In praise of... the sandwich cake

As I'm back home from uni for the summer and I no longer have any problematic sharing-a-tiny-kitchen-with-housemates-type problems, I've started baking again. It's been quite a while since I last wrote a post for the cake 'n' bake section of the blog, but my most recent kitchen escapades have provided me with some inspiration: in the form of the humble sandwich cake.

What I love most about this cake is that it's infinitely customisable; above, you can see that I've tried out a few different flavour combinations. Some of my favourites include coffee, chocolate, or a traditional Victoria sandwich with strawberry jam. You can mix things up further by adding an extra sponge layer, or even topping off your creation with a meringue and an icing drizzle.

Today, though, for the second time in a fortnight, I've made a lemon curd sandwich cake. For this variation, I used my standard sandwich sponge mix, which consists of 8oz butter, sugar and flour and four eggs - you can scale this up and down to your heart's content, to make bigger and smaller cakes. To this, I added the grated zest of two lemons.

If you fancy creating a chocolate version, you can substitute 2oz flour for 2oz cocoa powder, and for a coffee-infused cake, add a tablespoon of instant coffee to the mix.

Because lemon is probably my favourite cake flavour, I added an extra zestiness to one half of the cake with some citrus curd. I used this lemon and lime curd from Devon-based Hogs Bottom Garden Delights, which is absolutely delicious - highly recommended!

To counter the sharpness of the lemon and avoid a citrus overload, I spread the second half with vanilla butter cream. My fail-safe butter cream method is use twice as much icing sugar as butter; for the lemon sandwich, I used 4oz of icing sugar to 2oz butter.

Spread your chosen fillings over your two cakes - jam and butter cream work perfectly together, as does a combination of butter cream flavours, such as chocolate and vanilla. And with summer coming up and Wimbledon around the corner, you could create a luxurious sandwich of fresh strawberries and whipped cream.

All that's left to do is quickly and carefully sandwich the two halves of your sponge together. I'd recommend lifting them both off the cooling rack to do this, rather than dropping one half from a great height onto the other!

And there you have it: a complete sandwich cake. They're easy to bake and they're even easier to personalise. Once you find your favourite combination of flavours and fillings, this will definitely be your go-to sponge. And if it takes you a while to find the perfect match, I'm certain that you'll enjoy trying and tasting.

I've accidentally become a vegetarian

Yes, really. Since moving into our student house in September, my boyfriend and I have become predominantly vegetarian. As we were in the uni's catered halls last year, it's the first time that we've had to fend for ourselves food-wise, and Oli's made several attempts to go meat-less before now. But, at least during term-time, so as not to inflict our new and self-inflicted dietary restrictions on parents at home, he (and I) finally managed it. 

It happened for a couple of reasons - for one thing, going veggie can be better for you than eating a diet that includes meat (provided, of course, that you make sure you're getting lots of protein and all of the other essential bits and bobs). Secondly, because we're students, a near-constant concern for us is money, or lack thereof. Vegetarian food, as it turns out, seems to be a lot cheaper to make than meaty meals; even when we do a dreaded Big Shop, we're not spending as much as we would be if we had to buy enough mince, chicken or other assorted animals to last us for a week.

So, with a student budget and the corresponding cooking skills in mind, here are a few of our favourite cheap-'n'-easy things to eat...

Veggie burgers with homemade potato wedges - I'm kicking off with a super-easy one; basically, this  requires you to be able to take a box of veggie burgers out of the freezer, open it and bung them into a pre-heated oven. This is a meal I'd make if I'm heading out of an evening, because, once you've thrown everything in to cook, you can leave it be while you do your make-up, get changed etc. Don't worry about peeling the potatoes, just chop them into nice chunky wedges, coat in vegetable oil and cook at 200°C for about 40 minutes. Nice things to add to your burgers include rocket, salsa and a generous/Hayley-sized helping of cheese.

Vegetable pasta bake - if, like us, you have an abundance of tinned tomato soup in your cupboards, this is a good recipe to use some up - at the last count, we had at least twenty cans of it! You can use any veg you fancy. We usually go for peppers and courgettes, but I made this for my parents last night and added a lot of mushrooms, of which my Dad is a fan. It's a really easy dish to make, although it takes a bit of time to prepare, so having a chopping partner helps.

Traditional nut roast - if, like me, you're a part-time veggie who craves traditional roast dinners, this nut roast is a good way to go. Even if you are meat eaters, it can make a good substitute for stuffing. Nuts are quite expensive things, so we don't make this dish too often, but it's always a nice treat at the end of a particularly long and busy week. Add onion, breadcrumbs and mixed herbs to the nuts while they're cooking in the pan, then crisp up in the oven. All you need then are potatoes, green veg and a good glug of gravy!

