Christmas Eve turnip salad

We had dinner with a few friends on Christmas Eve. Among other things, I made a salad with small turnips. I was excited about these when Alvin dropped them off to me among other CSA goodies - I had some once before and roasted them, which was the wrong thing to do - I realised after doing it that I should have followed my gut and made salad. This latest lot were beauties: white and perfectly smooth, with lovely, green, healthy leaves. The leaves tasted lovely - slightly peppery, less so than rocket, quite similar to mizuna, also in texture (quite juicy and big, not tough in the slightest). (NB I thought the cinnamon and cranberries made it Christmassy?).

1 bunch of small (~ping pong ball sized) turnips, greens and roots separated, trimmed, washed and dried
juice of 1/2 a lime
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp maple syrup
salt+pepper
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
handful pumpkin seeds, toasted
handful dried cranberries
petals of 3 agamous marigold flowers

Scrape the turnip roots if they need it, then slice them thinly. Put in a serving bowl with the lime, vinegar, oil, maple syrup, cinnamon, salt and pepper, toss and leave while you prep the rest of the stuff. Roughly chop the turnip leaves. Right before serving, add the pumpkin seeds, cranberries, turnip leaves and marigold petals to the turnip root mixture and toss.


This was prob the best thing I made. Really into the turnip leaves and roots: both are lovely and softly peppery / crisp. And the marigolds were probably the last thing I'll harvest from the balcony this year.

Sugaring wax

Sporadically, I wax my own legs at home. I always use sugaring wax rather than hardcore salon wax because it is so easy to wash off any drips or mistakes. Previously, I had bought it, but I just realised how it is basically just sugar and looked for a recipe. The only potentially awkward part was judging when it had reached the right consistency (like for caramel or jam) - I decided to give it a shot. This awesomely detailed recipe convinced me it was worth a try.

1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup water

Put all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat, stirring, until boiling. Boil gently for ~20 min, monitoring the colour carefully (by swirling and by checking drops on a white plate. When it is a light amber colour (the colour of typical runny honey) it should be ready. At this point a drop on a plate at room temperature should also become thick and sticky as it cools. Allow to cool slightly and transfer to a heatproof jar.

To use, put base of jar in a bowl of very hot water until the sugaring solution is slightly liquid. Stir with a plastic spatula and use the spatula to apply. Smooth on in direction of growth and use denim strips to remove quickly.


It worked really well! Very happy with it, and I reckon this quantity should do at least 10 half leg waxes.

Quick aubergine with nigella seeds

1 large aubergine, chopped into 1cm dice
1/2 tsp nigella seeds
1/2 tsp salt
~4 tbsp olive oil

Heat olive oil in a frying pan with high sides. Add the aubergine, nigella seeds and salt (to taste) and stir / fry for ~10 minutes, until the aubergine is tender and tasty.


Simple and effective: a lot of my aubergine recipes are relatively long and complicated - this one is super quick.

Raspberry-almond buns (gluten-free)

Seb made me a birthday cake with lemon cake and raspberry icing. He woke me up with cake and candles. He did an awesome job. Not to mention the day of presents and greetings and surprise friend-mob of a house show and whole room of lovely people singing 'Happy Birthday' to me with yet another cake+candles...

There was some icing left over. I wanted to use it up, got a copy of 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World' for my birthday (exciting: I look at her blog often but didn't have any of their books), and am having a GF person over for dinner tomorrow night so decided it would be a good idea to test out the GF vanilla cupcake recipe and top it with the leftover raspberry icing. Of course I didn't have the exact right combination of GF flours so didn't exactly follow the recipe, but nevertheless they came out quite well.

(made 11, could have filled a bit less full to make 12)

1 cup soy milk
1/3 cup veg oil
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp almond essence
1/4 cup tapioca flour (used glutinous rice flour)
2 tbsp ground linseed
1/3 cup corn flour or almond flour (used corn masa flour)
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour (used ragi flour = millet flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt

Heat oven to 350F and line muffin tin. Mix milk, oil, sugar and essences in a large bowl. Add tapioca flour and linseed and mix thoroughly. Add corn flour, rice flour, quinoa flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt and mix thoroughly (don't worry about overmixing). Fill cups and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before icing.


