Cake Cake Cake

I love cake. That is a known fact. I love chocolate too. And chocolate cake. And especially chocolate brownies. But sometimes you need to think a little healthier, especially when you eat make as much cake as me. So I've been testing some slightly healthier recipes. Admittedly they are still cake, and not altogether meant for every meal but they do contain a little less sugar and fat. I think. They taste pretty good regardless. Another slice?

The first recipe I tried was Dan Lepard's Alchemist's Chocolate Cake from his book Short and Sweet which is simply amazing. You need tinned pears in juice. I had tinned pears in syrup, but it still worked well. I sliced this cake in half and sandwiched it with a dark chocolate and creme fraiche filling. Basically I melted 100g dark chocolate and stirred in 100g creme fraiche. OK, that and the syrup from the pears, made it not so healthy but it was delicious in my humble opinion.

Next up was the need to deal with some very manky over-ripe bananas. Out came my Hummingbird Bakery cookbook for their Banana Loaf. Except that I added cocoa powder and dark chocolate chips. Because I felt like it really. I also had some buttercream frosting left over from making a cake with amazing son number 2 (more on that in a bit), so I mixed more cocoa powder into this and iced the top of the loaf. I am clearly incapable of keeping my recipes as healthy as they are intended to be. No complaints from the gorgeous husband or the amazing sons though.

And finally, a not so healthy variety of cake. Amazing son number 2 had to make a cake for a Jubilee Cake Competition at his school. We were a little ambitious but having seen this recipe how could we not give it a go? Yes it was fiddly and time consuming. Yes there is quite a bit of blue food colouring/buttercream/icing thrown in. But it was fun to make, and even tasted pretty nice. Although I did find the colour a little off-putting to eat. Maybe blue cake is the way to stop me eating so much of it?

Incidentally, amazing son number 2 won the competition for his year group. Award-winning cake seemed to taste even better when he brought it home. Blue or not.

Birthday Treats

It is the gorgeous husband's birthday tomorrow and he requested some espresso cupcakes to celebrate. To be honest, I think he would rather have had a pork pie, scotch egg or sausage roll as he has a very savoury tooth. But he IS the gorgeous husband and knows how much I like to bake cakes, so cupcakes it is. I used the Hummingbird Bakery recipe from their Cake Days book but also added an espresso syrup to soak into the sponge before I iced them with the coffee buttercream. No chocolate covered coffee beans for decoration, but a slice of flake on the top instead does the trick I think.

To appease his savoury taste buds I am currently slow roasting a tastily marinated leg of pork for 24 hours for lunch tomorrow. The plan is to eat it with some garlic and chive mash and some steamed cabbage. We have also been enjoying champagne cocktails using some fizz, The King's Ginger and my beautiful vintage glasses. I cannot begin to describe how good these drinkies are. I might have another shortly......

Cake Crawl

We are not long back from a couple of days in London staying with the gorgeous husband's parents. They very kindly looked after the amazing sons on Saturday so that the gorgeous husband and I could spend the day in London.

My Our plan for the day mainly  involved eating cake. So we started in The Hummingbird Bakery in South Kensington. I LOVE their cookbooks but this is this the first time that I have visited and oh my, I am so glad we did. We shared a single black bottom cupcake -so restrained and so delicious! Definitely a recipe I will be trying at home.

From there we (predictably) made our way to Harrods to enable me to drool at the macarons in Laduree. I couldn't help it, I bought 3 of the little lovelies, but I did share them. Black Forest, Madagascan Chocolate and Salted Caramel. Please note the use of capital letters in writing their flavours, they are worthy of such deference.

Our final stop was for the gorgeous husband to find his favourite - Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Sadly the hotlight store seems to have disappeared from Harrods. This was not altogether a bad thing as it enabled us to burn a few calories walking to the nearest alternative. Apple cinnamon was the flavour of choice and certainly didn't disappoint. It was deemed "nearly as good as the original glazed". High praise indeed.