Spiced Date & Sesame Crunchies

This was a recipe I had been looking forward to for ages, and it turns out I was wise to do so. These are something like date biscuit sandwiches - what's not to like? The recipe can be found on page 111 of Delia's Cakes, and really consists of two parts - the date bit in the middle (the sandwich filling) and the lovely biscuitty top and bottom (the bread of the sandwich).

The date mix is easy - particularly if you read the recipe properly before popping to the shops and realise the dates need to be finely chopped and so purchase chopped dates rather than whole ones (smug face). They go into a pan with some water, lemon juice and cinnamon and heat gently until it looks spreadable - this took about 5-10 minutes.

In the meantime, the biscuit-esque part can be put together. It's just a case of melting some butter and sugar then pouring onto some flour, semolina and sesame seeds. Then it gets a bit weird. Half of this mixture becomes the bottom of the 'crunchies' and as it's warm, it can be easily pressed into the bottom of the greased tin. The semolina does make it a bit of a strange texture, and it's very buttery so prepare for greasy fingers. Next the spreadable date mix gets spread on top, by which time the other half of the biscuit mixture has changed totally in consistency and is now crumbly! However, not a problem as it can be crumbled on top and then pressed down to cover the dates.

I would say it is quite important to get the right size tin for this - too small and the slices would be like bricks, but too big and you'd never get the mixture to cover over the date sandwich filling in the middle. Luckily I seemed to have just the right size tin and they worked out great. The recipe said it makes 18, but I went for more generous sized slices and got 15 instead. They sliced beautifully and came out really neat and as the name would suggest... crunchy.  They are perfect to take to work with a cup of tea, pack as part of a picnic or a car snack. The sweetness of the dates means they aren't as heavy on sugar as some other snacks, and surely they count as one of your five-a-day! The cinnamon in the date mix is delicious, and gives just a hint of the spiced joys of all the baking to come next month - Christmas is on its way!

Classic Sponge Cake

Time to tackle the very first recipe in Delia's Cakes - the 'Classic Sponge Cake'. Slightly strange that she doesn't call it a 'Victoria Sponge' but that's exactly what it is. Laura made this one, fresh from learning all sorts of fantastic tips at a class run at our (Chitty's Cakes) studio but by the wonderful Melanie from Devenish Girl - another local cake business here in Birmingham. Laura's past experiences of Victoria Sponge cakes had been compared to pancakes given their vertically challenged nature, but with the help of Melanie and Delia, this one was a success.

Delia's method seems to be the same for most of her sponge cakes - sift the flour into a bowl, then add all the other ingredients and combine with an electric whisk. It's exactly the opposite to what I would do, and what Melanie taught Laura and the rest of the class in this week's 'Perfect Victoria Sponge' class. The results from the class speak for themselves in this picture of a very happy Laura - the cake rose up massively and was as light as air, which was a direct result of lots of whisking and beating of the butter and sugar, then yet more beating as the eggs are added gradually and finally folding in the flour gently.

A few days later, when Laura made Delia's sponge cake, she was a bit disappointed with the rise in comparison to the one she made in Melanie's class, but we concluded it was more a result of the tin size rather than anything that hadn't gone right. At our team meeting tasting session, Julie was a bit disappointed at the lack of buttercream in the middle (although traditionally a Victoria sponge does just have jam) but I thought it was delicious. Really traditional and very tasty. In summer, it would work fantastically with some fresh cream in the middle as well as jam.

I hate to contradict Delia's instructions, but I have to say that personally, I think better results always come from the traditional creaming method (butter and sugar thoroughly beaten together first, gradually adding eggs then carefully folding in flour) so that is what we shall be sticking to here. Either way, it's a beautifully simply cake that never fails to hit the spot.

Oatmeal Parkin for dark nights

The clocks have gone back, the evenings are fast becoming long and dark, and it's a perfect time to enjoy some Traditional Oatmeal Parkin. Delia's recipe (on page 78) promises that this one keeps really well, and just goes on getting stickier. She's absolutely right - I've had this in the tin for a week and the last slice last night was by far the stickiest.

It's not a difficult recipe, although the long baking time (an hour and a half in the oven!) might put people off a bit, especially if baking is something you do when you get home from work to relax, as you might be wanting to head to bed before it's out of the oven! It's worth it though, if only for the small the permeates the house as it bakes.

