Dalek Cake

I’m not the biggest fan of moulds for cakes that are a weird shape as the cake never comes out evenly baked but this one called out to be made. It was an important birthday for someone at work and he is a Dr. Who fan. I accepted early on that this cake would be style over substance but who can resist something that requires painting in metallic edible paint!!! 

I decided to make a mainly red Dalek as it meant I could use red food colouring in the mix and have a good base of colour for the majority of the cake. I highly recommend this site (Cakes, Cookies and Crafts) for the paint. I used metallic red and gold paint with the silver being done with metallic powder. I also had gold metallic powder, because I bought everything (!) having not done this before, which worked very well but was messier than the paint so you had to be more careful. The powder has the bonus of being dry immediately but I’m not sure getting powder over everything was worth that.  

There weren’t instructions with it but on the Lakeland site, where I bought the mould, they recommended an eight egg cake mix. I did that but it wasn’t enough and I think that if you’re trying to fill every nook and cranny ram it with more cake mix than you need. It meant I missed out on some detail so below is the recipe I recommend using 10 eggs! (They also suggested putting a thin layer of frosting on the cake and covering with royal icing before painting. Seriously! What kind of sadists are they? Can you imagine everything that could go wrong?! If you’re brave do it that way but I’m happy with the painting on cake method). 

Ingredients

Lurpak Cooking Mist (seriously this is necessary and amazing)

500g butter, softened

500g sugar

10 large eggs

500g self-raising flour

40g red food colouring (bake safe)

1 x pot of metallic red edible food paint

1 x pot of metallic gold edible food paint

1 x tube of metallic silver edible food powder

1 x pack of Matchsticks (you only need 1 ½ but you can scoff the rest) 

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM4.

2.    Grease your mould well. This is key to using any mould as you need to get the sucker out afterwards. This cooking mist allows you to just spray every part. Make sure you don’t have too many puddles but the cake batter will mix with it and it should be fine.

3.    Cream the butter and sugar. Add 2 eggs, then 100g of flour mixing well. Repeat with the rest of the eggs and the flour. Then add the food colouring and mix really well.

4.    Put the mould on a baking tray to keep it steady and allow you to move it around. Pour the batter into the mould. It should fill it almost to the top. Then pick the tray up a few cm above the work surface and drop. The aim of this is to get the batter into every part of the mould so do it two or three times.

5.    Put the mould, on the baking tray, into the oven. Cook for about an hour and a half – the batter may spill over the top but it will only go on the tray. If the top is burnt it shouldn’t matter as you’ll be cutting it off once it’s out of the oven because it’s probably outside the top of the mould. You can check with a skewer if it’s cooked but it could need longer. Err on the side of caution and over cook if in doubt.

6.    Once cooked leave the cool in the mould. This is important as you’ll have more chance of getting it out in one piece (saying that I always get impatient and do it when it’s warm!)

7.    Before you turn out cut any cake that is over the top of the mould off so you have a smooth back to the cake.

8.    Turn out and paint! I started with red, and then did the gold detail, ending with the silver. Make sure each layer/colour if dry before putting more on top. I did two layers of each and that seemed to do the trick. Finish by shoving half lengths of Matchsticks in the three points where Dalek’s have sticky out things (or you can fashion them out of black icing but after all that painting who has time for that?) 

N.B. This cake is going to be a bit dry, as you’ve probably overcooked, so maybe have cream or frosting on the side for people to add.

 

Ok so the painting part was lots of fun

Rhubarb and Custard Macarons

I’m not going to put up the recipe for these as they didn’t work out perfectly. I was experimenting with powdered egg white (because I find it a pain to have to make something with left over yolks) but I don’t think it works on these as the consistency of the whisked egg is so important to the overall recipe. I’m going to see if I can find pasteurised egg whites in a supermarket as I’m sure they must exist.

Macarons are fundamentally easy to make but fiddly to make look flawless. I will say that the texture of these were brilliant and I got that little lip on them that is so vital. So while they weren’t as beautiful as shop bought ones the end result in the mouth was spot on. It just goes to show that baking doesn’t need to look perfect to taste good.

One thing that was a success was the flavourings. I picked up some concentrated rhubarb and custard food flavourings and they worked out really well in these. Subtle and very realistic – I’m going to try it out on cupcakes next. 

Chocolate Malt Biscuits

A couple of weekends ago some good friends of mine got married. The night before one of the Bride's friends, who I met on the hen, stayed over at mine as we were decorating a boat together on the wedding day (I know - random). Anyway she brought many lovely gifts with her, one of which being a jar of caramel biscuit spread (the others alcohol based) which we had discussed in length on the hen do. It’s basically the caramel biscuits you sometimes get with tea or coffee in the little wrapper mushed up to make a spread. I know!!! 

She proceeded to reveal a packet of malted milk biscuits from her bag as these are the structure she had found best to spread this on. It was immense.  

So that got me thinking about malt and biscuits. I’m a fan of malt. I’ll have a malt shake over a pure milkshake but I’ve never been a fan of malt loaf or malt drinks. However the malted milk biscuits were good and so I investigated. I found a recipe and they worked out very well. I made 2 ½ times this amount as my work eat biscuits like the world is ending and I needed lots! 

Ingredients

150g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

100g butter (soft)

75g granular sugar

60g Ovaltine

2 large egg yolks (you can whisk up the whites, add 120g caster sugar to make 2 large meringues. Bake on the lowest heat you have for about 1 hour, turn off the oven and leave to cool in the oven).

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM4.

2.    Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Leave to one side for the moment.

3.    Cream the butter and sugar together until it’s got pale. Everyone goes for this fluffy thing but unless you have a free standing whisk thing then about3 or 4 minutes will do.

4.    Then add the Ovaltine, egg yolks and vanilla. Mix well.

5.    Add the flour mixture and you’re done. You may need to use your hands to bring the mixture together as it will just look like wet sand.

6.    Then divide into 16 balls.

7.    Space them out on a baking tray – no more than 8 on a large cookie sheet – and press them down until they are about 1cm thick. Bake for 11 minutes. No more, no less!

8.    Cool and eat with a glass of milk.

 

Look - spread on biscuits!!! Oh and wine.