Sugar

I nearly had a mini heart attack last night dear readers. Not because my arteries are clogged with cakey goodness, and not because Johnny Depp turned up on my doorstep.

Nope, it was because my worst nightmare came true.

I had no caster sugar.

I panicked, I cried a little, I tried to convince myself that it would be OK to wait until tomorrow to make cakes. But nothing worked.

And then, in my time of need, inspiration struck.

Why do I always default to using caster sugar in my cakes?

I have Ready Roll icing...and I have icing sugar. Both of which...are sugar. So maybe I could use them instead of caster sugar?!

I stood nervously for a good minute until deciding that although I had come to considering drastic measures for the sake of cake, it had to be done. A lack of caster sugar wasn't going to get in the way of Cake.

So my friends, can you subsitute any sugar for caster sugar? Honestly? Yep! Read on...

I got my trusty big box of ready roll out and it is seriously like a brick of icing. Ooh that's given me an idea, I could live in a house of icing with icing bricks and liquorice windows and a door made of cake with a garden of buttercream and sugar flowers...

Ahem, where was I. Experiment 1: Ready Roll Icing Sugar

As we all know, ready roll is a nightmare to roll straight from its cosy foil bed in a box. So instead of waiting around for it to warm itself up and get acclimatised to my kitchen, I cut off a big chunk and threw it in the microwave where it bubbled up and went mushy.

However, as the picture below will reveal, it does harden up again crazy quickly, so when you mix it into your butter you will end up with a weird pool of melted butter with floating lumps of icing sugar...

I have to admit I was a little alarmed at this point and feared for my cake in the making. But I continued readers, for the sake of Cake Science (a recognised and respected branch of science...)

Ok, I'm aware the image below doesn't exactly look appetising.

It's melted butter, lumps of icing sugar, egg and flour...I can hear you drooling now...

But! Although again alarmed at such an...interesting looking mixture, I figured I'd come this far now, so it was only right to throw my mix in the oven and pray for cake.

Experiment 2: The Icing Sugar

Now, I really wasn't sure about this one. 'But you were about ready roll?!' I hear you mutter in doubt.

Well, no, but Icing sugar just seemed too powdery to be mixing with the likes of cake mixture. By rights it belongs with butter to make delicious buttercream, not getting down and dirty with eggs and flour...

But I knew it was time to take Icing Sugar away from its pretty pink packaging and life spent sitting on top of The Cake. It was time for it to get beaten, mixed and cooked in the oven.

Add a lil' egg and flour...

And as you can see this mixture looks a lot more like the cake mixture we all know and love. Largely because there are no lumps of Ready Roll floating about...

Now I know what you're thinking readers, 'There's no way using that weirdo sugar worked. What a waste of tasty Ready Roll icing and a cruel infliction of suffering for Icing Sugar'. But it did, and rather well I'll have you know...

Tudaah! Ready Rolls on your left, Icing Sugar on your right.

No idea why they're different. I only bake the cakes for science, I don't actually know why strange and wonderful things happen...all's I care about is that the end result is edible!

Of course as my aged and wise father pointed out after 'testing' the final products; a task that meant he had to consume all my cakes just to make sure there was consistency across the cakes...

Sugar is sugar, no matter what form it is in. I can see how the idea of putting ready roll into a cake would appear not to work because it looks so solid, and it goes against every cakey bone in our body that screams at us that it is not normal and only Caster Sugar will do.

But as I have proved dear readers, our screaming bones are wrong.

So next time you've got a basement full of Read Roll and Icing sugar (like you do...), but no caster sugar. Do not panic! Go forth and bake that Cake!

Next time, can you use bread flour...in cakes?! Stay tuned...

^ Icing Sugar innards ^

^ Ready Roll ^

Chickpea Cake...no really

Ok I know, I'm a lil' late on this one...my sincerest apologies! BUT! I've been a lil' busy, and I have a lil' news...Next week my friends, I'm having some of my more unusual designs (See Plant Cake, Cup Noodle etc.) In a gallery in Leicester Square! It's part of an event called The Mad Artists' Tea Party sponsored by Tate and Lyle promoting their fair trade sugars and it should be a lil' bit good...

SO! 'Yes that all sounds rather swell but where's this week's post?!' I hear you cry, well, worry no more, tis' here! Chickpea Cake!