Golden syrup, treacle, butter and dark brown sugar are what makes this wintery cake so deliciously sticky, but there is nothing complex about mixing all the ingredients together. It's a relief to read that it often sinks slightly in the middle, as mine certainly did (this can be quite disconcerting if you're not warned!). The result was a spicy, dense and just a bit sticky cake that suits this time of year perfectly - Halloween, bonfire night and the darker nights need a cake like this, so next time November comes around, give this a go!

Maple & (not so) Caramalised Pecan Cake

Team meetings here at Chitty's are where we get our heads together and come up with our latest flavour of the month cupcakes. November's is Maple & Pecan, so it seemed a good idea to see what wisdom Delia has to add to this classic flavour combination that is yet another recipe that is just perfect for the time of year.

Julie is a recent convert to pecan nuts, and now she's discovered her love for them they appear in lots of her bakes! The cake itself is a fairly traditional sponge with a tablespoon of maple syrup (Delia recommends the rather expensive, although worth it, Amber No. 2) and some chopped pecans. This gives the cake itself a nice little crunch. Delia recommends two 7 inch (18cm) sandwich tins, but as 6 inch were to hand at Julie's that's what she used, and it made it a nice deep cake - I have to say it may have looked a bit flat if made in a larger pair of tins.

The filling is a maple syrup flavoured mascarpone which makes the overall cake really light - our flavour of the month cupcakes have maple syrup flavoured buttercream which is also delicious, but there is something fresh about a mascarpone icing that compliments this cake nicely. Julie didn't go to the trouble of caramelising the pecans (I don't blame her!) but Delia makes it sound relatively easy - mixing pecans with yet more maple syrup and popping in the oven for 10 minutes. Pecans are pretty sweet as they are so caramelising them seemed like a bit of a maple syrup overkill - it certainly wasn't necessary.

The cake was absolutely delicious - I may be making this one myself at the end of the month for Thanksgiving (no, I'm not American, but I just love a turkey dinner with creamed corn and candied sweet potato!). Great cake for November, or anytime to be honest. Just a quick note that it really is worth investing in the Amber No. 2 maple syrup, as we have tried making our maple syrup buttercream since with a cheaper version and it ain't quite the same! Delia does know best on this one - it's worth the extra pennies!!

Halloween Gingerbread shapes

Everyone loves a gingerbread man, and as Delia tells us this recipe is 'ideal for children' it seemed like a good idea to tackle this recipe with my niece and nephew, Kate and Ben, aged 3 and 5. The recipe is on page 166 of Delia's Cakes and while she calls them gingerbread 'men', they can be made with any shaped cutter. Having carved pumpkins earlier that day, we kept with the Halloween theme and decided on some Halloween shapes for our biscuits.

The excitement of sleeping in a bed that wasn't her own was too much for Kate to resist, so while she napped in the afternoon, Ben and I got to work making the gingerbread biscuit mix. Only minor burns were suffered during the melting process (in spite of the repeated chorus of 'don't touch that Ben') and Ben seemed to enjoy helping me mix all the ingredients, although seemed to enjoy more letting me do the hard work while he looked on.

I was a bit worried about the patience required in waiting for the dough to cool enough to work with it - it makes essentially a sticky paste which then cools in the fridge for around half an hour to become a consistency that allows you to roll it out. An Avengers colouring book helped (me more than Ben!) with killing time while it cooled.

By the time the dough was ready to roll out, Kate had re-appeared and was keen to cut out shapes with Ben and I - we had pumpkin shapes, witches, a moon and more - all very seasonal. Rolling the dough out got a bit messy when done with small hands so I did most of the rolling and the children were happy to cut out their shapes and set them out on the baking trays. 10-15 minutes in the oven and they were ready (and smelled amazing). To be honest, if you have such interesting shapes, they don't need any icing, but I thought it would add an extra element of fun, so we made some simple icing with icing sugar, water and orange food colouring to spread on the pumpkin shaped biscuits - Ben and Kate were really good at this and even managed to keep the majority of sprinkles on the biscuits and not on the floor (miracle!). Kate suggested we use some raisins for eyes, and Ben insisted on some Star Wars messages to be written on top in icing, so the result was a truly unique selection of Halloween biscuits!

The great thing about this is that all you need is a themed cutter and this activity can be made suitable for any time of year or occasion - it's fun to decorate them, and easy to do. It's great fun to do with kids, and they absolutely love tucking in to them afterwards!

