h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I guessed as much Mol, I also guess you put in a lot of time and effort too! School gates can be cruel and pitiless places for the faint of heart.

*Lalalala* Got my finger in my ears.

Right, just ate a bit - I clearly took it out too early! It was denser and darker in the middle of each cake.

But I did it at 180 (according to the thermometer) for *exactly* 20 minutes! I stuck a skewer in, and it came out clean!

This is why I get so bloody frustrated with baking!

It wasn't red enough, but that can be fixed, and it tasted lovely (marscapone icing and filling with raspbery jam, how have I never knowingly eaten marscapone before!?) but it didn't have the texture. Gah!

The skewer test only really works with dense cakes. I use a skewer for my banana and choc chip cake, and if I'm making a fruit cake (which would be about once every 10 years). But I do the fingertip press test for the all-in-one sponge. It might have been the depth of the tin or it might be the oven (you probably need to do a cake a week for a couple of months to get the hang of the oven).

How people get the really deep cakes is: use the same 7" sandwich tins, but increase the recipe to 3 eggs/6 spoons/three quarters of the tub of margarine/dob more baking powder. So, basically, more mix.

Sol, don't worry. People who buy the cakes are just as valuable as people who make them. If *everybody* made them, who would be the customers? I don't always contribute a cake - sometimes I just equip Osh with the necessary cash to buy one (a bun or biscuit usually, because I refuse to pay cake-stall prices for something I can knock up in 5 minutes). The only exception is May Day when I both contribute a cake, and buy a slice to tide me through the event. I *always* do May Day. But I skive off Sports Day.

Mol

Oh no, I make cakes. I like making cakes. I like eating them too. Mind you, it has just occurred to me that I might have very low standards when it comes to the edibility of cakes. Cakes I can do. Anything else is a bit hit and miss.

The one most foolproof cake I know is a fruitcake (like the kind you get at Christmas). It's not much good for a cake sale though, because it gets better with age.

But you cannot go wrong with it. People always think it's a very ambitious baking project, but you just mix it all up well and put it in the oven. No "will it rise, will it collapse" anxiety, because it's not yeasty and full of air. No "will it end up all runny" fears, because it's already a fairly thick mix before it goes into the oven.

For cake sales, though, go with chocolate. Chocolate makes people buy on impulse a lot more readily than most other things.

Our school does bake sales one class at a time so you don't end up with 80 cakes and nobody to buy them

Ok, I think I have finally cracked the victoria sponge! Made a very acceptable one today - I have to have my oven at 165 for 20 minutes and it is just right. The only problem is that ideally I would tun the cakes by 180 degrees halfway through if that wouldn't totally trash them when I open the door - I think the fan is a bit fierce and the cooking is not even. Still, was a good'un today. Thanks Mol (and evryone else) for the adivce on this - not beating the mixture was definitely my problem before, and over-cooking.

And having made three carrot cakes over the weekend I still haven't quite got the sweetness right. I just used the cbeebies recipe for banana bread but used one large carrot instead of the banana. 110g plain wholewheat flour, 3tblsp oil, 50g of sugar*, 1 egg, 3 (generous) tblspn raisins, 1 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp bicarb, 1 tsp allspice, 1 tsp vanilla extract.

I tried light brown caster sugar (not sweet enough), lightbrown caster sugar and 1 tblsp honey (too sweet), dark brown soft sugar and 1 tsp honey (not quite sweet enough).

I topped with marscapone (my new bestest cooking ingredient ever) which I have added variable amounts of icing sugar, but today's was the nicest with very little sugar but the juice of one passion fruit. I think a bit more sugar in the topping and nothing more in the cake and the latest attempt might be just right. Either way my colleagues have half a carrot cake and half a victoria songe to look forward to tomorrow.

Husband suggests I should try chocolate cake next...and expects I should practice it half a dozen times over. So, how do I make a ganache (or just nice and chocalatey) filling?

Ganache is easy - heat some cream and melt chocolate into it. And if you then let it cool and whip it like regular whipping cream, you have my usual cake filling... 100g chocolate to a carton of cream should be about right.

Nononononono, you can't just substitute carrot for banana. The carrot cake recipe *I* use has both. Find a proper carrot cake recipe!

Mol

Every single one I found on the internet had walnuts in, and I didn't know if you had to adjust anything else if you leave them out. Plus this recipe didn't seem *that* different to the ones I did look at in its composition?

This one seems to be working ok, the cake itself is nice with a good texture etc, I just need to get the sweetness right. Maybe I'll put in a bit less carrot and half a banana next time, although I'm not that keen on banana cake - do you taste it in yours? I did think I could maybe put some grated apple in.

Walnuts are fairly leaveable outable - they aren't a crucial ingredient for the actual cakiness. I don't think you can taste the banana in the carrot cake recipe I've used but on the other hand I probably haven't made it for about 10 years - I usually make banana choc chip cake if I have manky bananas lying around. Apparently you can freeze manky bananas for later use but my experience of this was that I ended up with a load of frozen manky bananas which were never thawed when I actually wanted them

Mol

That would happen to me too.

Ours go into the banana bread and I feed it to the boys and their friends, fairly diet-friendly as isn't that hard for me to resist. Failing that, the chickens like banana and don't care if it is manky.

The carrot cake was really popular today so maybe I've got it right.

Chocolate next as I think King Bomba is probably right that choc cake inspires impulse puchases. Do you just replace an ounce of flour with an ounce of cocoa?

Oh and I tried making banana crisps once to use them up. It didn't end well.

Yes - at least I just replace 1oz flour with cocoa. And sandwich together with chocolate spread, for a dead simple chocolate cake.

There are about a squillion recipes for more advanced chocolate cake, my own favourite being devil's food cake

Mol

A457139

I looked at that and discounted it because of the nuts, and I have no idea how to convert cups to something I can measure! I often come accross american recipies that I like the sound of and then discount becuase I can't convert - surely 1 cup can't convert to a weight because ingredients have different densities. Always leaves me baffled...

But looking at the ingredients and proportions it pretty much looks the same as the one I made, except I used allspice instead of cinnamon (on the grounds that another carrot cake recipe I saw did the same).

Jolly good.

I don't think nuts are essential to carrot cake at all. I have left them out many a time.

But they're the best part!

I made a huuuuuge bowl of apple donuts/fritters yesterday, and they were gone within seconds. Could find you the recipe if you're ok with deep frying, then the question of the oven doesn't come into it at all.

Well as I said before, I just didn't know if I could leave them out or if I had to adjust anything else to make up for it.

Mala, I agree, but I'm trying to learn to make cakes that I can safely send to school bake sales etc, and we are not allowed to make things with nuts in.