177: Christmas cake, p364

My first Christmas cake. Don't really like fruit cake, like Christmas cake and wedding cake, too dry and heavy I usually find, but maybe this will be the exception! Fingers crossed. The mix was very stiff and difficult to stir, once the flour was added, so I 'had' to slosh in a good extra glug of brandy to loosen it up a bit. It was only after I had baked it that I realised I missed out the second lot of dried fruit listed in the ingredients - ooops. Am trying to keep hoping that 350 missing grams of fruit isn't going to have made too much of a difference... Eek. Will keep fingers crossed and keep feeding it brandy until Christmas Eve when I ice it...

 **Update on 26/12/10: well, it sure is dense... even without the extra fruit... In the end I didn't ice it. My parents liked it, but none of us are big Christmas cake eaters so it's going to be taken into work next week to be finished off :)

132: A wonderfully moist, fresh plum cake, p287

'Wonderfully moist' - ha - sticky messy slodge 'o' cake this was - perhaps not the best one to take into work... We ended up eating it with spoons :) But it was lovely, if a little gooey and more like a cakey crumble. The almonds, as ever, gave the cakey part a nutty, rich texture, and the walnuts worked better than I thought they would - I'm not a big fan of lumps of nut floating around in cake. The English plums I got at the weekend were just right - a little sweet, but also a little tart - but made it very gloopy on top. Definitely took longer than 45mins to cook, more like 1hr 10mins and because of the gooey plumminess on top had to have faith that it was cooked underneath. Phew...

118: Peach and blueberry soured cream cobbler, p230

Mmm, yummy! I suddenly had a craving for a bit of comfort food of the pudding variety and spur of the moment made this, having all the ingredients in stock. Wasn't sure what made it a cobbler and not a crumble until I started making it - and I think the distinction is that you make a dough and pile little rounds of dough on top of the fruit. What a faff! The dough was quite sticky and difficult to make into flat enough rounds to possibly cover the top of the fruit so I ended up with quite a 'rustic' mishmash of odd shapes stretched out across the surface, and covered in the stuff. It took longer to cook than 25mins too, more like 40mins, after 25mins I cut into it and found the cobblers (??) were still raw and sticky inside, so had to pop it back in. The result was good though, not too sweet, not too sour, and I quite liked the topping... Hmm. But would probably stick with regular crumble topping normally... Less messy... and quicker...

117: Bramley apple shortcake, p124

Yummy! I made pastry!! Hot paws are not conducive to pastry making, which is a terrible shame as I love love love pastry. Actually it's probably a good thing I can't make it very well... or I'd eat it all the time...

This was a very short shortcrust pastry, and I tried really hard... but it still ended up being placed in the bottom of the pie tin and over the top of the filling in multiple pieces. Added a very homemade 'rustic' look, I like to think... Only a pic (to follow) of the outside for this one as I took it to a family party and we had to leave early as hubby had an opera to get to, at Glyndebourne, so had to leave it there and in the rush, although I tried a bit of it quickly, completely forgot to take a picture of it cut. Ho hum. But I can report that it was really rather good - not too sweet, not too sour, not too sloppy. Hate it when the filling makes the pastry too soggy and thought that might happen with this as I made the pie last night - but no, it didn't, success! And even grumpy uncle, who doesn't do complements, said it wasn't bad at all. And then had a second piece :)

110: Chocolate almond cake, p99

An emergency pudding required for a picnic at Glyndebourne... and this leapt out of the book at me. Even though we were out of dark chocolate... It's hubbie's fault that we need an emergency pudding, so he went out to get dark chocolate with the instructions to get 200g fine quality, c.70%+ dark chocolate. He came back with dark cooking chocolate (54% cocoa), which was at least better than the galaxy dark he came back with at some point in the past... Poor hub. He slunk off embarrassed when I pointed out the difference. But he got everything else on the shopping list spot on!

The egg white whisking fest continues - 5 eggs this time, separated, whites whisked to stiff peaks (I'm getting good at this!). I must have used over a dozen eggs so far this week...

Difficult to fold the heavy gloopy choc/butter/egg yolk/flour/coffee mix into the light, fluffy egg whites but managed without knocking all of the air out...

Took c.10-15mins longer than the cooking time in the book, before the knife stopped coming out covered in cake mix, and on removal the top of the cake broke slightly, showing that the top had risen slightly above the rest of the cake, and had formed a little crisp layer. Yummy.

