Raspberry and Vanilla Castle Cake.

Here's a little thing I knocked up for a Clandestine Cake Club meet that had a Medieval theme. It tastes lush and looks pretty much like a castle, and that's about as good as I get :D The sort of thing you can make for a young child's birthday cake. You don't want to get them started on mega-awesome cakes too early because they just want something better the next year and unless you're an uber talented cake artist it's going to cost you thousands over their life time! So keep them basic as long as you can with a nice little castle cake.
          "No you can't have a life size cake version of *insert current favourite hideous pop sensation boy/girl*! You're having a Castle Cake that some random guy made on his blog and you're going to like it! Now get back up that chimney!"
          It got given a buttercream covering because I still haven't got round to covering a cake with that rolled out icing stuff, and I sure as hell wasn't going to start on an awkward shaped cake like this! The cake's pretty much straight forward to make, well, I made it, the only out of the ordinary things you'll need is up to three 8" square cake tins, a ruler, a palette knife, and some black edible paint or gel food colour :)


Ingredients:

• 300g Caster sugar
• 300g Unsalted butter, room temp
• 5 Free range eggs
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 300g Self raising flour
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 3 TBSP Milk

Filling, covering and decoration:

• 300g Unsalted butter, softened
• 600g Icing sugar, sifted.
• 2 TBSP Milk
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 200g Raspberry jam.
• 100g Thin white chocolate bar, room temp or just above. 

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 180c
• Grease or spray and line up to three 8" square baking tins.
• Weigh your mixing bowl.
• In a bowl, mix together the sugar and butter until creamed.
• Keep mixing and add 1 egg at a time.
• Add the Vanilla Extract.
• Sift the the flour and baking powder, add to the bowl and mix.
• Add the milk and mix.
• The batter should be runny enough to spread a thin layer in each tin, if it looks too thick add a touch more milk.
• Weigh the bowl again to work out how much total batter there is then spread a third of the batter evenly into each square tin, pushing it out to the sides. I had 2 tins and so had to bake 2, then 1.
• Bake for about 25 mins, or until lightly browned, just starting to come away from the tin sides, and a knife/cocktail stick comes out of the centre clean.
• Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins then tip out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
• Whilst the sponges are cooling...
• Mix together the butter, milk, icing sugar and vanilla extract for the buttercream, add either more milk or more sugar if necessary. You can either put the buttercream in a piping bag, or just use it straight from the bowl or a plate. A plate is easiest when scooping up a bit at a time with a palette knife for the outer covering.
• Cut back the slight domes of the sponges so that they are a bit flatter.
• Take 2 of the cooled sponges and cut out about a 4" square from the centres. Cut these squares into quarters.
• You now have 1 solid sponge, 2 with the centres cut out, and 8 small squares for the corner towers.
• Spread a tin layer of jam on the solid sponge, then a layer of buttercream.
• Place a hole'd centre sponge on top then repeat the jam and buttercream on this.
• Place the next hole'd sponge on top and repeat the jam and buttercream in the corners, but just buttercream in between the corners.
• Use 2 little sponge squares in each corner sandwiched with jam and buttercream.
• Cover the rest of the bare sponge with buttercream.
• Chill in the fridge for a while until the buttercream has a solid surface but is still soft underneath. It is then easier to smooth with a palette knife. (I didn't do this bit, you can tell lol)
• Chop the white choc into little rectangles and place around the top of the castle. This helps protect the castle from attack and protects your troops, oh yes. I used a bar of Lindt white choc as it was the thinest so it looked to scale-ish on the cake and was easier to cut neatly.
• Place the cake in the fridge until well chilled.
• Make a little door out of brown/chocolate flowerpaste if you want :)
• Now, I had the single choice of one paint brush and black food colour gel to do my very artistic and detailed brick work on the castle. If you cover the cake with rolled icing and have a selection of brushes and food paints, you could do a pretty special job on the brickwork. You can also get those plastic moulds that you press into the icing to look like stone or brickwork. 
• Make or buy little flags and stick in the tops of the towers.
• Ta-da!!!! Castle cake!
• Attack, conquer, eat :)

Castles Castles Castles! The soothing tones of Crystal Castles - Baptism

Throw the cake as high as you can and you get Ian van Dahl - Castles in the Sky.