Vegetarian chilli pie - this is a great Friday night dinner, especially if you're having a lounging-around-with-a-DVD sort of evening. Cook your favourite Quorn or bean chilli recipe (we've tried so many different ones that it's impossible to keep track), then pour into a casserole dish and top with nachos and another generous helping of cheese. To finish, pop it into the oven for the cheese to melt.

If you'd like to have a go at veggie food, but you're on a tight budget and you're not sure where to start, I recommend Vegetarian Nosh for Students by the wonderful Joy May, also the creator of the original Nosh for Students cookbook, from which some of our dishes are adapted. 

If you do have a go at any of our favourites, I'd love to hear how you got on and what you thought of them. Maybe you'll 'accidentally' become a vegetarian too...

Just a quickie - testing Betty Crocker's cake mix

I've not been able to do all that much baking since going back to uni, what with essays to write, translations to do and so on, but I've been making a few cakes and biscuits here and there when I can. A few weeks ago, when my parents came up to visit and they brought up some lovely treats for us, including this cake mix, which I got in my goodie bag at The Cake and Bake Show at Earl's Court in September. Now, I must admit that I've been a bit of a cake snob in the past, so I would rather make cakes from scratch than use a box mix. But I thought that I'd give this one a go and see what happened.

At the show in London, we tried some very lovely salted caramel cupcakes at the Sainsbury's stall, which were made from a ready mix, so I was in fact quite looking forward to how Betty Crocker's version would measure up.

The kit comes with a bag of vanilla cake mix - presumably including sugar, flour, baking powder and flavouring - a bag of vanilla icing sugar, a sachet of white chocolate chips for decoration and some cupcake cases. All that I needed to do was add oil, water and two eggs for the cakes and butter and water for the icing. Easy peasy!

Using the cake mix certainly saved time on measuring things out and it made a nice, smooth mixture. It had quite a strong vanilla flavour, but it wasn't overpowering at all after baking.

I ended up with a batch of nine good-sized buns - the sponge seemed to rise nicely and the kitchen really smelt lovely! All that remained to do was mix up the pink icing sugar with butter and water and ice them.

The icing wasn't as bright pink as was shown on the box, but that was rather a neon shade and perhaps not very appetising! I ended up with a more delicate pink shade with a very strong vanilla flavour, much stronger than the cake; but together, thankfully, the two flavours mixed well. I topped the cakes with the chocolate chips and served them to a peckish little sister and boyfriend, who had been hovering ready to test the finished article.

In the end, we agreed that they did still taste a little 'shop-bought' - there's definitely some sort of homemade taste that boxed mixes can't replicate exactly, but what it is, I'm not certain. But overall, Betty Crocker's cakes turned out well and I was quite impressed. The sponge was very light and actually they were quite moreish. All nine seemed to disappear quite swiftly!

My mum and sister have been testing more of Betty Crocker's and Sainsbury's cake mix ranges at home, apparently with great success. I think that, if I were to try more mixes, the Sainsbury's salted caramel would be the top of my list, or perhaps the red velvet ones. 

In any case, I must definitely go and peruse the shelves in the homebaking aisle soon - university is starting to give me cake withdrawal! But Christmas is on its way and there should be plenty more baking opportunities of the festive variety in the works...

A solo voyage on the Tube and a visit to the Cake and Bake Show

Look, look, it's a non-Bake Off blog post! Yay! As much as I love GBBO, I think that recently I've been neglecting the other side of the blog (as in the exciting bits where I go out and do things). So you'll be glad to here that yesterday, Olivia and I were lucky enough to visit The Cake and Bake Show at Earl's Court in London. Thanks to the very kind people at Tea With Tom (thank you!), I won two tickets to the show and so I took myself off to London to meet Olivia and see lots and lots of cakes.

Now, on the off-chance that you've been following my ramblings on here, you'll know that I've already been to London this summer. But this was the first time that I'd been on my own, so getting my train into Paddington and going on the Tube to Earl's Court was quite a big deal for me. I'm actually quite surprised that I managed to get where I wanted to go without getting horribly lost but I guess that I am supposed to be a big girl now, what with the rather daunting 2. 0. coming up in October...

After Olivia and I had found one another successfully, we joined a long queue of cakeophiles (that's a real word, right?) and headed into the exhibition centre.

We decided that perhaps the best plan, given the vast size of the show and our somewhat poor sense of direction, would be to have a wander and not try to find anything specific just yet - to get our bearings, if you will. The range of different cakes and bakes on offer was amazing. Our first purchases of the day were made at The Brownie Bar, where I bought a raspberry and almond blondie and Olivia a salted caramel brownie. 

As we had hoped, there were lots of free testers around. One of our first was a little chip of a 'coconut drop', which was lovely but perhaps more gingery than coconutty (which I have to say I didn't mind, as I love both flavours).

One of our next stops was at the Cake On The Catwalk display (sponsored by Stork, natch), where an array of professional and nonprofessional bakers had designed and created a beautiful selection of cakes, based on the brief 'London fashion through the decades'. 

