Playdough

Lockdown means spending a lot of time at home, and also means spending more time with little S. The weather has been amazing, so we haven't been hanging out inside a whole lot, but I was thinking he might be into some playdough, so I put some food colouring on our biweekly shopping list... I used this recipe, and made one batch of pink-red and one of blue. Both needed a little extra flour to get a good consistency.

It was fun! It's been out twice now, and is still in the fridge for another go. We made some elephants, and buses, the first time. And the second time he played with it on one kitchen surface while I did some cooking on another.

8 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp salt
60 ml warm water
food colouring
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix together the water, a few drops of food colouring and the oil.

Pour the coloured water into the flour mix and bring together with a spoon.

Dust a work surface with a little flour and turn out the dough. Knead together for a few minutes to form a smooth, pliable dough. If you want a more intense colour you can work in a few extra drops of food colouring. Add more flour if needed.

Store in a plastic bag or wrapped in clingfilm in the fridge.

Turkish delight

I'd got it into my head I wanted to make Turkish delight a while ago, which spurred a quest to find cream of tartar (which was quite difficult, in the end I bought it online). Then I had the cream of tartar, but it took me a long time to get around to making the Turkish delight. This weekend seemed to be the time: perhaps because it is a surprisingly vegan food (happy days, I always liked it and hoped it wasn't made with gelatine) and we were invited to a vegan party on Saturday evening... But we ended up taking pretzels there and I took the Turkish delight to a non vegan brunch on Sunday morning instead. It didn't really seem like conventional brunch food but I figured anything goes for brunch... right?

I followed this recipe, almost exactly, with the addition of some red food colouring to make it pink.

2 cups granulated sugar
5/8 cup cornstarch
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
2 1/8 cups water
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
3/4 tbsp rosewater
2-3 drops red food colouring
1/2 cup icing sugar
Vegetable oil

Grease the inside of an approx 8 in square / 2 in deep baking pan (or similar) with vegetable oil. Line with baking paper and grease the paper.

In a saucepan, combine the lemon juice, granulated sugar and 3/4 cup water on medium heat. Stir constantly until sugar dissolves. Allow mixture to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until the mixture reaches 240F, or firm ball stage (when tested by dropping a tsp into water). Remove from heat and set aside.

Combine cream of tartar, 1/2 cup cornstarch and remaining 1 3/8 cups water in a second saucepan over medium heat. Stir until all lumps are gone and the mixture begins to boil. Stop stirring when the mixture has a glue like consistency. Stir in the lemon juice, water and sugar mixture. Stir constantly for about 5 minutes. Reduce heat to low, and allow to simmer for 1 hour, stirring frequently. Once the mixture has become a golden colour, stir in rosewater and food colouring. Pour mixture into paper-lined pan. Spread evenly and allow to cool overnight.

The following day, lift the Turkish delight out of the pan onto a clean surface using the edges of the paper. Cut with a sharp, oiled knife into approx 1 inch squares. Mix the icing sugar and remaining 1/8 cup cornstarch in a bowl. Roll the Turkish delight pieces in the icing sugar mixture until they are well covered. Eat right away, or keep in an airtight container in layers separated with baking paper.


This worked surprisingly well, although not perfectly. The end result was a very pleasant, pink Turkish delight with a subtle rose flavour. It was tricky but not impossible judging the sugar stage (I don't have a sugar thermometer). The finished result was slightly wet: after the sugar coating it wetted most of the covering sugar so I had to re-coat it before taking it out. Not really a problem, but it looks much prettier when freshly dusted. Not sure why it happened: perhaps the initial sugar solution should have been boiled for longer? or perhaps I should have let it sit longer before coating it with icing sugar? or perhaps it was just to do with the humid weather? Could have increased the rosewater to 1 tbsp: it was maybe a little too subtle. And the colour was slightly pinker than I wanted: two drops of colouring would probably be enough.