Gosh, these look like they should be for a little girl's birthday party or something. The buns rose quite nicely and also taste pretty good: the predominant flavour is almond - it would appear that almond essence is pretty powerful stuff. S assures me the colour of the icing is entirely from raspberry, which is awesome... He doesn't remember what recipe he used but I suspect it may have been this one.

Icing:
1/2 cup coconut oil, softened
1/2 cup margarine, softened
3 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2-3 tbsp raspberry jam
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp cornstarch

Heat 3 tbsp raspberry jam in a pan. Mix cornstarch with a bit of water and add to the raspberry jam. Stir until it become clear and thick. Push the sauce through a sieve to remove the raspberry seeds. Beat the softened coconut oil and margarine together to a fluffy mixture. Add the icing sugar alternated with the raspberry sauce and vanilla. Beat to a smooth and even consistency. (note: S had evidently had trouble softening the coconut oil as it is Winter and so I warmed the icing a little and beat it some more to make it smoother and more evenly coloured, which worked well).


I decorated them with flaked almonds, basil flowers and red sugar crystals.


These taste most strongly of almond.  Quite nice texture.  Alvin liked them.  They froze well (apart from the flowers, obv).

Marzipan balls

Grandma and I were excited to find a 1920s cookery book when we were sorting through a box of books that used to be Mum's: Miss Tuxford's Cookery for the Middle Classes (9th Edition, 1927) (see also Green Tomato Jam). A lot of the recipes that I bookmarked were, predictably, in the chapter 'Bread and Cakes'. One I was most interested in trying was for 'Almond Paste'. Elsewhere, the almond paste was used to make 'Marzipan Potatoes', which I thought sounded utterly silly but also kind of delicious.

4 oz ground almonds
2 oz icing sugar
2 oz caster sugar (used granulated)
1/3 tbsp orange blossom water
1/3 tbsp rum (note: in the book, rum is included in the recipe for almond paste but not for marzipan potatoes)
few drops almond essence
1/3 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 3/4 tbsp hot water
cocoa and (optional) gold dust for rolling

Mix the ground almonds and sugars in a bowl with a fork. Add the orange blossom water, rum and almond essence and mix in with a fork. Add the linseed mixture and continue to mix with a fork, finally bringing everything together with your hands. Break off small (cherry sized) pieces and roll into balls. Put 1-2 tbsp of cocoa powder in a small bowl along with optional gold dust, then roll the marzipan ball around in the cocoa until covered. Transfer to a baking tray lined with baking paper and leave to dry out.

I made 1/3 of the marzipan recipe (with a few minor adaptations), and that made 16 marzipan balls. They were never really going to look like potatoes, I can't call them that. But they are quite delicious and look quite luxurious (a bit like truffles), and appropriately seasonal (if a little quirky). It's good to know how to make marzipan / I was glad to use some of my collection of little bottles of big flavour (rum, orange blossom water, almond essence, yummmm).

These kept quite well: at least a month at room temperature. The cocoa becomes less dusty but other than that they are the same.

Sesame star mince pies (gluten-free)

I made these two years ago, but did not make them completely gluten free (used plain flour instead of the gram/rice mix). I really liked the pastry though - much more interesting than normal pastry. This time I went the whole hog and they are fully GF. The source of the recipe has now truly disappeared into the ether, but I found it somewhere on the internet back then.

(these quantities make 12, when bases cut using Coke glass and baked in regular-sized bun tin)

50g ground almonds
60g cooked chickpeas, mashed to a stiff paste
100g gluten-free plain flour (or 50g gram flour, 50g rice flour)
2 tbsp sesame seeds
40g margarine (or cold-pressed plain sesame or safflower oil)
water, to bind
1 400g jar of mincemeat

Combine seeds, ground almonds, flour and ground chickpeas. Rub in fat and mix with a fork. Add a little water to combine. Rest in the fridge 30min.

Heat oven to 400F / 200C. Roll out the pastry to about 2 mm thick and cut into rounds for pie bases (deep fill used tall plastic measure beaker / normal size used Coke glass). Put bases into bun / muffin tin. Fill with mincemeat or a mixture of mincemeat and cooked apple. Cut out stars (I freehanded) and put them on the tops. Bake for 20-35 min, til lightly browned and crisp. Leave to cool before trying to remove from trays.


