Jumbo jaffa cake

Baking birthday cakes for my nephews always has me trying out random things and this time it was baking a sponge in a frying pan/skillet.

It's getting harder and harder to think of fun or interesting things to bake for the nephews' birthday cakes now that they're all teenagers but I'm still just about managing it even if I'm not always remembering to photograph/blog them. Last week was youngest nephew's birthday and like myself, he bloody loves a Jaffa so making a jumbo version was the answer.

I mostly followed this recipe from Delicious magazine although I followed the jelly instructions from this one from BBC Good Food as I liked the idea of adding a marmalade to "oomph" up the orange flavour. I also heated up a couple of spoonfuls of marmalade in a pan to brush over the (cooled) cake before adding the jelly and chocolate topping.

Sadly I was quite disappointed with this bake despite it looking really cool. I wish I had taken it out of the cast iron skillet sooner when it came out of the oven as I think it continued baking in it and dried out a bit. I also regretted my choice of chocolate for the topping. I used half dark and half dark-mild and I think it made the overall flavour a bit too "grown up"/ bitter. The set chocolate also made the cake really difficult to cut as the cake had to be kept in the fridge to stop the jelly layer from melting.

However all was not lost. I also made some buns/fairy cakes using the same cake mixture and they were tasty. Instead of a melted chocolate topping I iced them with chocolate butter icing and topped with a Jaffa cake. They looked really cute. Did I remember to photograph them? Nope. 

Another carrot cake

It's birthday season at the moment which means a constant layer of icing sugar dust in my kitchen. Yay?

For last week's birthday I tried another new-to-me carrot cake recipe as there's no point in having a shelf full of baking books if I always default to the same handful of recipes. This one is from Vintage Cakes, one of my favourite books to flick through as it's full of pictures of homely bakes on pretty vintage china. To be honest I'm surprised I haven't baked this recipe before.

I think I preferred this cake to the one I made for the Man's birthday. The texture felt less wet and I've come to the conclusion I prefer the flavour of a carrot cake made with dark muscovado sugar as opposed to light brown sugar. I think it brings out the spices more.

Sadly I only have one picture of this cake so you'll just have to believe me when I say it was a winner and looked very satisfying when cut.

Carrot layer cake

Recipe (once again, slightly adapted to suit what I had available) from Vintage Cakes by Jane Brocket. I also did my own thing with the icing.

Sponges:

250g self raising flour

2tsp baking powder 

In all honesty I can't remember how much spice I added, but probably 1tsp ground cinnamon and 1/2 tsp mixed spice

100g pecans, chopped 

250g dark soft brown sugar 

220ml sunflower oil

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

250g carrots, grated 

Icing:

300g icing sugar

Approx. 75g softened butter ( I used slightly salted)

Approx. 250g cream cheese (that's all I had at the time)

Zest of half an orange

Preheat the oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4. Grease and line 3 20cm/ 8" round cake tins with baking parchment.

Combine the dry ingredients into a bowl: flour, baking powder and spices. Stir in the chopped pecans.

In a large bowl mix together the sugar and oil. Add the eggs and whisk again until smooth.

Add the grated carrots and the dry mix (flour and nuts) to the wet mix (eggs, sugar, oil) and mix everything together until well combined.

Divide the mixture between the cake tins and bake in the oven for approx. 25 minutes, until well risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave the cakes to cool for a few minutes before removing from their tins and leaving to cool fully on a wire cooling rack.

For the icing mix together the butter, orange zest and icing sugar then add the cream cheese and mix until everything is smooth and fully combined. (Tip: if you have a stand mixer and find your icing goes lumpy try swapping the paddle attachment for the whisk attachment. I usually find the whisk helps to incorporate the stubborn butter lumps.)

Once the cakes are cool, spread the icing onto each sponge and stack into a layer cake. Optional: add chopped pecans on top for decoration.