Autumnal Apple Cake

Our flavour of the month cupcakes here at Chitty's Cakes this month has been Toffee Apple Crumble (yum!) because nothing says 'October' better than freshly fallen apples baked up in some delicious cake or other, so it seemed a good idea to try Delia's Chunky Apple Cake. The recipe can be found on page 74 of Delia's Cakes.

Chopping the apples into chunks was probably the most taxing part of the whole process of making this cake - the rest of the cake mix was really straightforward and it went into the oven without any dramas (except for the battle to chop the apple fast enough so the rest didn't go brown while it waited!).

The finished cake requires no icing, decoration or post-bake attention - it's perfect just the way it is. It's one of the moistest cakes there is because of all the apple and the level of spice (mixed spice and cinnamon) and other flavours (orange zest) is perfect. I could have lived without the mixed peel, but it didn't ruin the cake at all. Totally delicious - try it before autumn turns into winter! 

(Sunken) Cherry Cake

Another team meeting, another Delia bake. Julie baked us all our Friday treat this week, Old-Fashioned Cherry Cake from page 72 of Delia's Cakes. The full page picture next to the recipe shows slices of the cake with the most perfectly dispersed cherry pieces (I wonder how many times it was baked to get it looking that perfect!) which may have led Julie into a false sense of security...!

This is a pretty simple bake, but with one major pitfall - sunken cherry syndrome! Even Delia admits that the cherries sometimes sink, but doesn't really address how to prevent it. The mixture contains two thirds of the cherries, with the final third of them dropped on top and poked down below the surface, but as Julie's cake shows - this ain't enough! The cake tasted great - a really traditional bake, perfect to have a slice with a cup of tea in the afternoon. However, if this were a bake-off technical, it simply wouldn't do, so here are our top tips for avoiding things like cherries (or other fruit, chocolate chips etc.) sinking in your cake:

1. Wash your cherries first - the sticky sugar syrup they are sitting in when you buy them will weigh them down
2. Dry your washed cherries thoroughly! Delia suggests patting them dry if they're covered in syrup, but in Julie's experience this simply won't cut it - wash and dry them to be sure!
2. Chop them very small - I know it's nice to have big chunky cherries in your cake, but they won't survive the pull of gravity if they're whole or even halved - at least quarter them!
3. Do as Delia says and put half or two thirds in the mixture, and sprinkle the rest evenly on top and poke down so they are just below the surface
4. If it's really important that things don't sink, add a little extra flour to your cake mix - if it's too runny, it won't hold your cherries (don't add too much though or your cake will be dry!)

Good luck defying gravity in the future with all your bakes, and if anything does sink just remember that it all tastes the same, so don't worry about what Paul Hollywood or Mary Berry might say about it!

Blimey! That's a Limey Cake...

After all the bakes we did for our Macmillan Coffee Morning, it's quite impressive that less than a week later Julie was back to it for another Delia blog bake. Team meeting Friday was round again and this time it was the Fresh Lime & Coconut Cake that was our treat. It's on page 38 of Delia's Cakes and it's a recipe she pinched directly from her Summer Collection. Although not strictly summer, we were experiencing an unseasonably warm start to October, so it went well with the sunshine.

The recipe called for the 'essential ingredient' of coconut milk power, which even Delia herself admitted was hard to get hold of (and that means it's near impossible!) so Julie made do with some creamed coconut that she keeps in the cupboard for making curries.

When we looked at the recipe the day before, it sounded a bit heavy on the limes. I love lime, but altogether the recipe called for four of them! The desiccated coconut in the cake is first soaked in lime juice, and then added (after an hour of soaking) to the cake mix (which includes plenty of lime zest) so it's no wonder the cake was incredibly limey!

Julie arrived at work on Friday morning looking unconvinced about the success of the cake, but when, part way through the morning all three of us collectively decided we couldn't wait until the afternoon's meeting to have a taste, we all tried a slice. I really liked it, but would have to describe it as a lime cake with a little bit of coconut - I don't think the balance was quite right. Now, perhaps had we followed Delia's instructions in obtaining some dried coconut milk powder (I've checked online and it seems Ocado stock it, but otherwise it's not the easiest thing to source), the balance of lime and coconut would have been a bit more fair. Perhaps one of the reasons I like it is that it reminds me of a gin & tonic (which can only be drink with plenty of fresh lime!) but like it I did. It you want your coconut flavour to stand up against all those limes, I'd suggest finding some of Delia's magic dried coconut milk powder and giving that a try. Or perhaps just lose a lime next time!