Castles need stone! Stone Roses - I am the Resurrection (live)

Castles need rock! Party rock! Love this literal vid - LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem -Literal MSPaint.

Any excuse for some mad muppetry - I'm Elmo and I know it! 

And what ya gonna attack a castle with, why Breeders - Cannonball of course!

Loved these guys 'Safe sex, Designer drugs...' 90s album! aparently they changed their name to Deckard to hide from me :( The awesome Baby Chaos - Hello Victim.

Another! Another!!! :D Baby Chaos - Golden Tooth.

These are the sort of tunes you want blasting out when attacking a castle! Courtesy of Kasabian - Club foot.

...and Fire.

....aaaaand finally, just going to add this. The fantastic Nneka - Heartbeat. A tune that's been reworked by Chase n Status, and is currently being sampled in the C & S produced RIP by Rita Ora (Some saying without being credited)

Stay Stoney people!

Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake.

You know that time when you want to bake and have a quick look through the shelves and cupboards to suss the options available. Well this is where this baby was conceived. Right up to when I decided I wanted to try to replicate some awesome looking caramel hazelnuts I'd seen on Pinterest, when a shopping trip was needed for whole hazelnuts. After making daft looking cakes like Oxford Rocks with it's leopard spot sponge, and before that the Valentines cake I wanted to pull things back a bit towards the basic tasty and good looking cake that takes about a tenth of the hours to make. I was quite happy with the Easter pimped Honey cake but even that had decoration un-relating to the actual cake, so with this one, I actually managed to keep the decoration chocolate and hazelnut based. I even felt a bit bad for veering off into the world of caramel lol.

1st May - Chocolate Celebration Cake version added below the choc/hazelnut. :)

Ingredients:

• 250g Golden Caster Sugar
• 130g Unsalted Butter (Room temp)
• 2 Free range medium eggs
• 30ml Sunflower oil
• 80ml Milk
• 2 TBSP Nutella
• 200g Plain Flour
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 40g Cocoa powder
• 30g Ground Almonds

Filling and sides:

• 150g Unsalted butter (Room temp)
• 2 TBSP Nutella
• 1 TBSP Milk
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 300g Icing sugar

Topping:

• 60g Double cream
• 120g Dark chocolate
• 15g Unsalted butter

Extras:

• 3 Hazelnuts
• 50g Hazelnut bits
• 30g Granulated sugar

Preparation:

• Turn the oven on to 170c
• Prep two 7" or 8" tins, either by greasing and lining with baking paper or spraying with cake release spray.
• Put the butter and sugar into a mixing bowl and cream together.
• Keep mixing. Add one egg at a time.
• Add the oil
• Add the milk.
• Add the Nutella.
• Sift the flour, baking powder, and cocoa into a bowl and add gradually to the mixing bowl.
• Add the ground almonds.
• Mix until just fully combined.
• Split evenly between the tins and bake for about 25 mins.
• Check they're cooked with a cocktail stick or knife which should come out clean when inserted into the centre of the sponges.
• Allow to cool in the tins for 15 mins, then tip out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
• To make the buttercream, beat the butter and Nutella together for a couple of minutes.
• Sift the icing sugar and cocoa, and add to the butter mix a bit at a time.
• Add the milk and mix for at least 5 mins.
• Spread on one sponge and then place the other sponge on top so that the 2nd sponge's flat base is facing upwards.
• Apply buttercream to the sides of the cake with a palette knife. You can do this properly by applying a thin crumb layer first, which traps any loose crumbs, and then another layer. 
• Press crushed hazelnuts into the sides of the cake in whatever style takes your fancy. I poured some out at the base and then pushed up into place with a palette knife. 
• For the topping, pour the cream into a saucepan and heat until bubbles start to form at the sides.
• Turn the heat off and add the chocolate. Stir gently until melted.
• Add the butter and stir until melted.
• Allow to cool for 5 mins.
• Using a teaspoon, dribble some of the choc mix down the sides of the cake.
• Then spread the rest over the top of the cake.
• Decorate with chopped hazelnuts as required.
• To make my not-quite-what-they-were-meant-to-be caramel hazelnuts, I melted 30g of granulated sugar in a small saucepan, just gently moving it with a spatula as it melts. I then arrange 5 hazelnuts on manipulated paper clips sandwiched between 2 cartons of fruit juice and two tins of beans. I then sprayed a baking tray with cake release spray and placed it underneath the nuts, the hazelnuts. I then dribbled the melted sugar over the hazelnuts. What I was looking for was a long, sleek, single pointy caramel finger, like the T-1000's finger in Terminator :) I think that involves dunking the nuts in the caramel or allowing it to cool a bit because when I dribbled the caramel over the nuts it tended to fall off before it got right round to the underside. Also 2 flat juice cartons weren't quite high enough and the strands backed up on themselves and contorted or snapped off. I'll find out next time :)
• Allow to cool and place on the cake. You can also string some of the caramel and use that as decoration.
• Eat cake :)

