artist/barista/baker

Working in a coffee house, I get to bake and decorate cakes in the afternoon in between the busy rushes. We only use Betty Crocker chocolate or carrot cake mixes, but it's still one of my favourite parts of the job. I occasionally take baked treats in to work, secretly hoping they might consider hiring me as a full time baker. This week my baking skillz were finally unleashed in the kitchen as we ran out of our Betty Crocker boxes. I made a vanilla cake and a lemon cake and the latter looked particularly impressive. (I thought about taking photos of my cakes but my coworkers think I'm strange enough as it is.) Half of the lemon cake disappeared within the first hour or so of me putting it on the counter! I think this is what all the cool kids call an "EPIC WIN".

Let's hope I get to make more tasty cakes at work.

I've also finally got round to ordering a Wilton piping set. So watch this space for fancy pants cupcakes.

Cursing cake

Well there's nothing like a massive virus attack threatening to destroy your computer to make you back up all your files.

I made a malteser cake with a friend on sunday night after finding the recipe from a blog a few weeks ago. It was a Nigella Lawson recipe so I thought it would be pretty reliable, however our cake just didn't turn out right (and this was our second attempt!) Here's a quick photo I took on my phone.

It took double the length of time to cook and didn't rise particularly well. There also seemed to be a lack of butter in the recipe(?) So off I went on Tuesday night to browse other malteser cakes on google images to see if other bloggers had similar problems. Then BANG!!! My computer went nuts saying it was being attacked by various scary viruses. Thankfully I have a Norton programme so it seemed to sort everything out but holy crap it gave me a fright.

But seriously, cake? A picture of a CAKE started all these viruses? I knew popular sites like youtube or myspace were bad for catching viruses but pictures of malteser cake from blogs?!

No more cake browsing on google images for me then.

Bun, cupcake or fairy cake?

Are they all exactly the same? I grew up calling these cakey creations "buns" and thought "fairy cakes" had the sliced off tops which were stuck on again as wings (or are those "butterfly cakes"?) The American term "cupcake", which has steadily grown in popularity in the U.K., just made me angry. In fact I usually ended up shouting "it's not a cupcake, it's a f***ing bun!" at people.

The "cupcake", however, is not a silly new term or fad. It can be traced back to 1796 when a recipe notation of “a cake to be baked in small cups” was written in “American Cookery” by Amelia Simms. (Good old Wiki!) The "bun" is apparently a Northern English term (fancy that!) and is described either as a sweet bread or a sponge/butterfly bun and the term "fairy cake" relates to the dinky cake size.

I decided further investigation was required, mostly through comments on cake blogs. Some believe the "fairy cake" is of a lighter texture and uses glacé icing as opposed to buttercream, or that "cupcakes" are more versatile in flavour and a "grown up" cake whereas "fairy cakes" are plainer and associated with children's parties. Another interesting theory came from a lady called Sarah on the Maison Cupcake blog:

Fairy cakes use the 2:1 ratio of flour sugar and butter to eggs and go into cases of a size that means I can get the cake into my mouth in one go. Cupcakes vary the amount of flour etc. according to the recipe and have milk in them and can only get into my mouth in one bite if I’m feeling particularly limber.

Very slowly, through much baking and blog reading, I am beginning to accept the "cupcake". I no longer view it as a threat to the "bun"; if anything I think it's a different kind of cake (with much more elaborate icing!)

So will I finally start using the term cupcake without muttering it through gritted teeth? Maaaaaaaybe.