The mincemeat I made 2 years ago was still in good nick, so that's what I used for these. I did see mincemeat in Stop n Shop the other day though, for future reference. The pastry was perhaps relatively brittle due to the use of GF flours, but it rolled out OK. I'm wondering if the gram flour was a mistake: it does have quite a pungent taste. Truth will be in the eating - they are cooling right now.

They are good! The pastry is nice and crunchy and robust, and delicious in combination with the mincemeat. The gram taste has baked out. The pastry isn't like regular mince pie pastry, but I think it's better.

Only thing is, the combo of the GF pastry (which cracks quite easily) and the runnier than normal mincemeat (because I used booze instead of fat to preserve it) means the liquid has seeped through the bottoms of a few of the pies and they were kind of welded onto the pans... still came off, but a couple lost a small part of the base. I guess I could have taken more care cutting them out and getting them into the tins...


Note: these freeze (baked) very well: can basically eat them straight from the freezer.

Rye and black pepper loaf

I bought some rye flour the other day and got excited about bread baking prospects. I browsed Dan Lepard's recipes on the Guardian webpage (I am in love with his recipes: they are just the right mix of adventurous, interesting, simple and downright tasty) until I came across this one. The mixture of rye, black pepper, caraway and poppy seeds sounded like something I should love 100%, and the use of coffee intrigued me.

325ml regular black coffee, warm or cold
150g rye flour
2 tsp crushed black pepper
2 tsp anise, fennel or caraway seeds (used caraway)
1 tsp dry instant yeast
1½ tsp salt
325g strong white bread flour, plus extra for shaping
fake milk and poppy seeds, to finish

Put the coffee in a saucepan along with half the rye flour, the pepper and your seeds of choice. Whisk, heat until thick and just boiling, then spoon into a mixing bowl and set aside to cool until warm. Add the yeast, mix well, add the salt, the remaining rye flour and the white flour, then mix to a smooth dough. Cover, leave for 10 minutes, then knead for 10 seconds. Cover, repeat twice more at 10-minute intervals, then leave for 30 minutes.

Line a baking tray with nonstick baking parchment. Using a little flour, pat out the dough into a 20cm square, then roll up tightly. Place the dough seam side down on the tray, cover with a cloth and leave to rise for 45 minutes. Brush the top with soy milk, sprinkle with poppy seeds, cut six diagonal slashes across the top and bake at 220C/425F/gas mark 7 for 40-45 minutes.


I had a brain freeze and got utterly confused about how long it had been proving for - there's a good chance it had not been long enough. It is still lovely though: the black pepper, caraway, poppy seeds and darkness go very well together, and very well with the celeriac and porcini soup I made at the same time.

Celeriac and porcini soup

We have lots of celeriac right now. I love the stuff: it's one of the most wonderful and versatile vegetables, in my opinion (despite being ugly as hell): great taste and texture, lovely raw in salads, souped / pureed, roasted, boiled with lentils, I could go on...  Grandma and I bought one recently and made a soup, mixed it with potatoes for mash on a shepherd's pie, blanched and pan-fried some with parsnips, made a salad with apple...

I wanted to try something new, and came across this recipe (slightly adapted here) in my trusty New Covent Garden Soup Company cookbook.

2 oz margarine
1 medium onion, finely chopped
110g / 4 oz celeriac, peeled and roughly chopped
15g (1/2 oz) dried porcini mushrooms, soaked for 20 minutes with 150 ml (1/4 pint) boiling water
290 ml (1/2 pint) water
200 ml fake milk (subbing this and vinegar for creme fraiche)
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper

'prepared fresh ground' horseradish (the stuff you buy in a jar in the fridge section) to serve

Melt the marg in a large saucepan and add the onion and celeriac. Cook, covered, for about 20 min without colouring. Add the porcini soaking liquor, chop the porcini and add, along with the water and thyme. Cover, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes or until the veg are all tender. Cool slightly, then liquidise.

Add the soy milk and vinegar and taste for seasoning.  Reheat gently and serve swirled with horseradish.