I'm submitting this production into May's Alphabakes. Alphabakes is run monthly, alternately by Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker, and this month's by Caroline at Caroline Makes... This months letter is 'H', and what letter does hazelnut begin with children? That's right! :)

Chocolate Celebration Cake.

I contemplated giving this fella his own page, and might do, but for now he's so linked to the cake above I think I'll tag him down here...and also the photos were a bit pants :)

Same recipe as above but:

No Hazelnuts.
No Nutella.
All over buttercream with 250g butter, 250g icing sugar, 1 TBSP milk and 2 heaped TBSP cocoa powder.
A sprinkling of cocoa powder.
2 flakes, crushed.
2 bags of maltesers.
1 bag choc buttons.
Melt dark and white choc onto baking paper or a sheet of acetate, then chill, for the shards, and also to drizzle over the wired maltesers.
I was going to decorate with milk and white choc curls as well, done with a peeler, but they didn't come out nice enough so I ended up just putting a few right in the centre where the wires go in.

Tunage courtesy of course from Hazelnut O'Connor - Eighth Day

Rabbit action! Watership Down featured a rabbit called Hazelnut! (Are you sure? - ed.) Written by Mike Batt of the Wombles fame, Art Garfunkel - Bright Eyes.

Talking of Terminator fingers, a Tuuuuuuuune! from T2 - Guns and Roses - You Could Be Mine

...and finally, random gorgeous tune of the day. One of the best from Elastica - Never Here.

What's that? You want to see Julianne Regan lipsyncing on Japanese TV? Why certainly! Here's All About Eve - Every Angel.

Oxford Rocks cake for The Oxford Bake Off

A long, long time ago, March 24th to be precise, there was in Oxford Town, a Bake off. I attended along with this time-eating cake, some mad chocolate brownies, and a loaf of Sun-dried tomato and basil bread.
The cake and brownies took hours and hours of planning, practice runs, frustration, sorting logistics and setting up. The bread took a few minutes, got un-ceremonially placed on a plate at the bake off, and then won it's category! Yay! lol To be fair to it though it did bake really well, looked ok, and tasted good.

So, to start with, the cake. As it was the Oxford Bake Off, I wanted to do something Oxford based, and after a few other ideas, came up with a music from Oxford theme, and the original design is pretty much what the final cake ended up being. It is a Chocolate and Orange sponge made in a rock n roll leopard skin stylee, with a truffly chocolate filling, then I tried to make an Oxford blue buttercream, but didn't quite get there, then I decorated with regalice records featuring bands from Oxford (Radiohead got the 3 centre spots), some icing musical decoration, a base ring of Crunchie rocks, and finished off with a bit of airy height from the 'Oxford Rocks!' Maltesers. The last time I used maltesers on the Valentines cake, they were randomly placed, so when I went to line these up I didn't foresee the frustration of getting the little sods lined up properly lol

Ingredients:

• 225g Self Raising Flour
• 25g Cornflour
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 250g Caster sugar
• 250g Unsalted butter at room temp
• 4 Free range medium eggs
• 5 TBSP milk (Or just enough to make the batter easily spreadable in the tins)
• 1 Heaped TBSP Cocoa powder
• 1 tsp Orange extract
• Yellow, red and black concentrated colour gels.

