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.

Review - The Great British Bake Off 2013, Episode 1

After almost a year of waiting, the Great British Bake Off is finally back on our screens! Rejoice - or, to reference the programme's tantilising advert, HALLELUJAH!

Now with an audience of millions and several international spin-offs, the Bake Off is in its fourth series and for the first time features a baker's dozen of thirteen contestants. I'm a huge fan of the show and this year found myself the proud owner of 'The Great British Bake Off Everyday' recipe book before the show had even aired. And so, being such a keen bean, I was able to familiarise myself with the new names and faces of the bakers well in advance, which is always a good idea.

I don't know about you, but watching the Bake Off makes us ravenous and we always need a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake to see us through. A little birdie had let me know that the featured bakes from the first episode were going to be a Signature Bake sandwich cake and a Technical Challenge angel food cake with a finale chocolate Showstopper - so I thought I'd tick at least two out of three boxes and make a chocolate sandwich cake for our delectation during the show.

In homage to the programme, the cake is actually Mary Berry's Very Best Chocolate Fudge Cake from her 'Baking Bible'. It takes a lot of prep to get ready for Bake Off viewing in this house, so we found ourselves in a bit off a rush to catch the start!

Anyway, with our preparations done and cake cut, we settled down in front of the tellybox for the grand opening of the series.

Mel and Sue are of course back on form, as are la Berry and Mr Hollywood, as they welcome this year's bakers to the competition. Will there be soggy bottoms? Fridge-and-pray moments? Will the GBBO squirrel make an appearance?

There's only one way to find out. On your marks - get set - BAKE!

As we were expecting, the first challenge our bakers faced was the sandwich cake Signature Bake. Paul and Mary wanted a variation on the classic sandwich. The idea behind setting such a (seemingly) simple test was that it would flag up straightaway any issues the bakers might have, be it with the recipe, the crumb or any other elements of the cake. To put it Paul's way, any mistakes would mean 'serious trouble from the offset'.

But, in theory at least, the contestants came up trumps. Teacher Glenn (who just so happens to hail from my university town, Exeter - yay!) chose to put a slight twist on a Victoria sandwich, in that it contained whole fresh strawberries and was consequently of quite a phenomenal size. Lucy was the first to use what is reputed to be the 'flavour of the series', cardamom, while Frances took the brief literally and set about creating a giant jam sandwich in a sugarpaste paper bag.

Toby stuck to a classic with a spiced and iced carrot cake, which features in the Everyday recipe book and is one that I'm very keen to try, while Ali also used a familiar flavour - rose, which, he informed viewers, is a staple of Pakistani desserts.

Several of the bakers seemed to be finding baking in new surroundings difficult; Rob bemoaned the lack of work surface, while Ali declared that his workstation looked 'like a bomb's gone off' - it seems that his style of baking is not dissimilar to my own...

However, the many and varied creations of the bakers were causing problems; there were more injuries in this episode alone than I think I've seen in any other series! 'It's Bake Off meets Casualty,' quipped Sue, joining Howard at the back of the tent with the medics.

But lo, in spite of the drama (underbaked sponges, blood, sweat and tears) the Signature Bake was finally finished. 

Among my personal favourites are Glenn's giant strawberries-and-cream cake (and hey, us Devonians have to look out for one another), Frances' beautifully executed sandwich/sandwich and Lucy's cardamom and home-grown rhubarb sponge, which Paul and Mary agreed looked absolutely beautiful.

Leaving the first task behind them, for better or worse, our thirteen bakers moved swiftly on to the Technical Challenge: Mary's own angel food cake. We learnt that it contains no fat (sounds ideal) and its only raising agent is whisked egg white (sounds tricky). As the recipe left out several vital details - oh come on, we don't want it to be too easy, do we? - the contestants whisked their whites to varying consistencies and added the remainder of the ingredients.

This was no mean feat; for several of the bakers, the angel cake had not turned out to be the blessing that its name might suggest.

A blind tasting by Mary and Paul followed and each cake was thoroughly tested. Paul observed that one particular cake had elaborately piped icing, declaring it 'straight out of the '70s.' 'I can't remember,' Mary replied tartly.

The bakers' names were called out from the least successful to the best; sadly, Toby's accidentally salty angel food cake was bottom of the pile, followed by the youngest baker in the competition, Ruby, and then Ali and his lovely jumper. Top of the pile with some very impressive bakes were Christine, Lucy and Rob.

Now, finally, to my favourite part of the programme, the Showstopper itself. In this instalment, the contestants were challenged to create a chocolate cake on one condition alone; it had to be something very special indeed. Although it had to be a novelty cake, Sue was careful to remind the bakers that 'this is 8pm on BBC2!'

All manner of flavour combinations went into the chocolate masterpieces. Just a small cross section includes Ruby's delicious-sounding chocolate and ginger bake, while Ali used fresh raspberries and Lucy unusually opted for thyme. Glenn, not to be out-done, designed a Gaudi-inspired creation, consisting of seven different cakes. If there's one thing that can be said about Exonians, it's that we know how to pull out all the stops when it comes to chocolate cake.

Scientist Rob pulled off yet another feat of baking ingenuity with his precisely crafted striped chocolate cigars; it was thoroughly impressive, yet he managed to make it look so simple and they looked stunning atop his showstopper. And that's without even mentioning his balloon baskets!