This is interesting. Rich, earthy flavours. S thought I was cooking meat!?! Can't decide whether the porcini or the celeriac dominates, perhaps that means it's perfectly balanced? I felt like the horseradish really brought it to life - strongly suggest adding it (full disclosure: I'm loving horseradish in everything right now).

If making this again in future, I might just use some of the dried mushroom powder I have - would save the whole soaking / chopping mushrooms bit and be a great use for them. I doubled the recipe and used a 25g packet of porcini from TJ's, and one small celeriac (still got 2 large ones left to use!).

Ginger-Chocolate Gradient Cake

When someone in my lab has a birthday it is the responsibility of the last person who had a birthday to make them a cake. The other girl in my lab (Andrea) and I both have December birthdays. Mine is so close to Christmas it always gets a little lost in all the other sweet treats and festivities. This year we decided a while ago that it would be fun to get together and make one big cake for both our birthdays and have it in between. Originally this was because we wanted to reprise our amazing rainbow cake for a big enough audience to eat it. But when it came to now we felt like doing something a little different. So we took two of our favourite things, ginger and chocolate, and stuck with layers (four this time) and decided to geek it up with a lab themed gradient (our lab does a fair bit of work on developmental patterning involving morphogen gradients).

For the cake (this quantity makes 4 fat layers):
(based on this recipe)
6 cups flour
2 cups finely chopped crystallised ginger

Both photos taken by Paul

4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups (packed) golden brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups plus 4 tbsp buttermilk
~1 cup cocoa powder

Inner icing:
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp water
3 scant cups icing sugar
2 tsp ground ginger

Outer icing:
12 oz 70% chocolate
1 cup hot water

Decoration:
Edible gold dust
Crystallised ginger, chopped

Heat oven to 350F. Grease four 8-inch round cake tins and line the bottoms with baking paper. Mix flour, crystallized ginger, ground ginger, bicarb and salt with a fork in a medium bowl. Beat butter and sugar in a separate, large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until well blended after each addition. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in three additions each, scraping down sides of bowl. Beat just until smooth.

Divide batter between four bowls and add cocoa or additional ginger so that each bowl has more chocolate and less ginger than the last: going from very gingery and no cocoa to very chocolatey and less ginger. Check the batters are of similar consistency, then put each into a separate prepared cake tin. Bake cakes until skewer comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool for 10 min then turn cakes out and cool completely.

For the inner icing, heat the water, granulated sugar and butter in a small pan, then add the icing sugar and ground ginger and mix until smooth. Allow to cool.

For the outer icing, melt the chocolate then add the hot water and beat until smooth.

To assemble, put the darkest layer on a plate and smear with 1/3 of the inner icing. Sprinkle with chopped crystallised ginger. Put the next darkest layer on top and repeat. Add the second lightest layer and spread with the last 1/3 of inner icing, then put the lightest layer on top. Dump the outer icing on top and use a straight-edged knife or palette knife to smear it all around the outside of the cake, covering the top and sides as evenly as you can. Use remaining preserved ginger and gold dust to make a decoration on top (we did a shooting star).


Could perhaps have done with more inner icing (think we're both of the less is more camp when it comes to icing in general). The outer icing was obviously basically just chocolate but I was into that. The cake was quite dense and heavy (I blame the buttermilk) so it added up to a massive piece of cake. If using this recipe I might have used 3/4 of the cake recipe quantity and split it in 4 still. Or used less batter and made more of a simple Victoria sponge (my original thought) with added ginger / cocoa, just putting the preserved ginger between the layers and on top - would be lighter.

Bavarian sweet mustard

We made this at Carly's to go with pretzels. Took quite a lot of grinding with pestle and mortar - might have been easier with a spice grinder to hand...

250g split yellow mustard seeds
50g brown mustard seeds
1 tsp ground cloves
generous pinch of salt
200g sugar
350ml cider vinegar

Lightly crush the brown mustard seeds in a mortar; should remain very coarse. Put yellow and brown mustard seeds, cloves and salt in a bowl.

In a medium-sized saucepan, melt the sugar and let it caramelise. Stir constantly, so sugar will not burn; the colour should be a nice dark brown. Once the sugar has caramelised, slowly add the vinegar and allow the caramel to dissolve.

