The Queen of Hearts

The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts all on a summer's day;

The Knave of Hearts he stole the tarts and took them clean away.

The King of Hearts called for the tarts and beat the Knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts and vowed he'd steal no more.

Unfortunately in this Queen's kitchen there were no tarts for the Knave to steal since the Queen dropped the tarts when taking them out of the oven and the jam went all over the floor, her oven glove, her apron.....

It was a right Royal mess and the only place for the tarts was the bin. 

The Knave was very sad.

The End.

Silicone bakeware - good or bad?

I'm in two minds about this one. I've had some silicone cupcake cases for a while now and generally they seem to work quite well, although they do create more washing up. But recently I've been given a silicone loaf tin...

I've used it once before and it seemed ok, so today I thought I'd use it to bake some teabread in and save myself having to line my normal loaf tin. Unfortunately the results were less successful - it seems the sides of the silicone 'tin' weren't strong enough to withstand the expansion of the teabread and so I have been left with a bulging monstrosity...

We haven't eaten any yet but I'm hoping it tastes better than it looks and in future I will either have to find a way to support the sides of the silicone 'tin' or just stick to my normal tin!

Types of baking

I have recently discovered that I adopt different styles of baking dependent on circumstance and my mood. I've already blogged about "replacement baking" when I used baking as an excuse not to run in the rain and then the other weekend I started off with "preparedness baking", followed by "emergency baking" when the prepared cakes got used for an alternative purpose.

The story went as follows: it was Mother's Day weekend and I'd invited my in-laws for Sunday lunch, but thinking they were likely to stay for some tea in the afternoon I decided to be organised and make some cake on Friday evening. I opted for orange fairy cakes, a nice simple recipe - first time I'd made it with orange although I've made it using lemon in the past - and once I'd finished icing them and topped them off with little sugar flowers, they looked most appropriate for a Mother's Day tea I thought!

But then Saturday morning came and we had a phone call from our friends and their three children saying they were in the area and so perhaps they could pop in to say 'hello'. Always lovely to catch-up with friends, but not so good on the organised cake front since these are the friends from where the name 'zoecakes' originated and so it would have been very poor form not to share my latest creations with them. There was no time for baking pre-visit since we had gym plans (the cakes don't work themselves off you know!) and so the MD cakes were brought out. Happily they went down very well, but then the rest of my afternoon was spent in "emergency baking" mode - I opted to make Rock Cakes for a change, as it seemed a little dull to be making the same cakes twice in as many days, not to mention the fact that I didn't have any more oranges. Can't really go wrong with Rock Cakes and so my good daughter-in-law halo remained intact by the end of Sunday afternoon, other than of course the geocaching scuffles with my father-in-law after lunch, but that's a whole other story...

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!

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...

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... ;-)

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!