Note: an idea from the original recipe's comments to help with the sweating: cut it into pieces and let air dry while turning frequently for another 2 days before sugar coating - perhaps leave in the switched-off oven overnight?

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!

Amazing Rainbow Cake

We were away in a big house with a big pile of people this last weekend (President's Day weekend).  The house was in Vermont, and the aim was to take advantage of any snow there might be, hang out and have fun.

S's birthday is on Tuesday (and Nick's was earlier this month), so I had the idea a while ago that we could make a cake while we were away.  Turned out Andrea had an awesome cake recipe she'd wanted to do for a while: rainbow cake.  Nick didn't make it in the end, and Seb told me he really believed it was bad luck to celebrate birthday before the day.  A+I decided to make it anyway, as a general celebration cake, and it was awesome...




We took the idea from here.  It's not a vegan cake: I had some eggs left that I had to buy for a protocol I'm using at work, so we used them up.  The frosting is the coconut oil based frosting I've used before.



Cake Mix:
3 cups plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks (1 cup) softened (fake) butter
2 1/3 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
~1 cup coconut milk beverage (add more or less to get a good consistency)
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet gel food colouring

Frosting:
2 cups coconut oil
~5 cups icing sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
~2 tbsp coconut milk beverage

Decoration:
multicoloured sprinkles
squiggly, brightly coloured candles
a sparkler

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease seven 9 inch cake tins (we had 4 tins, so did one round of 4 and another of 3), and sprinkle with flour. Mix the baking powder and salt with a fork in a medium sized bowl. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and mix. Add the vanilla and mix. Alternately add the flour mixture and milk starting with the flour. Check for good dropping consistency and add more liquid or flour if required.

Split the mixture equally between seven smallish bowls. Add each colour of food colouring to a different bowl, mixing thoroughly. Then transfer each mixture to a separate prepared cake tin. Smooth out. Bake for about 15 min, until the cake comes away from the edge and a skewer comes out clean. Repeat until all cakes are done. Move the cakes to a cooling rack and leave until cool. Refrigerate until needed (the coldness may help with stability during assembly).

Prepare the frosting: beat together the ingredients gradually until a good consistency is reached. Note that the melting point of coconut oil is right around room temperature, so consistency can be very sensitive to temperature.

To assemble, place the violet layer on a plate, cover with icing, then add the indigo layer. Repeat with the blue, green, yellow, orange and red layers, being careful to keep it in a straight stack. Note, to keep the top straight it may be a good idea to invert the red layer on top (we forgot to do this and it wasn't noticeable though). Cover the top and sides with remaining icing - the idea is to make a smooth white outside to hide any hint of a rainbow. We were actually a little short on frosting, for looks - for taste it was plenty enough. Scatter multicoloured sprinkles on top. Chill (we just put it in a very chilly outer room of the big house). Before serving, remove from chiller and arrange candles around the outside / sparkler in the middle.

I have never made a cake with so much 'wow' factor: when we cut it everyone (about 15 of us) just went ohhhhhhhh for about 5 minutes.  It does look awesome.

The whiteness and stability of the cake and icing mixtures are really important.  The gel colours (which are key - liquid food colours won't do this) combined with a white cake mix make the the layers really bright.  And the white icing really sets the colours off - coconut oil is whiter than butter, so the coconut icing was perfect.  I'm kind of glad we didn't attempt a completely vegan cake as I think the eggs are probably important for the cake stability, which is important for making a neat stack and for getting a clean, beautiful cut.  It would probably be possible, but might require experimenting and optimising the cake mix recipe.

The coconut icing also gave it some flavour interest: with butter icing it would have been visually amazing but relatively dull in taste.  The frosting was a little short to get a perfect finish on the outside, although this wasn't so noticeable by the time it was decorated - for a smooth exterior more would have been necessary (although it already felt like loads when eating it).

It is an amazing, epic, huge cake: each slice is seven layers deep so there's a lot of cake and a lot of frosting... and a lot of awesomeness!