trying to follow this example so that we always have some nice snack to take along to work and keep us going through the morning without having to resort to bought biscuits, snack bars, etc. filled with preservatives, E numbers and who knows what other nasties. However with only two of us in the house I am not a great offerer of choice, so imagine our excitement this weekend whilst visiting my parents to be offered a whole range of sweet treats to choose from to go with our cup of afternoon tea.

Mum had really surpassed herself and we may have even been offered four choices but my eyes had slightly glazed over and I was starting to salivate by the time she got to the Dundee Cake option after hearing about Coffee Sponge Cake and Mars Bar Rice Crispie cakes. 'Well, I shouldn't really as I'm going for a run in a bit' I virtuously proclaimed, 'well, maybe just something small for energy, perhaps a rice crispie cake...' But then out came the gloriously light (well that was my justification for eating it!) coffee cake with layers of butter icing in the middle and on top. Virtue went out of the window and soon I was happily tucking into the coffee cake with everyone else!

Incidentally I did go for my run eventually and I did get try to the Mars Bar Rice Crispie cake later in the weekend but somehow even with a long three day weekend I ran out of time to check out the Dundee Cake...

Cupcakes

I went to The Hummingbird Bakery yesterday. I've been curious about it for a while having read and heard lots about it and so took advantage of a trip to visit a friend in Notting Hill to also visit this infamous cake shop.

I found the shop quite easily nestled amongst the antique shops, jewellery stalls and other quirky shops on Portobello Road and was slightly surprised by its diminutive size. A couple of tables out front for those who want to enjoy their cakes right there and then, and then a small interior with some glass fronted displays showing the days offerings - a few 'specials' and then trays of their 'standard' cupcakes all beautifully iced. I chose a selection of the latter which were quickly boxed up for me to take as a gift for my friend. The store is known for its red cupcakes but I couldn't see any available and to be honest I'm not totally sure if the idea appeals to me or not - I like my cupcakes light in both texture and colour!

Happily my friend suggested that we try some of the cupcakes when I arrived and I can confirm that they tasted as good as they looked. Lovely deep and fluffy sponge cakes topped with a generous swirl of creamy butter icing (I'm sure that I could make cakes just as tasty but my butter icing would definitely let me down) topped with some coloured sprinkles or piles of chocolate vermicelli! What on earth is there not to like?!

Being a 'local' my friend reported that there is always a long queue outside the shop on a Saturday when they walk past having bought their fruit and veg at the market, a fact for which she assures me she is grateful as otherwise it would be all to easy to succumb to the temptations of these wonderfully indulgent treats!

Isn't it just common sense?

So, I've been watching the new show on BBC2, 'Economy Gastronomy', and have realised that maybe I am in a minority when it comes to food and doing the weekly shop. In case you've not seen the show, it features two chefs trying to help a family reduce their large weekly shopping bill but without depleting the quality of the food they are eating, and in some cases improving it! One of the things they advocate is cooking one big meal that can then be transformed into something else on two other days, ok so I don't do that but the other things they proclaim all seem pretty logical and obvious to me...

One, plan what you are going to eat a week in advance. Maybe I'm a bit anal but if you don't know what you're going to eat how to do you know what and how much food to buy? Which leads nicely on to

Two, make a shopping list and only buy what is on your list. Ok, so I don't rigidly stick to the second part of this rule, but if I didn't have list when I went shopping the impulse buys would be far worse and I'd also probably end up forgetting vital ingredients. Actually I sometimes do this anyway when despite the planning I inadvertantly manage to omit a crucial ingredient from my list.

Three, homemade is better and cheaper than ready-made. Surely this is a no-brainer? I'm no expert on ready meals and how long they take to cook but I'm guessing if you don't have a microwave it's around 25-30 minutes. A quick flick through a modern cookery magazine (or even the freebies they hand out in the supermarkets) and you can find countless simple recipes that proclaim to be ready in 15 minutes. Ok, so the reality when you do it in your own kitchen is a little bit longer but you're still only talking the same time as your ready meal takes to cook and surely the satisfaction of eating something freshly prepared easily outweighs the effort involved in preparing it. Homemade cakes and cookies take a bit more effort compared with shop-bought ones, but ultimately they taste better and there is a certain joy in the whole process of mixing the ingredients and then the aroma of baked goods filling your house.

So these three things I've been doing for years - part of the joy of planning what to eat a week ahead means that it gives me time to flick through my magazines and find new recipes to try out meaning we don't eat the same old things all the time. It also enables me to plan combinations of meals to ensure that I'm not wasting food (I'm not perfect at this but I try my best not to let too many things take on a life of their own in the fridge). The shopping list allows me to make a smooth trip around the supermarket without needing to double-back to pick up things I've forgotten, well in theory it does. Inevitably life doesn't run smooth and sometimes that crucial ingredient isn't available and so I have to rapidly re-assess my meal plan and re-trace my steps to collect the appropriate ingredients. And although I love the homemade bit, I'm not religious about it and do buy some ready made items, like pizza and chicken kievs, where the effort involved in making them is too much. Plus, don't tell my mum but even more occasionally I will buy some shop-bought cake, although only things like Battenburg which with its checkboard design I can imagine being a nightmare to make....

