Tag: cake mixture

Pippa’s Rainbow Cake

I sometimes worry that I might be a witch. It would make sense – I am not totally unsinister, with my weird red hair, beady black eyes, fearsome straight nose and strong Welsh ancestry (full of witches, Wales).

And it would explain a series of terrible things happening to people I hate. Three people, whom I have had cause to dislike intensely, have come to sticky ends – one had a near-fatal heart attack and was then made redundant, another broke their leg in an horrific accident and the other one actually died of cancer. All completely true. All in the last 3 years.

I cannot deny that I wished bad things for all of these people. But at the same time I cannot feel too guilty about any of it, because that would be to acknowledge that I think I really might be a witch – and that question would bring the priest and the doctor in their long coats running over the fields.

And anyway, terrible things happen to people I like, too – for example the woman I know whose newborn suddenly died last week, or my mother-in-law who had to have an emergency operation at Christmas. So if I do have any magical powers of Wicca, it probably isn’t that I bring great pain and suffering to people who cross me – it’s probably just that I bring shitty bad luck to everyone.

It is in this contrite mood that I turn to Celebrate, by Pippa Middleton. Everyone made terrific fun of this book when it came out, so furious were they all that she not only has a marvellous bottom and lovely swingy hair, but that she had landed a £400,000 book deal for writing about how to make paper chains.

But the thing is, this book is really terribly good and very inspiring and completely worth it if you are halfway inclined to throw parties but have, like me, little creative flair. And those famously obvious tips everyone scoffed at are actually perfectly sensible and not so obvious and stupid when you think of the awful, charmless parties you have been to where there’s nowhere to sit, nowhere to put your coat and not enough to eat. If I turned up at any party even half as pretty as the ones shown in the pictures in Celebrate I’d be fucking beside myself with excitement.

So anyone who says this book is no good is just a bitter, miserable sour-face and I hope something awful happens to them.

It’s also full of recipes, which I didn’t realise. They are good, all useful classics like kedgeree, gravadlax and simnel cake and she has some brilliant ideas for inexpensive mass-canapes, like baking tiny baby new potatoes and finishing them off with a blob of sour cream and caviar (she suggests Sevruga, but there is nothing wrong with Lumpfish, frankly). AND she’s got a twice-baked souffle thing, which I’ve been meaning to try for ages.

Pippa has also had the audacity to include a rainbow birthday cake, which caught my eye as it’s Kitty’s birthday quite soon and I do so like to present children with exactly what they want – i.e. hideous plastic toys with flashing light and noises, telly, full-fat, full-sugar, full-salt foodstuffs and enough E-numbers to blast them into space.

I was sceptical about the instructions for this cake, so I thought I would give it a go and possibly fuck it up, just to spread that essential extra bit of bad karma.

But even I didn’t manage to ruin it too badly, although it didn’t turn out anything like the picture. But that’s my own fault. My complaint with this cake is not the method, which would be fine if you were a little more precise, artistic and meticulous than me, but that my blue and green came out as more or less the same colour. I think if I was going to do this again, I would know my limitations and maybe stick to only four colours – two in each sandwich half.

I might even, thinking about it, if I wanted to do four colours per sandwich half, fashion a cardboard cross to sit in the tin so that you could dollop the batter with confidence and whip the card away at the last minute to leave four reasonably even segments of colour.

I am also at a loss as to how one would present this without covering it with some sort of icing, as although the colours come out beautifully on the inside, the outside goes brown during cooking. Pippa helpfully includes a recipe for buttercream icing, which does the job: 125g soft butter, 250g icing sugar, 2 tbsp freshly boiled water and whisk.

The cake itself is delicious and the batter doesn’t suffer too much from having the air knocked out of it when you mix in the food colouring.

Anyway so here we go:

Pippa’s Rainbow Cake

the exact recipe can be found on p.312 of the excellent Celebrate, which I urge you to buy if you have half a mind to.

This mixture makes enough for a 20cm round or 18cm sq cake tin.

200g self-raising flour
200g sugar
200g butter at room temperature
4 eggs !! I know rather a lot
Large pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180C.

1 Cream together 200g butter and 200g sugar. Add the salt.

2 Whisk in the four eggs one by one. You do this to stop the mixture from curdling. I must say, I have never managed to stop a cake mixture from curdling completely even when doing this – but at the same time it has never made the cake horrible or anything. Having said all this, best not to dump all four eggs in at the same time.