Cake survived the car journey to Glyndebourne, and with the leftover mascarpone cream from yesterday, slightly flatter now the egg whites had lost a lot of their froth, went down very well. A very rich, fudgy chocolate cake, with only a couple of embarrassingly albino bits where I clearly hadn't mixed the egg whites in well enough...

87: A really fast cake with blueberries and pears, p163

Oh wow. This is a supreme cake, and a definite keeper of a recipe... Nigel's puddingy cakes are amazing. And so easy! They tend to make a very small amount of batter though, which I always have a mini panic about as I'm scraping it into the tin and try to cover the bottom with it, and they don't make enormous thick wedges of cake, but they still rise and make a lovely light texture, and I suppose more elegant little slices of cake. This one is just a batter with a pile of fruit heaped on top before baking, and so looks like it's not cooking whilst in the oven, and is all gooey and a bit of a mess, but ooooh boy... It's been promised to the folks at work tomorrow but it looks and smelt so good, I've had to test a bit, purely for research purposes... maybe a another, very small, sliver won't hurt...

82: Demerara lemon cake with thick yoghurt, p91

A really moist, puddingy cake, this. Took it to my parents' this weekend for my mum's birthday and it went down very well after a BBQ and with strawberries and fruit salad (and yoghurt) and then with icecream and more fruit at lunchtime the next day.

Very easy to make, with the only faff being to make the sticky lemon slices to pop on top, which to be honest, I probably wouldn't do again... Lazy? Moi? Noooo, just that everyone peeled them off and left them on the side when the cake was served!! The ground almonds made the cake definitely more of a pudding, and the hubbie really liked it, having seconds, and even asking to bring a slice home with us. Result :)

68: My very good chocolate brownie recipe, p325

Oooooh, these were, and still are, very good indeed. Incredibly rich, dense, fudgey brownies, without any interloping ingredients like chopped nuts, just chocolatey cocoay goodness. This is supposed to serve 12, but I cut it into 24, and having tried a half a piece, this is definitely the sort of brownie one can only eat one small piece of at a time...And then need a bit of a lie-down...

Wasn't the easiest of instructions, to fold the flour and cocoa in to the butter/egg/sugar/chocolate mix in the bowl of the food processor, but managed, nonetheless, and soon the flat was full of chocolatey baking smells, making for happy hubby.

Only real problem was that for some reason, inspite of greasing the tin and lining the base with baking parchment, it was a bugger to turn out and I ended up cutting it in the tin and prising out the first few pieces. A few bits crumbled in the process, so it's not a neat brownie, but it was worth it...

Apart from a few pieces, sequestered for T, these are destined to accompany me to work on Monday as it's my birthday, and one must bring cake for morning tea if it's one's birthday.

**Aha, and I've done more recipes in the last week than I did in the whole of April - oh dear!!**

58: English apple cake, p306

Yummy yummy, what a good recipe to do first on my return from Sikkim. The end of the trip ended up being so busy and with so little shopping time that I couldn't get any Indian sweeties to bring home for work, so I decided to bake a Nigel cake and take in some real Sikkimese 'Temi' tea to have a proper little tea party for our team. This cake mix made a very small amount of batter, which is always worrying, hardly filling a quarter of the tin, and then the cinnamon/lemon apples piled on top before baking. The cake didn't rise very much but wasn't heavy at all, and the fruit slightly sunk in but stayed towards to the top, which was really rather nice. I don't like too much cinnamon in things like this, I like cinnamon but find it very strong and overpowering in lots of recipes, becoming rather sickly...  But the amount in this recipe was perfect, very light and delicate. All in all, a lovely light, not too sweet, definitely not sickly, moist cake - perfect for teatime! And it vanished very quickly at work...

57: Coffee and walnut cake, p355

Bad me - I forgot to post this one, just over a week before I went away. We had a cake sale at work in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care, and I made the coffee and walnut cake that kick started this challenge idea back in November last year. Bizarrely, I didn't get to try it... I put the cake up in our tearoom with everyone else's and dashed off to a lecture, and an hour later went back to slice it up into pieces so people could buy it slice by slice - but the whole cake had vanished! A week later I was chatting to a friend in another department and she said she'd dashed over to the cake sale and bought a whole cake to take back to the office for her team, and that it had been fabulous! It was mine! So at least I know it turned out okay - and I did get to try it last year when I made it, so think I can get away without having to make it again...