Macmillan Coffee Morning bakes!

After a month or two of baking lots of Delia's cakes for our blog, Julie suggested we offer them up to the public by holding a Macmillan Coffee Morning. Most people have heard of them - they're a fantastic idea. You hold an event whenever and wherever you like, bake a cake or two and invite people to come and eat them and donate money for Macmillan. There aren't many people who don't know someone who has suffered from cancer, and Macmillan do so much great work for sufferers and their families so it really is a good cause.

We (Chitty's Cakes) donated lots of cupcakes of our own - Red Velvet (always popular) and our flavour of the month for October, Toffee Apple Crumble - as well as a few cakes with the iconic Macmillan dusting on top. We set up a Delia table with some information about the blog, and all the Delia bakes we had done for the day.

Having been such a success the first time around, Julie recreated the Chocolate Beer Cake which went down a storm. I tried out the Rich Fruit Scones and served them with homemade strawberry and Pimm's jam and fresh cream.

The star of the day was The Ultimate Carrot Cake from page 186 of Delia's Cakes which Julie also donated. It's one we've had our eye on from the start as the picture makes it look so appetising. Not a fan of walnuts, she replaced them with pecans. It was moist, spicy and delicious. The sponges themselves were soaked with a syrup glaze (sugar with orange and lemon juice) after baking with made everything extra moist, and the icing was really tasty. Two tubs of mascarpone made it very cheesy tasting up against just one tablespoon of golden caster sugar, so Julie added some icing sugar (I think knowing my sweet tooth I'd have done the same!). Lots of people at the coffee morning had a slice and it got fantastic reviews.


One other bake worth mentioning from the day was the Peanut Butter Biscuits from page 161 of Delia which I made the night before. They were so easy to make - just a case of mixing everything together, shaping them into walnut sized balls, dipping them in Demerara sugar and popping them in the oven. They were crisp, sweet and really peanutty. Not only that, but as there were a few leftovers from the coffee morning I carried on snacking on them for a week, and they stayed really crunchy and delicious so a great biscuit to make and keep in a tin for a week (if they last that long!).

A massive thank you to everyone who came along to our Coffee Morning - we had a lot of support from our neighbours at the Custard Factory and really enjoyed meeting some of our neighbours. We raised almost £200 which we were really pleased with, and the fundraising continues as I will be running the Great Birmingham Run (a half marathon) in a couple of weeks time and am raising more money for Macmillan. If you would like to sponsor me, head to www.justgiving.com/rebecca-chitty. And if you like the sound of a Macmillan Coffee Morning, it's not too late to hold you own - just head to the Macmillan website for ideas. We would highly recommend it!

Bolton (or Eccles) Cakes

As my next bake was to take 'up north' to Bolton for my other half and his co-workers, I thought Eccles Cakes would be appropriate. Although not actually a cake, more of a pastry, they have the word 'cake' in the title, so they are surely entitled to be in the book. They're found on page 112 of Delia's Cakes. I was a big fan of these growing up, often making the mistake of heating them in the microwave for too long and making the filling painfully hot on the tongue! They date from 1793, where they were first sold in (you guessed it!) Eccles in Lancashire.

The recipe is fairly straightforward (thankfully Delia does not require you to make your own puff pasty - you've seen the Bake-Off, you know what a faff that is!). The first part is making a sticky dried fruit mixture that smells just like mincemeat.

The second part I found a bit more challenging (mainly because I'm never good at following instructions to the letter). Delia asked me to roll out a rectangle 32cm x 40cm (which I estimated) and to cut it 5 squares by 4 squares so each one would measure 8cm x 8cm. Well, I ran my pizza cutter down and across a few times and ended up with 20 squares, but whether or not they were 8cm, or even vaguely similar to each other in size, is debatable. In retrospect, this may have led to my downfall.

After putting a heap of the mincemeat smelling mixture in the middle of each square, I then had to dampen the edges with water (this got a bit sticky!) then turn all the corners inwards and seal them together (harder than it sounds!). Then I was to flip it and shape it into a round, put it on a baking sheet, brush with egg white and sprinkle with sugar. I was feeling pretty confident when they went in the oven, and they did smell great. Although not a complete disaster, a lot of the juicy part of the inside did seep out of the bottom (clearly my seals were not sealed!) and they got pretty stuck to the baking sheet - it reminded me very much of when mince pies overflow and you end up prising them out of the tin with a knife.