Filling:

• 100ml Double cream
• 170g Dark Chocolate
• 1/2 tsp Orange Extract

Covering/Decorations:

• 200g Unsalted Butter at room temp
• 400g Icing Sugar
• Blue and Black concentrated colour gels
• Black and White Sugarpaste/Regalice for the records
• Icing Sugar and few tsp of Lemon juice for the icing. 
• Maltesers 

Preparation:

• Make 3 records and allow to dry for a few days.
• Preheat the oven to 180c
• Prep 2 9" round tins as you like. Greased and lined or cakey release spray.
• In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
• Sift the Flour, Cornflour and baking powder into another bowl.
• Add one egg and some flour at a time to the butter mixture and mix well until all 4 eggs and all flour added.
• Add a tablespoon of milk at a time until the batter is of a consistancy that will push out to the tin edges easily.
• Take out 300g of the batter into a seperate bowl.
• To the remaining batter add the tsp of Orange extract and a few drops of yellow colour gel and mix.
• Split the batter evenly between the two tins and smooth level.
• Put the 300g of batter back into the mixing bowl, add the cocoa powder, a drop of red and drop of black colour and mix well. This will be piped, so add a small amount of milk now if necessary.
• Spoon the batter into a piping bag with about a size 5 nozzle or cut a similar sized hole in the end of the bag.
• Poking the nozzle down into the yellow batter, squeeze out lots of little blobs without breaking through to the surface. Then squeeze lots of little blobs out onto the surface of the batter, so it looks something like this on one of my practice run cakes.....

• Give the tins a bit of a wobble then bake for about 30 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out of the centres clean.
• Leave in the tins for 15 mins then tip out gently onto a cooling rack
• When the sponges are cool pour the cream into a saucepan and heat until bubbles appear at the edges.
• Add the chocolate and stir together.
• Allow to cool a bit until not runny but spreadable, and over the surface of one sponge.
• Sandwich the sponges together.
• Mix together the butter and icing sugar and add colour if you want to.
• Cover the cake with the buttercream using a palette knife.
• Use a black food pen and write on the 3 old records and place them in the centre.
• Roll out black and white Regalice and using whatever you can find to make the right sized circle cuts, in my case an old baking powder tub, a bottle cap, and a straw, make 6 records and place on the cake Let them dry a while before writing on them. (Slightly quicker to write that than make them lol)
• Mix together some sifted icing sugar and drops of lemon juice to make enough icing for the musical bits and pieces, and go as mad as you like piping the icing on. Save some for the maltesers.
• Pipe the letters onto the Maltesers, attach to wires, stick in cake.
• Take to Oxford Town Hall and eventually, eat :)

The Oxford Bake off was conceived by Kate and was a charity event for the benefit of:

Oxford International Women's Day

CoppaFeel

Oxford Rape Crisis

Cecily's Fund

As I write this, there is currently a wonderful Oxford Bake Off recipe book available to buy for just £5 from here with contributions from the likes of Holly Bell, Kate Shirazi, Oxford Cupcakes, and Jane Asher!

Piccies from the bake off:

And a few tunes from the Oxford boys and girls:

Another excuse to slip in this baby from Death By Crimpers - Obsessive

Radiohead - Creep (Uncensored, so don't click 'play' kids! Oi, no, stop that, oh now you've done it, that's the end of the world, you're all going to end up foul mouthed criminals, oh wait, that's from playing COD.) Oh, ignore all that, it's the radio friendly 'Very' version lol

Some tunage from Swervedriver - Dual

Some Supergrass - Richard III 






Classic from The Auteurs - Lenny Valentino






The Candyskins - Submarine Song.






Finishing with the awesome Ride - Time of her Time

Happy Summer Cupcakes.

There was a nice idea and theory behind these cupcakes, a chance to slap the cold, miserable days of January  in the chops and taking a bite, let your mind wander, happily, to a warm, summers afternoon. They kind of succeeded, and kind of failed. But most importantly of all, they taste gorgeous!

