The Longest Week of my life...ending with meeting Jude Law :D

So my lovely readers, this week I have worked night and day baking and decorating my offerings for the world's first 18+ Evil Cake Shop Where I made lots of eyeballs, maggots and mouldy cakes! But it was not easy...kilos and kilos of butter and icing sugar had to be sacrificed, and some cakes just didn't make it and were pronounced burnt at the scene of the crime. But I got there in the end readers. There were moments where I struggled to see the light at the end of the tunnel and continued to ice cakes like a vacant zombie. Icing cake...after cake...after cake...

But I'll stop whining, and show you my efforts through a pictoral diary!

In the beginning, there were giant saucepans of cake mix and lots and lots of mess...

And from this mess, towers of cupcakes were built...

And seas of cupcakes flowed freely...

Then, from the skies, buttercream rained down upon these cupcakes, and lo they became pink and tasty...

And they were to be called, The 12 Cupcakes.

Some betrayed their Lord Cupcake, and were sent to 'The Reject Plastic Bag' where a terrible fate awaited them; consumption by The Dad.

Others went on to seek greatness; they became mouldy.

(I think I should add here I made them mouldy for that 'manky' effect...I didn't actually leave them to mould for months on end...*cough*)

Others explored the Cake world and found new land where they formed a new race of cake, The Green Cakes. An elite race of cakes that form communities in abandoned jars...

Where they went forth and multiplied. And The Cake Lord said unto them, 'You shall love thy fellow cupcakes, and obey The 10 Cupmmandments (Geddit? Commandments...Cupcakes...Cupmmandments...It's a stretch I know.)

1. You shall have no other Cupcake Lords other than me, for I rule the Cupcakes. I am the Uber Cupcake.

2. You shall not take the name of The Cupcake in vain. Or you shall be baked with out of date eggs, and ye shall smell.

3. Remember the Buttercream day, for it is a holy day, when all that is delicous rains upon little cupcakes and transforms them into little drops of Cupcakey heaven

4.Honor your Father and thy Mother, Mr. Oven and Mrs. Kitchen Aid.

5. You shall not eat other Cupcakes. Cupcakes are not Cannibals.

6. You shall not commit Cupcakey Canoodling. You shall be a beautiful tasty cupcake, and will not taint yourself with Cupcakey inbreeding. You are baked as a family of delicous cakes.

7. You shall not steal cupcakey goodness from your fellow Cupcakes.

8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. Should a fellow cupcake sit naked and Buttercreamless beside you whilst your bounteous amounts of buttercream sit upon you whilst you look suspicious, ye shall be sent to Cupcakey Hell. The Reject Plastic Bag.

9. You shall not covert your neighbour's cupcake case; you shall not covert your neighbour's buttercream, nor his decorations.

10. You shall not try and recreate yourself in the Lord Cupcake's image. He alone stays forever delicious and has the perfect ratio of icing sugar to butter in his Buttercream.

Behold my Kingdom of Jar Cakes.

Maggots!

Beautiful cupcakes conquered by Maggots.

The Washing Up.

Before.

After.

(1 hour later...)

Cake Pop Eyeballs! Rather popular in the shop ;)

And finally a picture of the queue for the shop (Courtesy of Molly Bakes!) Stretching down the high street! Who knew London was so full of sick minded people after 18+ Cake...

P.S I dropped off some cakes to Cupcake Camp London in Camden today where, and here's why I think there is a God, there was Jude Law! He is a beautiful, beautfiful man. I had to convince his children my maggots wern't actually real...(Which of course they are...)

PP.S My cakes were on the telly! BBC 1's 'The One Show'. You can see my Maggot Cake and my eyeball!

Lil' Tarts

And I mean tarts completely in the edible sense...

Lil' Bakewell Tarts! I do apologise that sometimes my Titles may appear shocking and misleading, i.e 'Rabbit Cake' (where no rabbits were harmed in the making...*cough*) but I feel they are necessary to arouse intrigue and curiosity in the following post thus allowing relief and enjoyment to sweep over my dear readers as they realise they are not about to read about tarts and massacred rabbit cakes...See, everything I do I do for you reader.

Anyway! You know I ramble, but all ramblings lead to a logical post. So here are my little Bakewell tarts!

I went for the 'rustic' home made look (i.e I couldn't be bothered to make them look really neat and trim the edges to the nearest millimetre because let's face it, all little tarts look like that - and I like mine to look a lil' different!)

So I made me some shortcrust pastry courtesy of The Delia

- Greased up me muffin pan, and here's how to achieve the beautiful rustic effect; don't cut out nice little circles from your pastry to line the tin, cut out completely random shapes and squidge them into the pan! So you end up with funky pointy bits and unusual shapes; much more fun! (and a lot less effort)

- Pricked the bases of the pastry with my trusty fork; this is supposed to prevent the bases getting soggy or something...incontinent pastry.