3 Now fold in the flour.

4 Now divide your cake mixture into as many separate bowls as you have colours and give each bowl its own teaspoon with which to mix in the colour. Add each colour until you are happy with the saturation and then spoon the colours into your (well-greased) tin.

I was worried about this as I assumed they would all merge together and create a hideous grey/brown cake. They do not, as cake batter is reasonably stiff, but a clumsy hand such as mine means that I didn’t get a gorgeously even distribution of colour as someone more talented might have. But these things are all about practice.

3 Give the tin a little shake to even the top out and then bung in the oven for 30-40 mins.

After this has cooled you may find you need to level off the top with a knife in order to be able to sandwich your two halves together, with the prettiest cake bottom (eh? See what I did there??) facing uppermost. As I had buttercream on the outside, I filled the middle with jam.

And I was really very pleased with it. So if Pippa suddenly drops dead of a brain tumour, you will know who to blame.

 

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Amaretto cake

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Ingredients

  • 200g softened butter
  • 200g brown sugar
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 2tblsp amaretto liqueur
  • 180g flour
  • 50g ground almonds
  • 3tsp baking powder

That’s goodtoknow

This makes a great dessert served warm with chocolate sauce or ice-cream.

Method

  1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C/160°C Fan/Gas Mark 5. Grease and line a deep (preferably spring-form) 10cm sandwich cake tin.
  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy. Beat the eggs and add the liqueur.
  3. Mix in 1/3 of the eggs and 1/3 of the flour and gently fold in. Repeat until all of the eggs and flour are combined.
  4. Add the baking powder and ground almonds, and fold through the cake mix.
  5. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 20-30mins until the cake is slightly risen and golden brown. A skewer inserted into the middle of the cake should come out with a few crumbs but no raw cake mixture attached. If it browns too much before it’s cooked in the middle, cover with tin foil.
  6. Cool in the tin for 10mins, then turn out onto a wire rack.
  7. Serve warm with chocolate sauce or ice-cream, or allow to cool completely and cut into slices.

By Eleanor Turney

What do you think of this recipe? Leave us your comments, twist and handy tips.

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Rosemary Shrager’s Victoria sponge cake

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Free & easy recipe video: Watch new how-to recipe videos with goodtoknow and Woman’s Weekly see all videos >

Rosemary Shrager makes this classic British cake recipe look effortless with an easy to follow step-by-step guide – so treat the family to this freshly baked cake next time you have an hour to spare.

  • Makes: 1

  • Prep time: 30 mins

  • Cooking time: 25 mins

    Plus 10 minutes cooling time

  • Total time: 1 hr 5 mins

  • Skill level: Easy peasy

  • Costs: Mid-price

That’s goodtoknow

This Victoria sponge cake will keep up to a week in an airtight container or you can freeze the individual cake bases without the filling on them, to make the cake at a later date.

Ingredients

  • 220g soft unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
  • 220g caster sugar
  • 4 large eggs
  • 220g self-raising fl our
  • 6 tbsp raspberry jam
  • 1–2 tbsp icing sugar

Method

  1. First prepare two 20cm sandwich tins by greasing them well with butter. Line the base of each tin with a circle of baking parchment cut to fit.
  2. Put the soft butter and the sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy and almost white in colour. This is easiest with an electric beater but you can also use a wooden spoon.
  3. Lightly whisk the eggs together in a small jug or bowl. Add to the butter mixture a little at a time, beating constantly.
  4. Now sift in the flour in 3 or 4 additions. Fold in the flour each time with a large metal spoon. Be careful not to knock the air out or the cake will be heavy.
  5. Divide the cake mixture equally between the 2 sandwich tins and level the surface. Place on the middle shelf of an oven preheated to 180°C/Gas Mark 4 and bake for 25–30 minutes, until well risen and golden brown.
  6. To check if the cakes are done, press one gently in the middle with your finger – it should spring back up. If you’re still not sure, insert a skewer in the centre – if it comes out clean, the cake is cooked through.
  7. Remove the cakes from the oven and leave in the tins for 10 minutes. Then run a knife around the edge of each one to loosen it if necessary. Turn out the cakes on to a wire rack. Leave to cool completely. Peel off the baking parchment and put one of the cakes on a serving plate.
  8. Spread the raspberry jam over the top of the cake. Put the other cake on top of the jam. Then sift the icing sugar over the top through a fine sieve.

By Rosemary Shrager’s Absolutely Foolproof Classic Home Cooking, published by Hamlyn, £18.99.

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Nutritional information

Guideline Daily Amount for 2,000 calories per day are: 70g fat, 20g saturated fat, 90g sugar, 6g salt.

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