They contain the fruit of summer - Strawberries, and also Bananas which, amongst their other many qualities, are high in tryptophan which aids production of the mood-stabiliser Serotonin and therefore in my theory will stop you getting any January blues!, the healthy goodness of rolled oats and oat bran so that you can feel no guilt at all from eating them ;), a hint of dark chocolate, and we all know that chocolate = happines! Topped off with with hazy warm sunshine lemon tinged buttercream. See, a recipe for complete January joy.

It's a nice theory, but the truth of the matter is I'm like a kid throwing whatever sounds good into a bowl and hoping for the best. In the recipe I made the strawberries get lost under the taste weight of the bananas. It didn't help that I had to use tinned strawbs as the local shop had no fresh ones (In January!?! shocking! - ed), and the cakes were quite sticky to the cases, although they were much better when chilled in the fridge. I'll come back to the idea of a taste-of-happy-sunshine cupcake in the future when I have more knowledge :) but for now, here's what you need and do:

Ingredients:

• 250g Plain flour
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 40g Porridge oats
• 40g Oat bran
• 40ml Vegetable oil
• 60ml Milk
• 1 Free range egg
• 100g Light brown sugar
• 100g Strawberry Yoghurt
• 100g Strawberries
• 1 large or 2 small ripe bananas mashed.
• 50g Dark chocolate chopped small

Preparation: 

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/170c Fan/Gas 4.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tray with muffin cases.
3. Sift the flour, Bicarb, Baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl.
4. Put the Milk, Oil, Yoghurt and Egg into a separate bowl and mix in the Oats and Oat bran. Leave to stand for 5 minutes.
5. Mash the banana and chop the strawberries smaller.
6. Add the Sugar to the liquid mixture and stir.Leave for 5 minutes.
7. Chop up the Dark Chocolate into choc chip sized bits.
8. Add the Liquid mixture, the banana, and Strawberries to the Flour bowl and mix together thoroughly making sure all the flour is mixed in.
9. Spoon or pipe the mixture equally between the muffin cases.
10. Bake for 25-30 mins or until an inserted skewer/cocktail stick comes out clean.
11. Cool in the tray for 10 mins, then transfer the cupcakes to a cooling rack to cool completely.
12. Eat as they are or decorate.
13. I used the Depression Era Buttercream from the Melting Moments (I'm an addict and wanted to see what it was like as a topping), but for a generous covering for 12 cupcakes you'd need about 190ml milk, 3 tbsp Flour, 165g butter, 165g caster sugar and 1.5 tsp Vanilla extract. I also added some grated lemon zest. I then took a third of this and added red and yellow colouring for the sun, and added blue colouring to the other two thirds.
14. To make Banana and choc version, leave out strawberries, use plain or another flavour yoghurt. Drizzle with melted choc of choice.

Happy Happy Sunny Joy Joy!

One of the happiest, sunniest tunes out there - Katrina and the waves - Walking on Sunshine

Going back even further, a funky bit of Donna Summer - I Feel Love 

Haha, sing along to the chorus of  LFO - Summer Girls! You do know it! Oh yes you do!

Oh, I nearly forgot this! How could I??? Fuzzbox - Pink Sunshine

And now, it's time for pointing at your body parts! Yay! It's almost a workout if you point dramatically, a choice of the original Beach Ft Tia - Suntan with video, or the Freemasons Vocal mix without video!

And finally, grabbing the last bit of sun as it melts into the hazy horizon, Sunshot - Stop Me. (An awesome 90's band featuring Toby Bricheno on guitar, you know Toby! brother of Tim! Tim! Yes, Tim from All About Eve, Yes, that Tim! )

Mary-Anne's Melting Moments.

      These are currently my complete favourite sweet treat. I cannot begin to describe how utterly gorgeous they are! Cake sex! Messy, make you moan, and finished far too quickly.

      Ahem....Anyway, this was my third attempt at making these and they finally looked like what they're supposed to look like. The recipe is from Mary-Anne Boerman's blog and is a recipe she used in the Great British Bake Off.

