Wednesday 28 October 2009

An interesting day

Well, most of you won't know this, but I currently have a regular order for cakes at the local deli in Aldridge called Simply Delicious.

I might provide them with a carrot cake or two, chocolate fudge cake, Victoria sponge cake or chocolate fridge cake.

Today I asked how my chocolate fridge cake (from the Hummingbird bakery cookbook) went down. The answer was good, but they wondered whether I could make it look a little prettier.

I thought fridge cake was supposed to be a little "rustic".

I will now have to think of a way of making my fridge cake "pretty".

Keeping up with the bakers

Well, one thing I have noticed - all bakers seem to take excellent photographs of their cakes.

This is probably not one of my core skills - as you might be able to tell from the picture below (although I did think about stealing other peoples photos of cakes, but thought I'd rather do it myself), but we all have to start somewhere.

I expect my kids will be delighted, as I'll obviously need to make extra cakes to cut up and photograph. They're always hoping a cake doesn't work out so well so they get to keep and eat it.

Well, here's a couple of pictures of my Chocolate Guinness Cake taken before it gets delivered to the cafe who are buying it this morning.




All I need now is to make one and cut it open and take some more.........

Tuesday 27 October 2009

Why is my Red Velvet more chocolate than red?

I've been baking today - 2 chocolate guinness cakes (lets hope the icing is more solid than last time) and 1 three layer red velvet cake.

Again, the colour of this cake seems to be more brown, than red. You have to mix two bottles of red food colouring with coccoa powder. I reduced the amount of the coccoa, but still it seems more brown than red.

I wonder whether there is a difference between the "natural" red food colouring compared to the artificial. It looks like the artifical food colour looks redder, so for the sake of a few "E's" I might stay with the artifical one (plus its cheaper!)

Anyone one have any issues with making this cake?

Monday 26 October 2009

Choosing what is for dinner

How do you decide what to eat for tea (or dinner)? How easy it is to get into a routine of Fish Pie on Tuesdays, Spag bol on Wednesdays etc.

I need to work out how to be creative with our daily menu, that doesn't mean spending all day preparing it and increasing the weekly food bill.

Someone ought to create a menu generator - select all the meals you like (and can cook) and it then generates the weekly menu.

Saturday 24 October 2009

Mother and daugther in the kitchen

As part of our new lifestyle at home, its been decided that I'll cook the meals during the week and my wife will cook at the weekends (she said she needed to keep her hand in, but I think its because she's lovely and wants to give me a break from cooking.)

So, as I write my first blog post, I find that instead of cooking, I am watching my wife and daughter cook and prepare dinner for tonight and pudding for tomorrow (we're having friends round to eat with us).

The pudding comes from a great book called "the hummingbird bakery cookbook", which has some great recipes in (a Red Velvet Cake which I've used), although, for tomorrow we having a great Lemon Meringue pie.

Well, I think I'll go and help dry up - its the least I can do :)