But, the main thing was, they tasted fab. Looking back, I think I should have rolled the pastry a bit thinner and been a bit more careful about the sized of my squares and sealing them up at the bottom (so, I failed at every step basically!). Plus, personally, I would have preferred a higher ratio of filling to pastry, but maybe that's just me. The cast of The Family Way at Bolton Octagon Theatre all tasted one and I'm told everyone liked them (but they are actors, they could easily have been acting...).

Chocolate Chip Cookie mistakes!

Two weeks without a day off can do strange things to a person, and in my experience one of the best ways to delay madness is to bake. And eat. So this week, that's exactly what I did. Having a couple of hours spare, but not a lot of time to get to the shops, I decided to bake a Delia recipe that I could make from what was in the cupboard. I almost had everything I needed for the Chocolate Chip Cookies (on page 149) minus the hazelnuts. I did have a handful of almonds though, so decided to make do.

They were pretty straightforward to make, nothing complicated about it. I had a bar of chocolate so made my own chocolate chips - this meant that some were pretty chunky (no bad thing there) and roasted and chopped my almonds. The raw dough was irresistible - it tasted just like chocolate chip cookie dough ice-cream (well of course it did you idiot, it's chocolate chip cookie dough!!).

Delia suggests a rounded dessertspoonful of mixture for each cookie arranged on baking sheets. Now, I may have licked the bowl just a little, but not so much that her suggested 28 cookies could be reduced to just 14. I hate to criticise Queen Delia, but something clearly went wrong with the measurements here as the recipe I followed made exactly half the number it should have done. Julie tried this recipe a few weeks back too and said the same thing, so a word to the editors for the next edition - either double the recipe or halve the number it says this should make! There is a history of mistakes with this recipe in fact - in the first edition of Delia's Book of Cakes she left the chocolate chips out of the recipe!

 

Anyway, back to some more positive comments - these were pretty fantastic cookies. They helped Julie and I though a long Sunday at work, and a couple of long car journeys for me. Quick and easy to make - just bear in mind the recipe will only make 14 and not 28!

Banana Bake-Off!

Laura doesn't do things by halves. For her latest Delia bake, she decided not only to try out the Banana & Walnut Loaf (on page 53), but to also make the Hummingbird Bakery's much more modern version of Banana Bread. Delia's Banana & Walnut loaf is an old classic, appearing in every edition of Delia's Book of Cakes. It's something I often choose to make when I have a handful of bananas going brown in the bowl (great excuse to bake something tasty).

They both appeared here at Chitty's on a Friday morning - we didn't have a team meeting scheduled, but it was a busy day and we collectively decided that a sit-down to judge the banana cakes was in order.

The two cakes were really quite different - Delia's was a traditional banana and walnut loaf, although was a lot more citrusy in flavour that I thought it necessary (zest of a lemon and an orange in a cake that should taste of bananas and walnuts seems a bit OTT to me) but tasted delicious all the same. Laura's version looked almost identical to the picture in the book and tasted great.

However (sorry Delia) the Hummingbird Bakery version won hands down - it was moist, sticky and spicy. No walnuts in that one, just bananas, but of the two we all preferred it.

I have to say, I love a banana cake, but I think next time my bananas are turning brown, I'll be reaching for the Hummingbird Bakery book and not Delia!

A trip to Vienna

August Bank Holiday weekend saw a bit of a jam-making fest at my house, so I sought out a recipe to use some of it up! Delia's Viennese Tartlets (on page 107 of Delia's Cakes) were not something I had tackled before and since they are filled with jam they seemed perfect.

The recipe is very heavy on butter and flour with a bit of icing sugar and cornflour basically - all ingredients you can usually find in the house without making a special trip. There really isn't much to it - mix all the ingredients then divide between paper cases. The tricky bit was shaping the mixture, because they each needed a well in the middle for the jam to fit into later. The mixture is a stiff one so it wasn't the easiest thing to do, or to make look neat.




They smelled beautiful while baking, and the texture is a strange one - very short and buttery (as Delia describes), like some sort of cross between a fairy cake and a shortbread biscuit. I used up the dregs of my homemade jam - four strawberry, four raspberry and four blueberry. Once they were cool, in went the jam and they were ready to eat.

