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Clandestine Cake Club Dundee

I’m a member of the Dundee branch of the ‘Clandestine Cake Club’. I joined back in April of this year and have been to a couple of the meetings. The idea is that you take a cake along to a venue, not specified until last minute (hence Clandestine) and meet other cake lovers, chat about cake and of course gorge yourself on everyone else’s cake. Each meeting has a theme and July’s theme was ice-cream flavours (well, we can dream it feels like summer!).

The venue this time was  Drouthy Neebors – a great pub set in the West End of Dundee. The cake club had the basement to ourselves and the staff couldn’t have been friendlier or more obliging.

My cake, I decided, was to be Mint Choc Chip flavour. I had the green mint chips that I had used in my chocolate mint cookies so what better way to utilise the rest of the pack? But I decided the cake was to be a chocolate cake with the mint chips mixed through – the frosting was to be the reverse, minty marshmallowy frosting with dark chocolate chips through out!

When I arrived at the venue, the heavens had opened. The rain was torrential, but luckily everyone there had their offerings under wraps, so no soggy sponges to eat. It was great seeing newly found friends again and chatting about our shared love of cake. And the range of cakes on display was amazing – it’s good to see how folk interpret the theme differently. There was a peanut butter and chocolate cake, a baked raspberry cheesecake, rhubarb and rosemary cake, the list goes on. But my favourite was my friend Linley’s cake, which was a Caramel Cinnamon Waffle cake. It was humungous and delicious in equal proportions. I tried to take a modest piece but no luck, modesty just wasn’t happening!

So after eating way too much and chatting loads, time was up. If you fancy joining a Clandestine Cake Club, they are all over world, so check on-line to see if there is one near you.

I'll be posting my Chocolate Mint Chip Cake Recipe soon.

Olympic Foodie Challenge - Help Wanted!

Well,  the London 2012 Olympics begin very soon and I have set a wee challenge. As you may know, the Olympic rings represent the 'continents' of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

So I'd like to bake one cake/cookie/snack/dessert type thing from each of the 'continents'. The America's and Europe should be a cinch - but the other 3 could be a challenge of Olympic proportions!! So if anyone has any suggestions for African, Asian or Oceanic(!) cookies, bars, cakes etc. especially please get in touch.

Please submit suggestions by 21 July - the opening ceremony date - I will start baking after that and post during the games. You will even get a shout out if your suggestion is baked. Contact me at mrcakeyboi@gmail.com. 

Ready Steady Go!!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Krispie Treats

Well, my Black Forest Rice Krispie Treats went down very well the other week. And I liked the idea of flavouring the marshmallow mix. What with it being the 4^th July , what Treats could I make to pay homage to good ol’ US of A? Well, I love peanut butter and jam on my toast. The Yanks call it peanut butter and jelly and the jelly they use is sometimes purple grape flavour. This isn’t a common flavour across here in the UK, but it’s very sweet and almost bubblegum like.

I had purchased some grape flavour Kool-Aid mix when on my London travels and thought this would be perfect to mix into the marshmallows. And for the topping I was just going to spread some smooth PB on top, but I remembered I had some peanut butter chips, in my store cupboard and they would set hard on top. I dug them out, with my rice krispies and set to…
(thanks again to Cupcake Kelly at An American Cupcake in London for her inspiration).

Ingredients:

30g unsalted butter

180g mini marshmallows

1 small sachet of Grape Kool-Aid mix (or 4g)

125g Rice Krispies

100g Peanut Butter Chips (or a jar of peanut butter)

Veg Oil

Method:

I sprayed a glass dish with some veg oil spray and set this aside. In a large saucepan I melted my butter and then added the marshmallows stirring constantly until melted and incorporated with the butter. I then added the Kool-Aid powder, stirring until it was all combined.

Next I took the  rice krispies and stirred this into the saucepan, mixing the mallow mix and the rice totally; it was nice and stringy (and smelt amazing!).

I then placed this into the glass dish and pressed down hard so it was all level and compact.

I let this cool and set, which took about a couple of hours. When set, I placed my peanut butter chips in a bowl over some simmering water and melted them. Now I hadn’t melted PB chips in recipes before and thought they would melt like chocolate – wrong! They seized and went into a tight lump, so I added just a drizzle of veg oil and stirred this through, making the PB very spreadable.

I tipped the rice krispies out of the dish and cut them into about 20 pieces, but you could do bigger or smaller. Then taking a knife I spread the PB mix on top of the blocks of rice krispies. I set them aside for a few hours and the PB had set. I took them into work the following day and these were even more popular than my Black Forest treats.

If you can’t get hold of grape Kool-Aid, try adding a teaspoon of strawberry flavouring. This would be like strawberry jam instead. And if you can’t get the PB chips, spread on some smooth peanut butter. This won’t set like the chips, but will still be delicious!! Enjoy…

(I've tweaked the measurements slightly from the Black Forest Treats - much firmer squares!)

Cartoon Homage - The Cakey Bunch

(an homage to The Brady Bunch if you are too young to remember!!)

Cupcake Bites

Little nuggets of heaven - I bought these on the recent London trip and devoured them straight away!
They are little balls of cupcake mixed with sprinkles and white frosting. Mmmm...

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Oh Fudge!

I wanted to try my hand at fudge making. I haven’t tried it before and with a plethora of recipes for different types of fudge out there I wondered what Cakeyboi twist I could put on it.

I looked in my cupboard and found a bottle of maple syrup that cousin Lawrence from Toronto brought over earlier this year, when he was on his travels. Now if you are anything like me, you will love maple syrup poured over blueberry pancakes for breakfast. And I thought why not try maple and blueberry fudge?

I bought my ingredients, including some dried blueberries which I thought would hold together better in the finished article. I rehydrated them by placing them in a cup of warm water whilst I got on with the fudge itself. I put all of my ingredients in the saucepan, clipped on my candy thermometer and slowly brought the mixture up to the magic temperature of 115^oC. I think this is softball stage – but as I’ve said before that sounds too sporty and I shall just stick to temperatures!!

I then turned off the heat and let the mixture cool to about 40^oC. This was when I had to beat the fudge within an inch of it’s life, so it lost it’s sheen and turned thicker. I then added the drained and slightly juiced up dried blueberries and poured this into my prepared tin, lined with foil and a spritz of oil. And waited for it to set. And waited and waited. In fact, I left it overnight and when I examined it in the morning it was like a sugary slush. Very disappointing.

But I was not to be beaten (well, I was, keep reading), I tried the whole thing again, with a slightly different recipe, but still armed with those all important temperatures. And it seemed to work. The cooled mass, when beaten seemed thicker and I poured it into the tin. It hardened on top quite quickly and I left it overnight again.

But this morning, when I peeled back the foil, for a split second I thought it had worked. It was solidish – but then the whole damn thing cracked and underneath was sugary slush?

So Cakeyboi cannot make fudge! I shall persevere though, but if anyone has any ideas on what I did wrong, or has any tips to give me re: fudge making I would love to hear.