Pour the vinegar into the bowl with the mustard and spices and stir quickly. You may use the blender to achieve a finer texture, but it should remain grainy, not smooth. If the mixture is too thick, simply add more vinegar.

Pour the hot mustard into sterilised jars and seal them. The mustard will need to mature for 5 to 6 weeks (preferably in the fridge or a cool cellar). By then, all the bitterness will have disappeared. Always stir before using, as some dark liquid may collect at the bottom of the jar.

Custard

I had three egg yolks left over from making zimtsterne, needed to use them up. I have long been of the opinion that Bird's custard beats out real custard by a mile, thought I should check this out once and for all. Used this recipe.

1 1/2 cups milk
2 tsp cornflour
1 tbsp sugar
3 egg yolks
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Mix 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornflour in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. When the cornflour is dissolved, slowly add the rest of the milk and sugar, and cook over moderate heat until the sauce starts to thicken and comes to a boil. Remove from heat.

In a small bowl, beat egg yolks with a fork. Take a cup of the mixture, and slowly add to the eggs, beating briskly as you pour. Stir the egg mixture back into the saucepan mixture. Bring back to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and add the vanilla.


Definitely far inferior to Bird's. Next time I have leftover egg yolks I shall make something else - perhaps a version of egg yolk ravioli.

Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars)

There is a wonderful array of German Christmas biscuits out there: we've been eating our way through lebkuchen and chocolate covered lebkuchen herzen from Lidl and from Trader Joe's already. Then there's Pfeffernusse, Vanillekipferle... so many beautiful things. They really know that they are doing when it comes to Christmas, those Germans. S's favourite are Zimtsterne, so I wanted to make some. I've never made these before, but I've been feeling like doing some Christmas baking, especially since visiting the Christmas market in Edinburgh.

I got this recipe from my colleague Nik, who is German and a consummate baking pro. It appears deceptively simple: just almonds, cinnamon, egg whites and sugar - they're delicious and it's quite fiddly to make and ice all the little stars.

3 egg whites
250 g icing sugar
400 g ground almonds (plus more flour or ground almonds for dusting)
2 tsp cinnamon

Beat the egg whites to shiny peaks, then fold in the icing sugar a tablespoon or so at a time. Set aside ~80g to use as icing.

Mix the cinnamon and almonds, then fold into the remaining sugar mixture.

Dust your surface with flour or ground almonds, then roll out the mass until ~1 cm thick. Cut out star shapes and transfer them to baking trays.

Thinly (1-2 mm) spread the icing set aside earlier onto the biscuits. You should not be able to see through the icing.

Allow cookies to dry over night uncovered at room temperature.

Bake at 325F / 160C for 8 minutes on medium rack. Allow to cool. They should keep for several weeks in a container.

I thought these were lovely.  I was too chicken to take some in to Nik for testing, but S liked them. I took advantage of their long keeping time and sent some to each of my stepsisters back in the UK.


Now I am trying to think of something to do with the three egg yolks - custard is one option; egg yolk ravioli is another, more exciting option...

Date spread

We had the most wonderful date spread at A Naestu Grosum in Reykjavik, three years ago. I remembered it when I saw this recipe, also remembered a packet of dates I'd had in the cupboard for a while. Had been eating dates at Grandma's and thinking about how much I like them. This all seemed very seasonally appropriate, somehow.

(made a half quantity, used pretty much a whole packet of dates (apart from a few that went in my mouth... it was plenty - it's quite rich)

2 1/2 cups dates, pitted and chopped
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 cups water
1 tbsp lemon zest
2 tbsp ginger, grated
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried red pepper flakes
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cocoa

Put all the ingredients in a small pan and simmer until almost all of the water is evaporated (about 30 minutes).

Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Puree until smooth. Eat warm or cold, with seedy bread or raw veg.

Mum's 'Red Dragon' bean pie

This is sort of a veg shepherd's pie. Grandma looked out the recipe while I was in Edinburgh and made it for me. She had got the recipe from Mum. In fact, as she looked through her recipe folders she found that she had got the recipe from Mum twice: she had two different copies, both handwritten by Mum. Seeing Mum's handwriting is one of those things that makes her seem so near yet so far - I remember tearing out and keeping all these little bits of paper where she'd signed my schoolwork: I didn't want to forget what her writing looked like, same as I didn't want to forget anything else about her.