I'm not sure I would do this again, although they make a nice alternative to jam tarts if a jammy treat is what you're after, and although not quite as neat looking, the tartlet mixture is a lot less hassle than making pastry. They did taste lovely. All in all a successful bake... but it hasn't changed my life.

Chocolate Cake... and a Pint

We seem to be on a run of chocolate recipes at the moment and here's another one we all thought sounded great from the first time we saw it - Chocolate Beer Cake. Delia's book has a whole section on chocolate cakes, and this looks like one of the best. I have made something with a similar idea before - a Nigella recipe for Guinness Chocolate Cake which was delicious, but very different to how this one turned out.

Julie tackled this recipe, giving us all a treat at our fortnightly team meeting. As you might expect, the recipe (on page 174 of Delia's Cakes) included Guinness (or any dark stout) and a fair bit of chocolate. The Guinness appeared in both the cake and the icing, and as someone who hates the stuff (I went to the factory in Dublin last year and only managed about 5 sips with a screwed up face before abandoning my free pint!) I have to say that this was absolutely delicious. You can't really taste the 'beery' element, you just know there's something there giving the chocolate flavour a bit of a twist.



Julie reported that the mixture was very runny (as you can see from the picture - it looks like melted chocolate!) - definitely not a cake to make in a loose bottomed tin unless you want to spend the rest of the day cleaning your oven! When it came out of the oven, it was really stuck to the greaseproof paper and difficult to get out of the tin, but it was all worth the effort!

Not being a fan of walnuts, Julie opted to use pecans instead - these were used for decoration on top, but also chopped up finely and put in the filling. They added a nice crunch to the cake - I wouldn't really have thought of including nuts in this sort of recipe, but it worked.

There was a long silence at our team meeting while we enjoyed this one - the cake itself is really light, and the icing rich and chocolatey which makes for a great combination. It's a great option to make as a birthday cake for someone who likes a pint of Guinness, but I am proof that you don't have to like beer to like this cake. It does have a bit of a grown up taste, so probably not a child friendly one, but otherwise if you like a good chocolate cake, you're going to love this recipe!

Energy Bars fit for a Half Marathon

I have had my eye on this recipe since first getting my hands on this book - Delia's recipe for Chocolate Marbled Energy Bars appears on page 182 and she tells us the history, that these were made on TV with Dawn French for Comic Relief. By a happy coincidence, my own energy bars have been helping towards another charity (more on that later).

There were quite a few ingredients in this one that you wouldn't necessarily have in the cupboard, but luckily, I happened to have a few leftover packs from a Kellogg's variety pack (since everyone always grabs the Coco Pops and leaves the boring stuff) so my 25g of Rice Krispies and Bran Flakes were taken care of (just the right quantity too - it's like Delia knew!). Dried fruits, pecans, oats and condensed milk as well as (quite a lot of!) chocolate and I was all ready to rock.

Once you've got hold of all the ingredients, putting them together is really quite simple. Toasting pecans then chopping everything up took a bit of time but then it really was just a case of melting the condensed milk and syrup and mixing it all together then packing it into a tin a popping it in the oven.

You could leave it there - Delia says they are also tasty without the chocolate on top, and if you wanted a healthier energy bar very similar to (but much nicer than) cereal bars you can buy in the supermarket, all you'd need to do was chop. The oaty look makes you think you're getting something like a flapjack, but by using condensed milk instead of butter and sugar, they feel much lighter and crisper.

I decided not to leave it as a healthy option, but went for it with the chocolate. Delia said 150g each of dark and white chocolate, but I'm not a fan of plain chocolate so I went for milk and white instead. Both were melted in a bowl over simmering water, and then came the fun bit - marbling.  You can see from the pictures how easy it was - just blobs of melted chocolate swirled with a cocktail stick up and down, and then across. The result is really effective.


Very unlike me, I was patient with this one and left the whole thing in the fridge until the chocolate was really solid. I cut it into 16 pieces with the intention of sharing it around, but I have to confess I probably ate at least 10 of those! Those who did get a piece really liked it - it got the thumbs up from Julie and Laura, and by my friend Vic who was in need of the energy having been up half the night with a brand new puppy.

