Spooktacularly orange!

So I decided, about a month ago, to indulge the pagan in me and create a Halloween cake. What brought this about was too many evenings filled with Choccywoccydoodah re-runs. To put it mildly, I LOVE Choccywoccydoodah. Literally love it. When I am bored, I find my mind wandering, Brighton-bound. One of my bugbears with rolled fondant is the fact it tastes, by and large, pretty rotten. Particularly certain brands. There's nothing like peeling back the plasticised foil and the sweet, chemicular odour hitting the back of your throat (is chemicular a word? If it is not a word, it ruddy well should be). I search longingly for fondant that tastes good. The best combination I have found is Satinice for covering - the taste is far superior, and M&B and/or Renshaw for modelling. I hear, though, that the Americans have a product that is hallowed far and wide, Massa Grischuna. Nicholas Lodge is, allegedly, also a fan. This apocryphal covering is available to us in the UK if we are prepared to pay $63 a 6 kilo bucket of the stuff. A bit steep when you consider 10 kilos of standard fondant from the grey UK shores is about £30. But if the flavour is so superior, then just maybe it's worth it. Choccywoccydoodah on the other hand, have taken an entirely different tack and just use chocolate. Mouldable chocolate models adorn their cakes, and they are spectacular. I don't know how many people there are left in the baking blog-o-sphere who wouldn't have happened upon one of their creations, but if you haven't, go and google them and educate yourself in the art of chocolate kitsch.
Dave, head chocolatier, is a genius, of that there is no doubt, but it is the detail and tidiness of Tom, his equally talented wingman, coupled with Christine's (manager) fairy-fication if she feels not enough glitter has been used, that provides fertile ground for the folies a trois required to generate such creativity. And watching them just makes my fingers itch to create likewise.
Thus it was I began ordering copious quantities of orange icing, black glitter, and Celtic cross stamps. I fashioned black roses, black crosses, black ivy leaves. I ordered a pumpkin mould. I had my heart set on creating a Halloween masterpiece. And then Desk-buddy, curiosity getting the better of her, started asking why I was making the cake. Other than my daughter requesting it and pure self-indulgence of my creative urges, I had no justification. But then she said "Well if you want to make it for something, I'm having a Halloween party on the 29th for my birthday." And then I had an audience! My planning took on new fervour, but I also needed to scale down slightly, I realised. In the real world, not every birthday party heralds the arrival of 250 guests. And the resultant cake is here for you to view in all it's technicolor glory. The sponge is a chocolate mud cake courtesy of Paris Cutler, with a touch of orange zest, along with ganache made from Green and Blacks Mayan Gold chocolate, and soaked in a grand marnier syrup for extra moistness. Incidentally, if you hear of a good-tasting fondant, be sure to let me know!

Nigellas Banana Loaf

This is supremely good cake. Dense, substantial and yet improbably light. Nigella says to boil the fruits, but you can pre-soak them in rum, brandy - whatever tickles your booze-buds. This is courtesy of the Grande Dame of The Bakeratti, my ma, Pat. She always has a Parfait jar of steeping fruits nestled at the back of the cupboard, and therefore so do I. I add spice to mine too. They are wonderful neat over ice cream, rice pudding or, stroke-inducingly, just with a 'healthy' dollop of gilt-crusted clotted cream. And they work a treat in this banana loaf. Where Nigella states 'sugar', do yourself a favour and use light muscovado. The chemistry that takes place when it meets with the natural banana sugars, dried fruits and dark rum is sublime, wreathing each bite in toffee notes. You are committing a crime against humanity if you choose not to act on the recipe below!

INGREDIENTS
100g sultanas
75ml bourbon or dark rum
175g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
125g unsalted butter, melted
150g sugar
2 large eggs
4 small, very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin), mashed
60g chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin, buttered and floured or with a paper insert

METHOD Serves: Makes 8-10 slices

Put the sultanas and rum or bourbon in a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil.
Remove from the heat, cover and leave for an hour if you can, or until the sultanas have absorbed most of the liquid, then drain.
Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3 and get started on the rest. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium-sized bowl and, using your hands or a wooden spoon, combine well.
In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Then, with your wooden spoon, stir in the walnuts, drained sultanas and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit. Scrape into the loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1-11/4 hours. When it's ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out cleanish. Leave in the tin on a rack to cool, and eat thickly or thinly sliced, as you prefer.