The pie was really tasty - a bit 70s perhaps, but lovely. Grandma gave me one copy of the recipe and I've brought it back with me: I made it for S today (with black eyed beans) and he liked it.

For filling:
4 oz aduki beans (or similar)
2 oz wheat grain or rice (used rice)
1 onion, chopped
8 oz grated carrot (used about 5 medium-small ones)
1-2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp mixed herbs (used mix of oregano, basil, thyme)
1/2 pint bean stock
salt+pepper

For topping:
~4 medium potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed with
-marg, olive oil, fake milk, salt+pepper to taste

Soak the beans overnight, then cook. Cook the rice. Cook the potatoes separately, then mash with oil/marg, milk, salt+pepper (we used a mixture of potato and celeriac and it was yum).

Fry the onion and carrot. Add the rest of the filling ingredients to the onion and carrot and simmer until thickened.

Put the filling in an ovenproof dish, top with the mashed potato, and bake in a 400F oven for 20-30 min until the top of the mashed potato has started to brown and the filling is bubbling.

Note: I followed the recipe fairly approximately - used ingredients as above but just guessed quantities.

Rye and honey soda bread

I've come across a few recipes featuring rye flour recently but have never owned any. Today I stopped by the Russian store and bought a bag (I also found some 00 flour and got confused thinking it was the right one for pasta, ah well it should be good for pizza though).

I was thinking about making soda bread (it's so lovely and quick compared to yeasted bread, and I wanted some bread in the freezer), and this recipe seemed like a great idea: both rye and soda.

250g light rye flour, plus a little extra for dusting
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
20g each sunflower, sesame, poppy and linseeds (or 80g seedy mix of your choice)
100ml plain yoghurt (used 200ml soy milk plus 1 tsp cider vinegar instead of yoghurt+milk)
100ml whole milk
50g runny honey
1 tbsp rapeseed oil, plus extra for greasing (used olive oil)

Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Grease a baking tray and dust lightly with flour. In a bowl, mix the flour, bicarb, salt and seeds. In a jug, whisk the milk+vinegar, honey and oil, then pour into the dry ingredients and mix quickly but thoroughly to form a very sticky dough.

Scoop the dough on to the tray – you may find it easier to scrape it out with a spatula – and form it into a rough round about 7-8cm high. Don't worry if it's a bit of a sticky mess – it'll sort itself out in the oven. Dust with rye flour, cut a deep cross in the top – go at least halfway through – and bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. It's best eaten within 24 hours, though it will freeze well, too.


The rye does not have as distinct a taste as I was expecting but it's a nice-tasting, brown soda bread.

Nerf-day cake for Jamie (age 12)

I just got back from two weeks in Scotland. My cousin Jamie turned 12 while I was there (he's a millenium baby so it's easy to keep track of his age). For his birthday he and his dad (my uncle) had planned a party involving five or six of J's mates and a Nerf gun battle. Nerf guns are colourful plastic guns of all descriptions that fire three inch long orange foam pellets. They are very popular with little boys - Jamie has been into them for years. As he told it, this was his last big Nerf gun blow-out - he felt like he was getting too old for them.

I had plans to go out to East Lothian and hang out with all my sisters and their babies on the day of the party, but got thinking about what to get Jamie for his birthday and then thought of making a cake. I'm not often there on his birthday and I had plenty of time since I was on holiday (I love baking when I have time for it): it seemed like it could be fun for me and save his parents some bother. I don't know much about what 12 year old boys like, but started with the Nerf theme and the idea of a making a target popped up. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be coming together into a great idea, so I went with it.

I used my Grandma's kitchen and she helped me with the recipes, so these are not vegan since I a) wasn't making it for anyone veg, and b) didn't want to freak Grandma out with a weird recipe - the cake plan was already pretty far out for her...