All of those in the pictures above are from the nonprofessional category - I know, aren't they amazing? One of my favourites was the peach Edwardian style cake with the beautiful handmade topper, and the 1920s-inspired cloche hat cake with coordinated accessories, which actually won the category at the end of the day. Well done to fab baker Abigail Anderson for such a clever cake!

The professional category was just as impressive, with some really unusual and complex designs. My favourite in this section has to be Frances Jackson's box-style cake, with each side representing a different era in London's fashionable history. I think my sister would have really liked the Doc Martens cake and one of Olivia's favourites was Ramia Khan's cake, which was 'inspired by a mad girl's bedroom', with a pile of magazines and hatboxes. 

Many of the stalls at the show weren't displaying or selling cakes of their own, but selling various baking bits, such as decorations, toppers, piping sets and cases. Olivia bought some very exciting contraptions called Whizzy Whisks, which took seconds to turn skimmed milk into a firm froth, perfect for coffee. Also on offer were official Cake and Bake Show goody bags, complete with free gifts, one of which was a Betty Crocker cake mix. Although we wouldn't usually use cake mixes, we're definitely going to give these a try. And actually, after tasting a salted caramel cupcake at the Sainsbury's stand, I bought a couple more mixes (one salted caramel, the other red velvet), so I'm not going to be a cake snob or a bun purist about it, I think they should work really well.

As well as the bigger, more widely available brands like Sainsbury's and Lakeland, vanilla and flavourings makers Nielsen-Massey were on hand with cakes and cocktails, which we greatly enjoyed, despite the fact it was not-quite midday! But don't worry, the cocktail Olivia kindly treated me to was a virgin margarita, which I think should be perfectly acceptable at most times of the day. This was actually, shockingly, the first margarita I've had and Olivia is now something of a connoisseur, as she worked in Italy for nine weeks this summer, so she was more than able to advise me. (We're now thinking of having a couple of visits to the rather nice cocktail bar 44 Below when we're back in Exeter!)

One of the other displays at the show was 'The Wedding Cake of the Future', featuring a myriad of quirky cakes, beautifully decorated with stencils, flowers and lace. I think the lace icing was actually one of the most popular decorations, it was quite prominent among the wedding cakes. It's clearly the 'in thing' to have, if you're at all concerned about having a fashionable wedding.

Aside from eating, drinking and shopping, there were several stages where we watched demonstrations by Shelina Permalloo, the winner of last year's Masterchef, Simon Rimmer, of Sunday Brunch, and most excitingly of all, John, James and Cathryn from last year's Great British Bake Off! As you'll have seen on my blog, I am a HUGE Bake Off fan (along with most of the country, I daresay), so it was very exciting to see some of last year's stars baking in the flesh.

In addition to the main stages set up by the Cake and Bake people, there were smaller versions run by, among others, Renshaw and Dr Oetker, both of whom I really like. I use lots of Dr Oetker products (although I've always thought that it's a bit off-putting, eating something made by a doctor...) so it was interesting to see all of their products on show and of course we entered the competition to win lots of cake decorating goodies.

The beautiful Billington's-sponsored dessert tables showcased some of the industry's best cake decorating and sugarcraft work, from delicate pastel-coloured and floral tea parties to an elaborate trio of burlesque style celebration cakes. The woodland scene made me think of our chocolate squirrels and of the Bake Off's lovely, if slightly eccentric, Frances. Other highlights included the Mad Hatter's tea party and a special Jubilee themed table, complete with stamp cookies and Union Flag macaroons. 

Gluten-free and vegan baking was a big thing at the Cake and Bake Show, which is fantastic, because everybody should be able to enjoy tea and cake, regardless of allergies or dietary requirements (although you still have to pay a little more for one of these bakes, which would suggest that they're still a bit of a speciality). There was lots of advice about adapting recipes to be vegan and gluten-free, particularly from Australian Bake Off judge Dan Lepard, so I'm seriously thinking about trying a variation on some standard recipes to try and tempt coeliacs and vegans with my cake. There will be no escape!

Happily, sweets, marshmallows and fudge were in plentiful supply at the show and I picked up three varieties of Tom's Fudge as gifts to bring back for the fudge fans at home - rum and raisin, ginger, and Rolo - so we're looking forward to trying those!

Naturally, both Olivia and I came away with bagfuls of goodies, both bought and free, so I thought I'd show you just what I bought. (One of the Cinnamon Tree Bakery cookies mysteriously disappeared before it could partake in its photo shoot, but I think I know who the culprit is...)

We had a great day at Earl's Court and I hope you enjoyed my return to 'what I call blogging' as much as I enjoyed doing the hard work for it!

Keep your eyes peeled for links on my many social networking pages (if everything is functioning as it ought to, there should be some links to the right-hand side of this post), because I'm hoping to have a Freshers' Week post or two up by the end of next week.

(: xx