Ingredients:  

• 250g Plain flour
• 58g Cornflour
• 58g Icing sugar
• 250g Unsalted butter at room temp.
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract.
• Food colouring (Optional)

For the filling:

• 125ml milk
• 2 tbsp Plain flour
• 110g Unsalted butter at room temp.
• 110g Caster sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• Seedless Jam  

Preparation:

1. Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix together until pale and fluffy.
2. Add vanilla extract and mix in.
3. Sift the flour and cornflour, add to the butter mixture and mix well until smooth.
4. Now, if you want, you can add a line of food colouring to the inside of a piping bag, this will pimp the biscuits up, or you can have them plain. 
5. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle.
6. Pipe circles of the mixture onto a baking paper lined baking tray. Pipe a circle of about 3-3.5cm diameter finishing in the centre and lifting the nozzle to form a small peak. Place each swirl at least an inch apart. You should get about 30 biscuits from the mixture at this size.
7. Place the trays of biscuits in the freezer for 15-20 mins. This will help them hold their shape when baked.
8. Preheat the oven to 200c/180c Fan
9. Bake the biscuits for about 12 minutes until pale golden and turning very slightly brown at the edges.
10. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack. Be gentle with them.

Cooling.

Filling:

1. Put the milk and flour in a small saucepan and heat whilst whisking.
2. Keep going until the mixture thickens, then keep going for 1 more minute.
3. Pour the mixture onto a plate and cover, leave to cool completely.
4. Beat the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy, and then beat a bit more, the more pale and fluffy the better. 
5. Add the cooled milk mixture and vanilla extract and mix in for at least 10 minutes.
6. Put 3-4 tbsp of jam into a bowl and stir for a bit with a fork to even any lumps in the jam out.
7. Using a teaspoon, spoon jam onto the bases of half the biscuits.
8. Spoon the buttercream mixture into a piping bag fitted with the large star nozzle and pipe mixture onto the bases of the other half of the biscuits.
9. Put jammy halves together with creamy halves.
10. Sprinkle with a little icing sugar.
11. Eat. Moan with joy. Realise they've all gone. Cry. Return to Step 1....

The red swirls would have been more defined if I'd been less generous with the food colouring.

THE nicest buttercream!

Melt-in-the-mouth gorgeousness!

Some tunes for these beauties because they're the best!

Dear melting moments, nothing compares to you....
"It's been 7hrs and 15 days..." Yes, but enough about your marriage Sinead!

Robert Smith heard about these and then wrote Just Like Heaven for them! Oh yes!

..and then you eat them all :( and you think Good thing, where have you gone?

Critters Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream covering.

So I thought, hmmm, what can I make my Sister for Christmas, I know! A cake with all her animals on! One text later I regretted this idea - 2 dogs, and now others had increased to 11 rabbits and 19 guinea pigs! (These numbers were out of date by the time the cake was eaten haha!)  Still, the modelling practice would be good, especially seeing as all modelling I had ever done in 41 yrs was, um, disappointing. So challenge on!

    I used the cake and buttercream recipe from Sara's Cooking Diary with the only change being that I used 23cm/9" spring-form tins as I wanted as much top surface as possible for the animals. It still made a plenty deep enough cake. I thought the sponge was just right for a large cake, not too light and fluffy, not too heavy, just about the right body and texture, and mixed with the buttercream it was very, very nice! I will be using this for a choccy cake again :)

Ingredients:

• 250g Dark Chocolate
• 170g Unsalted butter at room temp.
• 350g Light brown sugar
• 3 Large free range eggs
• 370g Plain flour
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 500ml milk at room temp
• 2 tsp Vanilla extract.

For the buttercream:

• 175g dark chocolate
• 225g Unsalted butter at room temp.
• 1 tbsp milk at room temp.
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 150g icing sugar

Preparation:

1.  Grease and line 2 x 23cm tins, or as I do now spray lovely non-stick spring-form tins with even lovelier cake release spray. 
2. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in a bowl over a saucepan of water or in a microwave heating with 30sec bursts. Don't stir the chocolate while it's being melted. Allow the chocolate to cool a bit.
3. Preheat oven to 180c/170c fan/Gas 5
4. In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until pale and smooth
5. Separate the eggs, beat the yolks and slowly add them whilst mixing.
6. Add the slightly cooled chocolate and mix well.
7. In another bowl sift the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt.
8. In a jug mix together the milk and vanilla extract.
9. Alternately add a third of dry ingredients and third of the the milk to the chocolate mixture and mix well. Repeat until the dry ingredients and milk are all added.
10. Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks.
11. Carefully fold in the whisked whites to the mixture with a metal spoon until fully mixed in, be gentle, you don't want to beat the air out of the whisked whites.
12. Divide the mixture equally between the 2 tins.
13. Bake for approx 35 minutes, until risen and a skewer comes out of the centre clean.
14. Leave the cakes to cool for 10 minutes, then tip out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

