Let them eat cake!

Chocolate soldier cake & Pizza cake

Tanya's thoughts:
The soldier creation was chocolate sponge (with chocolate extract to make it REALLY chocolatey) sandwiched together with a chocolate *frosting and again swamped with it all over the cake, almost creating a chocolate moat around the cake. The cake was lovely and surprisingly not too heavy. Obviously I'd recommend the decoration for a young boy's birthday cake or in my case - a grown man's birthday cake :p
James's thoughts: .....

Tanya: James's can't talk right now, he's busy with his Fortress game clan :/






 

The pizza cake was plain sponge (cooked in a pizza pan (11ins), and was actually gluten free (yes the flour worked in this recipe)) with red *frosting (cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and red food paste), grated white chocolate (the cheese) then some fruit imitating pizza toppings. In our case we used 'pepperoni', 'olives', pieces of 'mozzarella'. Actually tasted really nice and quite light - the fruit made it feel light a light summer's cake. Presenting it in a Dominoes pizza box made it look the part and served it with a pizza cutter - great.
Jason's thoughts: "Needs moar garlic bread. No seriously, was enjoyable cake, different yet scrumptious. 8.5/10"
 











 

*Apologies for using the term 'frosting' I know it's American, but icing just conjures up a really thin silver spoon icing.

Toffee apple crumble

 











Tanya's thoughts:
Of course this had to be done for a fireworks night dinner! Eaten after a hearty cheesey chilli and the crumble was served with cream and as you can see from the photo - indoor sparklers. I think the excitement was too much as when the sparklers finished (after a very reluctant start) i felt extremely disappointed :p

This was a recipe found in a Brighton magazine about local food. you basically make a dark toffee sauce with dark muscavado sugar, butter and double cream which you pour over the slightly fried apples. Once cooked the sauce becomes a golden rich colour. The crumble mixture also has ground almonds which gave it a rich flavour (as if that was needed). Lovely and gooey.

James's thoughts: 
Very tasty but let down by sharp apples.

Classy cupcakes

Tanya's thoughts:
So next time you have Dorian Green pop in for a cup of tea you know what to serve with it. (Anyone remember birds of a feather?) Yes these cake cases are uber tacky but I think they look gorgeous :p the inner chav in me has unleashed itself obviously. I realise I've only described just the appearence so had better mention the taste. Lovely. Chocolatey and rich. What more do you want?

Friend's thoughts:
Well Andrew ate three so they must be good and Lauren's looking very naughty in this photo so presumably must be a 'naughty but nice' treat. Asked James what he thought of these cakes, to which he responded "I helped make them". That's nice dear.

The Soup Off! Blue Pumpkin VS Roasted Butternut Squash

 

Tanya's thoughts:

I like pumpkin soup, I like butternut squash soup - but which is better? :p Actually this is incredibly easy as we didn't like the pumpkin soup :( I followed Tana Ramsey's recipe for pumpkin soup where you fry then boil the chunks of pumpkin with garlic and rosemary - once it was cooked, blended etc - it only tasted of rosemary :( Very disappointing as it looked exciting (although it wasn't blue inside - obviously that would have made it more exciting!) and the texture was lovely and silky.

I've made this butternut squash soup recipe a few times before - again by Tana Ramsey (didn't even click that both recipes were hers until writing this). And it's lovely. Roasting the squash first just really brings out the sweetness of the vegetable. It's a time consuming soup - well over an hour to make it. But the real winner in all of this was the cheese scones I made as an accompaniment for this soup. I found a recipe online: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8877/cheese-scones and it uses vegetable oil rather than butter to make it healthier. Anyway who cares - they tasted lovely and rose really nicely.

James's thoughts (Well I'll write on his behalf)
He said that the pumpkin soup smelled like weed :/ And he obviously liked the squash soup and scones as took leftovers with him to work. :)

Fancy a bit of crumpet?

Tanya's thoughts:
Firstly - yes homemade crumpets taste amazing and nothing like the store bought ones.
Secondly and regretfully I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I can't believe I of all people would say that when it comes to baking. Basically it starts off with a bread making process which is fine but of course waiting for it to rise etc is time consuming. Then it's fiddly and takes time cooking them all. Yes I only had a couple of crumpet rings that slowed everything down but unless you have 5 frying pans on the go with 5 crumpet rings in each it's always going to take a bit of time. I started making these at a reasonable hour of 9am on a Saturday morning and think we were eating them just after 11am :/ Or later but can't really remember. That traumatic, perhaps I blocked it out :p
Maybe if someone asked me to make these as a dying wish I would consider it. I said consider :p

Easter cakes!

Tanya's thoughts:
Ahem. It's only a few months after Easter? Surely we all remember what we did for Easter?? :/ yes I'm playing catch up on my blog but really wanted to add these in as I had fun making them for a little tea party on the bank holiday Monday after Easter. Classic birds nests and butterfly fairy cakes, where I dyed the butter cream to match the nestle mini eggs. Yes even with food I like to colour co-ordinate.I also emptied some eggs so I could decorate them for the Easter table spread. Aren't they cute?

Chicken, apple and rosemary pie

Tanya's thoughts:
Have you ever being stuck for a dinner idea and just googled the ingredients you had in the fridge? well this was how i stumbled across this gem of an idea/recipe. I would never have thought these ingredients married together so well. here's the recipe: http://elseachelsea.typepad.com/frolic/chicken-apple-rosemary-pot-pie.html. In fact I can't believe I haven't made this since? I didn't make my own pastry as had some puff pastry that needed to be used up. (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).