No I havn't gone all crazy and healthy on you, I wouldn't be that cruel. I did in fact stumble across a weird and wonderful recipe for this Chickpea Cake whilst typing in 'unusual cake recipes' into Google on a wet and windy day and, having a can of chickpeas 'spare' in my emergency cupboard of cans of nameless things I will never eat but will probably put in a cake one day, I ventured forth to concoct this mystical sounding cake...

First thing I noticed about the recipe is its lack of butter. Now, either chickpeas are actually little pods of butter, or there's something magical about them that renders them a successful, and healthy (sorry) substitute to butter...but I'm not guaranteeing it'll be a tasty alternative...

So! First things first, chuck a load of chick peas (just thought I'd add, I don't think they're peas farmed by little chicks, unless they're genius chicks...I don't actually know why they're called chickpeas, but no doubt the mine of 'facts' that is Wikipedia will know...or guess...)

Then blitz the lil' guys into a smooth puree. This does take like, 5 minutes. So I suggest finding out where chickpeas come from during this valuable time...Unless you really love staring at chickpeas being blended...which I have to admit is one of my past times...

Drop a rather appropriate egg into the mix. Egg...being of the chick origin...adding it to chick peas...It's a stretch but yeah, chicks...eggs...moving on.

Then for the best part of any recipe, add a load of cocoa powder! Guaranteed to cover up any foul, or delicious tasting pureed chickpeas!

Blitzy blitzy...

Fortunatley, or unfortunately...the mix at this stage isn't exactly appetising, so at least you'll be left with a lot of it to actually make the cake

Plop into a pan...

Ok, it's not one of those sink your face into it and just eat your way through to the bottom kind of cakes, because it doesn't rise a hell of a lot. Who'd have thought chickpeas wern't a natural raising agent? But a ton of chocolate cream cheese topping soon makes up for this humble cakes lack of height, or 'vertical challenges' in life...

Ok, I'll be honest. This cake didn't taste amazing, but then I do think it's down to eater preference. It's quite a bitter cake, not really 'chocolatey' as such. BUT! Fear not, cover it in enough chocolate cream cheese and all thoughts of 'ew, of course this cake doesn't taste good, it's full of chickpeas. I hated chickpeas before and now, not only do I still hate them, but I've wasted what could have been a delicious chocolate cake...'

It's a Marmite cake. You love it or you hate it. Personally, at least I need no longer wonder what Chickpea Cake tastes like...Now to ponder over mashed potato cake...

Why stick to cupcake pans?!

So I was thinking...why do all cupcakes fundamentally look exactly the same? All round with a flat bottom and some kind of delicious spectacle on top...

What if you could make them look a lil' different?

So out came my brioche pan!

Admittedly, I've never actually baked brioche in it, I just thought the shapes were pretty...which is always a good excuse to buy baking equipment.

And I thought to myself dear friends! Surely if you can bake brioche in it, baking cakes in it isn't such a crazy idea...

So I did.

It were rather simple really, just greased it up and plopped about 4 tsp of mixture in. But as you can see my cakes got a little cooking happy and blew up over the edges, so maybe just 2-3 tsp next time...

And they look so sweet! Perfect to be served individually on a plate with a lil' bit of frosting swirled on top (mine were eaten by my trusty 'cake tester' aka The Dad before I could frost them...but the idea was there!)

I also tried out a multi-layered one for visual effect although it is a little in the chocolate's favour...but is that a bad thing?!

The grooves were begging to have lemon icing poured down them...

And then a little more icing...

OK a lot more...

And then! I figured, why stop at cake? Why not attempt making a cheesecake in it...

So behold the, 'What is that?!'...

...'Ooooh it's a cheesecake!'

Serving it upside down is of course optional, but I can't resist producing things in front of people and having them look at it quizzically, only to flip it up the right way and have them sigh with relief that it is indeed edible. Life would be boring if we always served food the right way up...

Lovely little individual cheesecakes!


And I guess you could do jellies...I did another mousse but again, eaten before photographed.
Eeerm what else...ice cream! Ooor massive ice cubes, ooor...well anything you can think of!

So basically, don't use a baking pan for the purpose the label tells you to, there's all kind of stuff you can do with pans to make weirdly shaped and unusual things. Why just the other week I baked a cake in a pint glass...so get creative with the stuff in your kitchen! (With the things that are oven proof of course or things could get a lil' messy...)