venta

So... anyone got any ideas on how to bake a beer-flavoured cake?

Having been caught up in the heady excitement of my rapper team's Facebook page, I have accidentally agreed to make someone a cake "made out of beer". I have remarkably little idea of how to proceed.

A quick google suggests that recipes for chocolate and stout cake exist. My mum makes a Guinness cake, but (although it's lovely) it tastes more of fruit cake than of Guinness. I'm currently inclining towards this Spiced Beer Cake recipe - though again I'm worried that the spices (while nice) will detract from the beery flavour.

Any advice? Please note I don't want a cake that looks like a foaming tankard, or is iced to resemble a bottle... I want a cake that contains and (preferably) tastes noticeably of beer.

I need to bake my cake next Thursday (to be delivered on Friday), so not a lot of time for experimentation...

I've written here before about going to Cake Parties - the principle is simple: make cake, take cake to party, eat cake. Then we tried a pie party, which worked pretty well. This time the host decreed we were going to have a Christmas party. She would provide us with turkey curry and mulled cider, the rest of us were to bring Christmassy cakes.

The trouble is, once other guests had bagged mince pies and Christmas cake, I couldn't think of anything else. Stollen? Christmassy, but the party includes a lot of marizpan-haters (and I suck at yeast-based cookery). Chocolate log? Meh, I can't get that excited about chocolate.

Then, sitting in the pub a few weeks back, Jamie said "why don't you make a gingerbread house?"

( Er... yeah, why not? )

One of these days, I fear I will be found dead in mysterious circumstances on a Monday morning and some CSI-style person is going to make a meal of the fact that the backs of my hands and wrists are covered with bruises and small abrasions.

Such things are, of course, the result of an all-day rapper practice on Saturday, followed by a rapper pub crawl on Saturday night. With the best will in the world, you end up with swords scraping over your knuckles and forearms and taking small chunks out.

But you know all about my rapper weekends... too much dancing, too much red wine, not enough sleep. So instead, I present some new culinary experiences from the weekend:

( Christmas Pudding Cheese )

( Haggis and Whisky Soup )

Nicked from bopeepsheep's LJ:
Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.

I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers, juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, pastry brushes, cheese boards, cheese knives, crepe makers, electric woks, miniature salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, pie funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic crushers, martini glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders, milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, slow cookers, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, ice cream makers, fondue sets, healthy-grills, home smokers, tempura sets, tortilla presses, electric whisks, cherry stoners, sugar thermometers, food processors, stand mixers, mincers, bacon presses, bacon slicers, mouli mills, cake testers, pestle-and-mortars, gratin dishes, apple corers, mango stoners and sets of kebab skewers languish dustily at the back of the nation's cupboards.

I think the short version is: I've got quite a lot of crap in the kitchen, but I do use most of it. The mincer is a recent[*] acquisition which I expect to use, but have not used yet. Get back to me next week. The juicer is a close call; it probably gets used about once a year. Used to be much more often when I lived in a house with an apple tree.

I'm bewildered by some of these things, though. What is a jam funnel? I don't own one, so it clearly isn't necessary for making jam. Mind you, I had a boiled egg for breakfast on Thursday and I don't own an egg boiler, either. How does a gravy strainer differ from any other kind of strainer (or is it one of those slanty jug things)? I have flat, ceramic dishes which I use, but I'm not sure if they're legally gratin dishes or not. I have made gratin in them. I counted my Kenwood as both a stand mixer and an electric whisk (I use it for both).

[*] Hmm. Not as recent as I think, though. Must get on with it!

Yesterday I took myself for a little wander round Kew Gardens. In between the exciting plants and inconvenient rainshowers, I paused in the café and bought myself a cake and some pop. The cake I bought was a strange-looking thing, rather like a small, dense pain au chocolat. It was, I discovered, actually a giant fig roll.

I presume the giant fig roll is a rare species which Kew is busy conserving. Anyway, I approve. But it has suddenly been revealed to me that I could make fig rolls. I could make giant ones! And eat them all myself!

Anyway... ( any advice on the recipe? )

Just when you thought I'd desisted from telling you about my lunch...

Today was my first experiment with quinoa, which I'm going to continue mispronouncing as kwin-o-a because the alternative just sounds too ridiculous for words.

( Yes! tell me more about your quinoa! )

I have to make a birthday cake for this weekend... and I was considering making the port and chocolate cake from Cooking for Geeks.

However, the recipe requires "bittersweet chocolate", and has a note not to substitute "semisweet chocolate" due to their differing cocoa fat content.

I'm not sure that I completely understand how those USian folks use the terms bittersweet and semisweet. Can anyone translate for me? Wikipedia's classification of chocolate describes the two kinds as "interchangeable when baking"...

I'm low on time this week, so no chance of solving this experimentally.

The trouble with not getting round to writing on LJ is that I store up things in my head which I intend to write. So I'd like to tell you about my recent holiday, but first I want to write about the epic pie I made a week or two ago. But I also intended to write about seeing Veronica Falls live, and I meant to tell you about Whitby goth weekend, and was keen to mention seeing PWEI before that...

Anyway. I can't help noticing that the only way to move forward is to bite the bullet, mix the metaphor, and get on with it. In summary: Veronica Falls are brilliant, kind of indie pop with a bit of a My Bloody Valentine fuzz, and you should check them out. They were supported by the Dum Dum Girls who are also pretty good, and their lead sinder is audibly indistinguishable from the Chrissie Hynde.

WGW was a bit of a departure this year, keris, davefish and I (having carelessly mislaid our usual flat) moved into a large house with ceb, damerell and Heather (WINOLJ, AFAIK). They all turned out to be lovely housemates, and even the bands in the Spa turned out to be enjoyable. I had no idea that the advertised "Chameleons Vox" were a reconstituted version of the band I know as The Chameleons, which was a splendid thing to discover.

And PWEI? Well, we partied like it was 1995. Despite retaining only about one original member, PWEI are still jumping about the stage, yelling, like it's 1995.

So, about that pie. Under the following cut are some fairly graphic pictures of the animal parts which went into making my pork pie.

( If that's the kind of thing you don't want to look at, don't click here )

( From here on you'll still get pictures of a meat pie in the making, but nothing too gruesome. If you can handle looking at streaky bacon you'll be ok. )

Following a suggestion from mr_tom, I pottered up to a Japanese tableware shop in Harrow at the weekend. As well as stacks of exciting plates, bowls, cups and teapots they had a tiny shelf of tiny bento boxes.

( Contuining lunch-related waffle )

Bloody mice with flipcharts. Honestly.

( Planning: not all it's cracked up to be )

( Bento 7 )