 

Now time for the shameless plug... part of the reason I made these energy bars was to keep me fuelled for my training - on Sunday 18th October I'm running a half marathon (The Great Birmingham Run) to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Care. Unfortunately chocolate, oats and dried fruit are not all I need for motivation - raising money for a great cause will get me out training so I can last the distance (only managed 8 miles so far of the 13.1!). So please visit my JustGiving page and give what you can! Thank you!

 

https://www.justgiving.com/Rebecca-Chitty

Chinese takeaway Chocolate Cupcakes

I had a friend visiting this week (a teacher on summer holidays) so we decided to tackle one of Delia's recipes during her stay. Laura leafed through Delia's Cakes and came up with her Chocolate 'Surprise' Cupcakes on page 92. And surprising they were.

Now, I make chocolate cupcakes pretty much every week at work, but I have never made them like this. Surprise number one was that the cupcakes contained mashed potato. Weird. However, not the strangest thing we would put in the mix. Not by a long shot.

The recipe itself wasn't too tricky. Boiling and mashing a potato was a bit of a hassle, but we coped (by sunbathing in the garden while the water boiled). We had to melt some of the ingredients together and then mix them together with the dry ones. So far so good.

Having long ago given up nearly all of my baking equipment to my business, I found that all I had at home were a couple of pretty old fairy cake trays, and a bit of a random selection of cases to fit them. We picked out some blue ones, since Laura planned to take the cupcakes home to London for her (Man City loving) other half Chris to taste.

So, on to the second 'surprise' - and this one makes mashed potato seem perfectly normal. Delia's recipe calls for a level teaspoon of Chinese five spice... what??! She says you could leave it out for children, but as two fully grown adults we thought we'd give it a try - trusting in Delia's wisdom. What a mistake.

While they were baking, a strange smell which somehow merged together two lovely smells (one a Chinese takeaway, and one a batch of chocolate cupcakes) into one very strange one. They were a bit smaller than cupcakes, so we made around 18 rather than 12 and they took a bit less time to bake than suggested (just under 15 minutes).

The icing was pretty straightforward to make - we melted together some chocolate and some condensed milk then popped it in the fridge to cool. It took far longer than Delia's 5 minutes to firm up enough to spread (in fact, it was still pretty runny when we came to use it) but spread we did. We tasted one before the icing and it really was an odd taste. Not unpleasant, but not exactly a joy for the taste-buds either. We thought the super-sweet icing might help, and it did. As did the addition of chocolate buttons. But they still tasted just a little bit wrong. The potato did make them soft and moist, but the spice I would definitely call an experiment that didn't work (sorry Delia).

You might be wondering what Chris made of the cupcakes once they had made their journey back to London. I think it is best represented in question and answer form...

L: What is your initial response?
C: I need water
L: Now you've had some water, what is your initial response to either flavour or texture?
C: Gingery
L: What do they make you think of?
C: Ed Sheeran (in reference to the ginger taste I assume!)
L: What do you think are in them?
C: Ginger and chocolate
L: What is your response to the information they contain mashed potato and Chinese five spice?
C: I can't taste mashed potato
L: You're not supposed to - it's for texture
C: They're alright actually.

I think Chris sums it up correctly (and ever so eloquently)... "they're alright actually". Thanks to Chris and Laura for their help with this one! And thanks to Delia for getting me to buy Chinese five spice, as it made a very tasty chicken stir fry the following night!

(Very Crunchy) Ginger Oat Bicuits

Julie has been showing us all up again by baking yet more biscuits! This time Crystallised Ginger Oat Biscuits on page 157 of Delia's Cakes.

Similar to a flapjack in their make-up, these little biscuits are made from oats, butter, sugar golden syrup and flour with plenty of, of course, ginger - both ground and crystallised. We seem to be drawn to ginger recipes recently and even those that don't have much ginger in them seem to taste like it (see Chris's response to my chocolate cupcakes!).

When all the melted and dried ingredients were mixed together, the mixture was to be divided into 12 and rolled into balls in your hand, then placed onto a baking sheet with room to expand. Delia assured Julie they would. However, after their 20 minutes of baking, not so much! They stayed pretty small and Julie reported, very crunchy indeed. A bit disappointing was the overall assessment. If you like oats and ginger and have very strong teeth, perhaps they are worth a try!

Next time, something a little less gingery I think - we need to experiment with some new flavours, and they are certainly to be found in Delia's Cakes. Watch this space!