Preparatory sketches

For the cake (Grandma's basic Victoria sponge recipe, plus red):
2 eggs
4 oz self raising flour
4 oz caster sugar
4 oz margarine / soft butter
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 tsp red food colouring

For the buttercream filling (Grandma's recipe):
1 tbsp water
1/2 oz caster sugar
1/2 oz butter
4 oz icing sugar

For decorating / finishing:
~10 glace cherries, chopped
~4 tbsp plum jam, warmed and strained
1 packet white ready to roll fondant icing
1-2 tsp red food colouring
1 Nerf gun pellet
red food writing pen

First, make the cake. Heat the oven to 170C. Grease two 8 in sandwich cake tins and line the bases with paper. Sieve the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, then add all the other ingredients and beat until well combined - either by hand or in a food processor (I don't have a food processor at home but for this I got to use Grandma's - it's a Kenwood dating from the 50s and it is amazing. One day perhaps I'll have one of my own, it feels like a 50s housewifely dream using it). Divide the mixture (which should be intensely red) evenly between the two prepared tins and bake for 20 min / until they are starting to come away from the sides of the tins. Let sit for 10 min or so then turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool.

While the cakes are cooking, make the buttercream filling. Put the butter, water and caster sugar in a small pan and heat until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted. Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the liquid mix to the icing sugar and beat together til smooth. Allow to come to room temperature, when it should be a good spreading consistency.

When the cakes are cool, trim any rough bits from the edges and peel off the base papers. Spread half the buttercream on one side of one of the cakes, and the other half on one side of the other cake.  Set one icing-up on a plate and sprinkle the chopped glace cherries over it. Put the other cake icing-down neatly on top.

Take a lump of rolling icing about the size of a clementine and put it aside in a small bowl. Roll out the remaining rolling icing (about 5/6 of the packet) on a piece of clingfilm until big enough to cover the top and sides of the cake in one sheet (take care to avoid red cake crumbs or food colouring when doing this). Brush the top and sides of the cake with the warmed, sieved plum jam. Carefully lift the sheet of icing and place it, centred, on top of the cake. Gently smooth it down over the sides of the cake and neatly trim any excess.

Take the set aside icing and fold in red food colouring until it is bright red (about 1 tsp) - I used a spoon to knead and fold until the colour was evenly distributed to try and avoid staining my hands. Roll or squish out a circle approx. 2 in diameter and press this in place in the middle of the cake (might have been a good idea to stick it on with the sieved jam). Roll out a sausage and flatten it to make a ring about 1 cm across that will fit around the perimeter of the cake. Place this on in the same way as the central circle. Make a second ring that fits in the middle, equidistant between the outer ring and the inner circle, and place this as well. The cake should now look very much like a target.

Press the end of the Nerf pellet into the icing in a few positions to make small circular indentations. Use these as guides to carefully cut circles out of the white icing, exposing the red cake underneath. Cut a hole in the icing in the centre of the central circle (bullseye!) just big enough to fit the Nerf pellet and then push the (clean) Nerf pellet into the hole, business end first, so it is sticking out of the cake at a jaunty angle.

Use the writing pen (I saw this in a cake shop down the road for Grandma's and was curious to try it - it looks just like a felt tip pen but writes with food colouring) to write a message along one of the white strips in the target... the Nerf-day pun occurred to me and I couldn't let it go, especially since the party wasn't on Jamie's actual birthday (a couple of days later on a weekday), so the cake really was for his 'Nerf-day'.

Finally, we used balls of the left-over rolling icing to stick the candles in and pressed them in place on the plate around the edges of the cake.


I was pretty pleased with this. It was a fun project, and fun to combine Grandma's recipes with my ideas and things I thought 12 year old boys would be into. The rolling icing was really fun and easy to work with (and appears to be vegan). It gives a  resilient finish - butter icing is so sensitive to accidental touching or changes in temperature, this stuff is robust. I was worried all the way through that the red would come out pink, which is one reason why I used so much food colouring. I'm glad I did, as it was quite high-impact, but using another colour would also work, and perhaps you could then use less. I really liked Grandma's buttercream recipe: a clever way to make a lighter buttercream / avoid having to use loads of butter.

As soon as J saw it he took photos and told me he was posting it on Instagram, which I figured was probably as good a thumbs-up as I could hope for (although he then proceeded to explain to me what Instagram is, I guess he sees me as hopelessly old and uncool even if he did think the cake was cool). Since I missed the party I didn't see the reaction, but Simon (J's dad / my uncle) said the red cake inside was a great surprise and it was all gone by the time I got back so I'll have to assume it looked and tasted good when cut!