Come the end of the task, Rob's was one of the cakes which impressed Mary and Paul the most as he was crowned Star Baker of the first week, but I think that Lucy or Frances would have been equally deserving winners, as Frances' adorable secret squirrels were also singled out for praise. (A few weeks ago, my sister used an identical cutter to produce something that Dad charmingly dubbed 'chocolate roadkill'. How very rude!)

Crunch time. After a less than ideal weekend in the Bake Off tent, the judges had their beady eyes on Toby, Ali and Ruby. Mark's 'Chocolate Monster' had left Paul and Mary underwhelmed but Christine's elegant hat and Howard's handmade chocolate bear definitely impressed.

Ultimately, the decision was made that Toby should be the first to leave after just one weekend in the Bake Off gang and he was immediately enveloped in a Mel and Sue sandwich. It must be completely gutting to go so early in the competition after such a lengthy and arduous audition process, but he did so so well and I will certainly be trying his carrot cake recipe! (I also love him a bit for his claim that he 'doesn't do gender stereotypes', but that is beside the point...)

So Ruby and Ali live to bake another day, along with ten other supposedly amateur but bloomin' fantastic bakers. How amazing was that first episode?! 

I apologise for not name-checking each and every baker - it's been difficult to keep this post of an appropriate length and there are lots of you to squeeze in, so I'm sorry for that. But I loved all of your bakes this week and I can't wait for bread next Tuesday!

If you enjoyed the return of the Bake Off, let me know in the comments box below (and as always, I'm open to constructive criticism on how my posts could be improved - this is my first time reviewing anything, so please be kind!)

(: xx

The Great British Bake Off continues next Tuesday on BBC2 at 8pm. Don't miss it! #GBBO

Betty's millionaire shortbread

I'm trying out a couple of things. One of them is making millionaire shortbread; the other is weaning myself off Instagram.

The latter has gone rather well today (I've been using Aviary to do my pics instead) and the former is currently cooling in the fridge, so it might be slightly early to say whether it has been successful or not, but early indications are hopeful.

I was very kindly given this recipe by my boyfriend's grandma at the weekend, so this has been my first opportunity to try it out...

The shortbread was surprisingly easy to make - I just combined the flour, butter and sugar in a mixing bowl to form a nice dough, like so:

Once the dough is patted down in the baking tin, it's cooked for about twenty minutes, during which time, I had the exciting task of making the caramel filling.

Again, it's pretty straightforward to make, but includes a whole tin of condensed milk, so it's not exactly low-calorie baking! The condensed milk is heated with butter and sugar in a saucepan until it boils, then cooled again until it is much thicker and darker in colour. Once the shortbread base is cool, I poured the caramel over the top and left it to set.

The only component left to add was the all-important chocolate, made of - well, just chocolate. I melted it in a bain-marie (that's the posh cooking term for 'in heatproof bowl over simmering water'). This part of making the shortbread took the longest, but that's just because the caramel takes a long, long time to cool, and if you put the chocolate on before the caramel has cooled, they'll intermingle and you won't get that nice layered effect that millionaire shortbread ought to have.

So this is how the fully-assembled shortbread + caramel + chocolate looked while still cooling in its tin. The top is nice and glossy, although I've had to put it in the fridge for speedy-ish cooling, so it might lose that shine a bit, but it shouldn't detract from the taste.

And - finally! - here it is, the finished article, straight from the fridge. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, lookswise, at least. Now it just has to pass the taste test.

(: xx

Anyone for a chocolate squirrel?

I wasn't planning on writing a new post so soon after the last one, but I really must share my sister's latest baking extravaganza:

CHOCOLATE BISCUIT SQUIRRELS!

I think they might actually be the best bake the Johns household has ever seen. I was rather chuffed with myself for my ingredient substitutions with my Mini-egg muffins, but Mel took recipe adaptations to a new level. Because, in an ideal world, or at least one plentiful with heart-shaped cookie cutters, her biscuits were supposed to look like this...

But unfortunately, we don't have a heart-shaped cookie cutter. Circles were deemed too boring and the Christmas selection out of season. We do, though, have a squirrel.

 It came in the goody bag I received when I joined the Exeter University Baking Society - or BakeSoc - which I sadly couldn't attend very often (at least not with any of my own baked creations) because, once I'd paid my membership fee, I remembered that the kitchens in halls consisted solely of a microwave and a sandwich toaster. 

Anyway, Edward the Squirrel, as he was once known, has finally been put to good use as an emergency cookie cutter. I think he did a rather good job, although some of his offspring did come out of the oven looking a tad like Timmy Tiptoes (one for the Beatrix Potter fans among you). Mel and Dad affectionately dubbed the most wayward ones 'chocolate roadkill', which is perhaps not the most appetising moniker for a biscuit, but they tasted very nice all the same.

The squirrels were then spread with melted chocolate and then - drum roll, please - our very special finishing touch, coloured sugar!

I've wanted to try and make this for ages and the recipe for Mel's sugared hearts, sorry, rodents required some, so we set to work. It's actually much simpler than you'd think, because it looks really pretty and effective on top of the dark chocolate. All you need to do is pop a few drops of food colouring into a plastic bag of sugar and then roll it around until the colour has spread thoroughly through. I'm definitely going to try it on some buns when I've recovered from the buttercream debacle.

And here are the finished articles; there were, I think, 29 of them in total, but there could have been a lot more Edwards had the cookie dough not tasted exactly like the sort in Ben and Jerry's ice cream...!

I hope that Mel's squirrels have inspired you to bake some mammals of your own - we did discuss an 'English Garden' collection, with accompanying frogs and badgers, but whether or not that vision will be realised, only time will tell.

(: xx