- Then blind bake your pastry (by this I don't mean grab the nearest blind person you can find on the street; it would alarm said blind person and such acts are frowned upon) what it actually means is! (Oh and it also doesn't mean blind yourself...baking should be pleasureable, not masochistic) Ahem, it means! Line your uncooked pastry with baking parchment then use your weapon of choice to weigh it down (I use baking beans; like ceramic chick peas) but you can use anything oven proof and heavy. Bake them like that for aboooout 10 minutes...ish...until your pastry looks slightly cooked, but we don't want them completley cooked yet!

- Then we remove our part cooked pastry, remove the beanage and parchment and plop in a dollop of your chosen jam (Raspberry all the way...not that I'm trying to influence your decision) and theeeen a dollop of Bakewell mix!

-Then cook 'em up for about 10-15 minutes until your little tarts have risen and your pastry is lightly browned (see below)

- Then I got a bit cutesy and added some little almond slice hearts for added 'Aaw' factor!

And here's my winged tart...

Very moist, very delicious, and very gone within 20 minutes of making them!

(Notice no soggy bottoms!)

Time for Thyme

See what I did there with the title? Mind boggling.

Ok I know what you're thinking, 'Enough with the amazing play on words, give us Cake!'

May I introduce to you, Lemon and Thyme Cupcakes.

I've always wanted to bake this combination and thyme somehow found its way to my doorstep after a trechorous journey from the shelves of Sainsbury's so I figured fate obviously knew the time was right for me to bake Lemon and Thyme cupcakes...

It's basically a good ol' vanilla cake recipe with a lemon chucked in (not whole, that would taste weird...) and a handful of thyme chopped up and sprinkled in, lovely! Here is a pictoral representation of how my Lemon and Thyme cakes came into existence...

So I butchered my lemon...and beheaded my Thyme. Do you like how I make baking sound so loving and gentle?

Then for the eagle eyed among you (I hope none of you have actual eagle eyes, because I fear you would look most bizarre...but definitely one of the only people in the world with eagle eyes, so quite unique in a way...but still rather odd. I condone diversity only so much.) Anyway! The above picture is indeed of chopped up Rosemary. I apologise for deceiving you. But I did also make Lemon and Rosemary cupcakes, but that's for another post entirely, I don't want to make you too excited.

Vanilla cake mix + chopped up thyme (Ok I know it's Rosemary, but let's all pretend its Thyme! :D I know deception through Cake Photography is the worst crime one could commit, but I'm at uni, Thymeless, and had to resort to what photos I had...I only do it to bring you weekly updates of my kitchen escapades, and if that means using the odd misleading photo then I am truly sorry, but I do it all in the name of cake.)


Tudaah! They're very tasty! A really 'unique' flavour which doesn't mean they're bad! It just means they have a really nice subtle hint of lemon and a sweet hint of thyme which go really well together. Tops it off with a little lemon icing, or leave as they are because the lemon icing could be quite overpowering. The cakes are lovely and moist so leave it naked and let it work it's magic on your taste buds!

Time for Tea

Now, I dislike tea, but I do love cake. So what better way to make tea taste good than to bake it in a cake?!

I have collected a vast amount of freebie flavoured teabags; not because I particularly like their flavour, but because they were free...So instead of wasting them I decided to give them a better life and show them to the cake.

I had me some vanillla tea, ordinary tea, green tea, peppermint tea and some kind of weird herby tea.

Made up some vanilla cakey mix and literally emptied a tea bag into the mix...

Also divided my mixture up into cups for all me different tea bags which the parents wern't too pleased about seeing as there were no cups left for an actual cup of tea...But sacrifices must be made in the name of cake.

Dear readers. I wish I could tell you they tasted amazing. But alas I can not tell ye a lie. They did not.

I have since realised my emptying of the tea bag into the mix was not my finest hour. Whilst the cakes did taste of the tea bags, they also had a not very pleasant grittiness to them as the tea leaves had not melted and merged with the cake as I had envisaged; not a marriage made in cakey heaven.

However! Do not think I have not consulted Cake Scientists on this matter. I have since realised that perhaps brewing the tea first with a little water to make it very strong, and simply adding the brewed tea to the mix would make the cake taste like tea but not feel like you're eating sand! Hurrah!

The worst thing about this whole exercise was seeing my father, the King of Cake Consumption, decline eating my Tea Cakes (see what I did there, 'Tea Cakes'...literally :D) And I never want to see the look of sheer disappointment upon my father's face again when faced with a cake he would not like to eat.

So dad, if you're reading this, I apologise, and I will never do such a horrendous thing to you ever again.

Mmm tea leaves...

My Birthday Cake

Don't cry for me dear readers when I tell you I had to bake my own Birthday Cake.

I believe people fear the great task of baking my cake upon realising I do bake rather a lot of cakes myself, and so the task of baking the ultimate birthday cake for someone who bakes a lot of cakes could be deemed quite a daunting task. So I thought, rather than let my beloved ones worry and sweat over such a gigantic task, I shall bake my own Birthday cake.

And so, behold, my Birthday Carrot Cake (I love Carrot Cake more than life itself...and the Cream Cheese icing more than that...) And of course I wasn't just going to put a little token carrot on top, obviously I had to make it look as if the carrots were growing out of the cake like a vegetable patch...

Enjoy!