Baking for one (or two dieting females)

It's a quandary I have been pondering upon for some time now. I like to cook. Specifically, I like to bake, for baking allows me to indulge in attention seeking behaviour. If I whip up a fabulous beef Wellington or cook a perfectly plump and juicy burnished roast chicken, nobody except my daughter will get to try this. So the praise-giving is fairly limited to my immediate family/those who are duty bound to tell me my food's sublime. But baking - well that is something that allows me to whip up vast batches of creamy, spongey, vanilla scented deliciousness that will generate coos and aaahs from colleagues. For when it comes to baking, it is nearly always for the troops on the front line of the financial services marketing teams that my creations are destined. Except, attention-seeking is not really why I bake. No - I bake because I cannot stand shop-bought cake. I bake as a creative outlet. I bake, in all honesty, to lick the bowl. I don't need to be told by my team a cake is good. I know if it's good or not, and I have my fair share of 'or nots' that get carefully edited out from the offerings I take in. I don't require 50 people letting me know it's good. The reason I bake for my department is, simply, either because I am asked to, or because if I did not take the food in, the produce would end up in the bin.

As a single mother of a teenage daughter, I have yet to solve the small batch baking dilemma. Neither myself nor the daughter care to eat such profound quantities of baked goods, yet we both like home cooked cakes and fancies.
Thus, it is that I have decided that this situation can continue no more. Not because my colleagues are unhappy with the situation. It just seems a little bit wasteful. I want to make small batches that are eaten in one fell swoop (or maybe two tops). I do not want to hate cupcakes by day three.
I have failed to find any useful compendium on the subject, even from the grande dame Delia in her singletons guide to cooking "One is Fun", the first landmark, mainstream cookbook to broach the rising social trend of cooking for one, but there's little on baking for one for the main reason it has stumped many a cook - that is, The Egg (upper case intentional). The single most irksome element. I feel this needs some R&D of my very own.
You cannot buy half an egg, or a quarter - you just have to use the whole thing. Which invariably requires a fair quantity of flour, sugar, fat etc to render it spongeworthy. Either that, or you must waste some. Sure, you can buy egg white in a carton, but what of the flavour-giving, gilding quality of the yolk? And if you like cake, will you really enjoy eggwhite omlettes? Sure, you can stockpile meringues, but who, really, does that?
Well, I think I may have the answer to this whole egg conundrum. But before I announce this revolution to the world, I'll need to practice first. Which means a few more cakes to wade through, but hey - for the furtherance of baking and the single girl, I'm prepared to take one for the team. To be continued...

Kitchenaid Artisan - a design classic

What is it about the Kitchenaid Artisan Mixer that makes me go weak at the knees? I imagine it's how boys feel about prestige cars. Having said that, increasingly I see the mixer as less of an indulgence and more or a pre-requisite. As a society we have long since passed the point of viewing the humble kettle as an indulgence. No, we would no more draw fresh water from the well and then pop the cauldron in the coals on the hearth than we would fly unless on a particularly remote Hebridean island, or partaking in a living history experiment, or even if living in Surbiton but with a penchant for the twee. No - we get water from the good old tap, put it in our good old kettle that we expect to die in three years, and that matches our good old toaster. It was no longer an attempt at channelling Nigella through 1950s style Kitschenalia in order to buy ourselves her life.
I was a grown-up. I had my own house, a full time job, a teenage daughter who was herself a trainee Bakeratti in the making, and failing joints. I could no longer use my Dualit handheld, which has amazing torque but weighs a ton and gives you whitefinger, without considerable arthritic pain afterwards. I had convinced myself I HAD to have a stand mixer.
So I did what any self-respecting grown-up did and called my mother suggesting she might like to donate some John Lewis vouchers in lieu of a birthday/christmas present. In the event, she bought the whole thing. Which was a rather clever move on her part. A Kitchenaid, at £419, is a once, at a push twice, in a lifetime purchase for the average heavy domestic user. Thusly, years from now when I am helping my grandchildren whip up their first batch of fairy cakes, I'll be able to tell them about their great grandmother, who bought me the machine. So she has ensured her place in the family history books. Not that she wouldn't have done anyway, but every time I walk past the gorgeous pinkness of the stunningly beautiful design classic, I'll send a little prayer of thanks her way.