Too many cookbooks spoil the broth

Last night I made some carrot cake - a wonderfully simple recipe that basically involves throwing everything into a bowl and mixing it together. Ok, so there are three stages to the throwing everything in - first the sugar, oil and eggs; then the carrot, raisins and orange rind; and finally the flour, bicarb and spices - but even I, champion of effortless baking, wouldn't call that complex. The baking tin has to be lined but there's a cheat's way of doing that and the icing is a straightforward mix of icing sugar and orange juice, which I'm sure makes it healthier than your normal carrot cake with it's traditional cream cheese icing, so all in all it's the perfect recipe.

Well it would be, if only it didn't always take me ages to find the recipe before starting to make it! My collection of cookery books is vast but that's not the problem - if it was in one of those I'm sure I would be able to remember which one of those a recipe I like so much featured in. No, the problem is that it is a recipe I printed off the internet and so is on a scrappy, through use, piece of paper which needless to say gets slipped into one of the many cookery books or even worse into one of the many cookery magazines I've kept for the odd recipe that I've made and liked. I do have a notebook (actually make that 2 notebooks) in which I stick recipes that I've found from various sources but unfortunately it doesn't get updated very often and the carrot cake recipe has never made it into the book - another carrot cake recipe that I don't like has made it in for some inexplicable reason, but the favoured one hasn't! I'm sure last time I made the cake and put the recipe away I actively thought "I must put it somewhere safe so that I will able to find it again easily". Clearly that mantra was a waste of time as the recipe was only located after I'd been through 2 shelves worth of cook books and magazines, which now leads to the question 'just how many cookbooks does 1 girl need and how many is too many?'

Is it worth the effort?

Just done my first baking since starting this blog, well to be precise I am half-way through making some caramel slice, sometimes known as Millionaire's Shortbread, and to be honest starting to thing that in this case it is more trouble than it's worth to make your own. Generally I am a huge advocate of 'homemade' being best but I think there are some things that are best left to someone else to make. Take Battenburg Cake for example - there is not much better to cheer you up when you feel a bit down than the glorious squares of yellow and pink sponge with a strip of marzipan holding them together, but the thought of actually making it myself is quite horrendous. I am a cook who likes to keep things simple - the fewer the ingredients and the less steps involved the better.

Anyway back to my caramel slice, it's one of my favourite cakes and frequently my cake of choice when in coffee shops and faced with an array of treats to choose from, but this is the first time I've ever tried to make it. A quick bit of research in my cookbooks found a recipe that looked fairly simple and only involved ingredients which I had in the cupboard, so when I got home from work tonight off I went. Unfortunately the recipe is in a cookbook produced by my parents' local sailing club and so hasn't been through the scrutiny and review that your standard recipe book recipe would go through, meaning that some of the instructions are a little vague - knead the butter, flour and sugar together (I opted for the easy option of throwing it all in the food processor and hoping for the best) and cook in a medium heat oven (I assumed 180 deg C). However the base seemed to turn out ok despite needing to stay in the oven for much longer than the recipe suggested. But then came the caramel layer - 6 minutes of stirring the recipe said. Hmmph, if only! 20 minutes of stirring, sieving (had a little accident when I didn't stir enough and had too much heat) and 2 dirty saucepans later I finally had something that vaguely looked like caramel. Slapped it on top of the base and now waiting for it to set so that I can add the chocolate layer which goes back to where I started - it all seems like a lot of bother for something that will no doubt be gobbled up in minutes. And I haven't even mentioned the trail of destruction that I've left for Mr Zoecakes to clear up in the kitchen... ;-)

Not my favourite time of the week

So, it's Sunday night, the weekend is almost over and thoughts of the week ahead are looming. But tonight I feel surprisingly mellow - maybe it's the wine we had with dinner, or maybe it's because I've not really acknowledged that it's the end of the weekend yet... However I think it may be because I've just watched 'Coast' - call me a geek but I just love the mix of scientific fact and human interest stories that these programmes entail. Tonight's show went from Whitstable to The Needles on the Isle of Wight passing lots of places that we've been to along the way. It started with a second world war fort in the sea off Whitstable the design of which was recycled for the first oil rigs in the North Sea, then they went to Dover and learnt about the old hovercraft service across the Channel that became financially unviable once duty-free was abolished. There were beach-launched fishing boats and crazy golf in Hastings, an underwater electric railway in Rottingdean (rather disappointingly the train actually ran above the water on stilt-like legs - I had visions of something running along the seabed so you could see all the fish as you travelled along), and finally the story of how the Isle of Wight became an island. All quite fascinating and I'm looking forward to the next episode when they break away from our coastline and visit the Normandy coastline....

The beginning

So I never thought I'd be one to write a blog, but then I thought why not?! Today is my favourite day of the week - Friday, the start of the weekend! The day when I have high expectations of every thing I am going to achieve in the weekend and then as the weekend progresses I realise that there aren't enough hours in it and so rather than doing to boring chores I end up making cakes instead.

There's something very satisfying about making cakes - the mixing of the ingredients, the placing of the cakes in the oven and then the smell when they're almost ready! The best cakes are the simple ones, the ones where you can just throw everything into one bowl without a need to rub fat into flour or melt butter in a pan, etc. No cake baking for me tonight though, just a bit of wine whilst watching an old movie!

Happy days!