For the buttercream:

1. Melt the chocolate as above and leave to cool a while
2. I did the following in a food processor, but you're welcome to hand beat it. In a large bowl beat together the butter, milk, vanilla and icing sugar until completely mixed.
3. Add the slightly cooled chocolate and mix until creamy and smooth. If the mixture seems to runny, add more icing sugar.
4. I mated the 2 top sides of the sponges together so that the bottom and top of the cake were flat. Test the two sponges together and if necessary, trim off any bits of the mating faces to help the sponges sit flat.
5. Add buttercream to one surface and sandwich the sponges together. If you are icing the sides as well as the top then use about a third of the mix. If you're just doing the sandwich and top then use a half (It will be quite thick, which is fine :) )
6. Use a palette knife to apply the buttercream to the rest of the cake.
7. I found the buttercream to be quite solid at fridge temp but less so, but not runny, at room temp.
8. Eat! or decorate further.

Half the army of animals ready and willing!

Stanley Dog - The first animal I made and the only one I was happy with.

Rocky the Shug.

Now mothers, tell your children, not to doooooooo what I have done.... The Animals - House of the Rising Sun.

A single Animal doing his thing whilst Rita Moreno tries to sing Fever. Just brilliant!

And finally, I think there's enough animals for them to have a Carnival.... Saint-Saens - Aquarium

Finally, finally. Seeing as I made this for my Sister it's a fine excuse for slipping in some awesomeness from Groove Armada - Look Me In The Eye Sister.  I was thinking that i got carried away with Gingerbread Glastonbury until I saw this :D Just brilliant Vid!

Pineapple Halo Cupcakes.

My Monday afternoon was spent knocking up these little cups of sweet joy!
As with all Cupcake recipes you can tweek away! I baked these fairly small as i knew i was going to go more OT than usual with the topping and the Cupcakes are usually eaten by my drama group at about 9pm, so not the best time for a massive Cupcake chomp-a-thon. So you could increase ingredient amounts for the 12 cakes, or lower the number made.

Dry ingredients:

• 250g Plain flour
• 100g Caster sugar
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 125g Pineapple Halo
• 2 Medium eggs
• 80ml Milk
• 100ml Vegetable oil
• 227g tin Pineapple chunks

Topping: 

• 400g Icing sugar
• 150g Unsalted butter
• 30ml double cream
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract

1. Whack the oven on to 200 degrees/180 fan/Gas 6.
2. Sieve and mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. In another bowl, cream the pineapple halo and mix in the eggs.
4. Drain the the pineapple chunks and either crush or briefly liquidise, then mix in.
5. Mix in the milk.
6. Mix in the oil.
7. Add the liquid bowl to the dry bowl and mix together
8. Place 12 cupcake cases in a Cupcake tray
9. Spoon the mixture evenly into 12 cases (You can use an icecream scoop but I haven't tried this personally.)
10. Cook for approx 25 mins. Until going golden or skewer/cocktail stick comes out clean.
11. Leave in Cupcake tray for 10 mins then place onto a cooling rack.
12. Top with whatever takes your fancy :) I used a outer ring of the buttercream above, with a dollop of whipped cream in the centre, then added a sprinkling of crushed pecans (Fruit and nuts! Must be good for you!)

I LOVE Toni Collette!!! So she is very welcome to a place on my blog, and if you don't like her then you're wrong, and will be locked in a big shed and forced to watch all her films and listen to all her music until you either love her, or go mad. Probably the latter lol Toni Collette and the Finish - Beautiful Awkward Pictures.

Followed by another Antipodean Aural Awesomeness from INXS - Suicide Blonde.