Thought you might like to know what I get up to when I bake for the Cafe… It all starts about 8.30am when I put out the cakes that I made the afternoon before for the morning, then the baking begins….
I have recently acquired three more ‘Silverwood’ 8″ cake tins. Lucky me, now I have six to play with and it also means that soon I will baking a six layer Rainbow Cake (I know a rainbow has seven colours- ROYGBIV. I think I’ll leave out the blue?) Today it meant I could make two triple layer Victoria Sponges at once which is a whopping 24oz cake mix!
24oz Butter
24oz Sugar
12 Eggs
24oz Self Raising Flour
2tsps baking powdering
3tsp Vanilla Extract
Six cakes baked and left to cool on wire racks.
Meanwhile on with Carrot Cake – this is the ‘Talk of the Town’ It sells out in the Café nearly every time. Who would have thought this was the favourite? It is a simple recipe with no dried fruit or chopped walnut and no iced carrots on the top. I will give you the recipe for this another time…Two lots of carrot cakes baked this morning. While these were baking in the oven, buttercream icing- using two packs of butter and therefore twice the amount of icing sugar (500g/1kg). This should last a couple of days!
Next cream cheese icing no need to clean the mixer again, two packs of butter, twice icing sugar and 500g of full-fat cream cheese. Again this might last a couple of days.
One Victoria cake assembled – I always put buttercream on the bottom layer and raspberry seedless jam on the second layer. The top layer is dusted with icing sugar and the cake was out before lunchtime in the Café. The other three sponges wrapped up and frozen for another day.
The next cake is a Lemon & Blueberry Swiss Roll. Before Christmas I hadn’t made a Swiss Roll for 30 years maybe? I remember making one in Food Tech at school (we called it home economics then) so I gave it a go a few weeks ago, and now make one every other week. I picked up a tip that as soon as its out of the oven turn out into baking paper laid on a damp tea towel, then roll up tightly with the paper in the middle, cover over with the tea towel and leave to cool. This will be unrolled and filled with a layer of lemon curd, whipped cream and a scattering of blueberries.
Its not 2pm yet and out goes a carrot cake. Two of the carrot cakes sponges sandwiched together with the cream cheese icing and topped with more cream cheese. I always dust the top with cinnamon. There’s always “ah’s and ooh’s” everytime I put a cake out, walking through the café to the front counter and presenting the cake onto the bar – but where will it go? Ha! There’s always a battle as to which cake gets the best spot on bar.
Everyone loves chocolate so a quick mix for a Chocolate cake, an 8oz mix in 2 8″tins cooked for about 25mins. While the cakes are baking, I make the chocolate ganache that needs to cool before it’s used to sandwich and cover the chocolate cakes.
Last bake of the day is two lots of Banana Loaf using 8 bananas! These take an hour to bake so they will just about cool enough to put away for tomorrow before home time. Tomorrow they will be iced with Caramel buttercream (a couple of tbsp added to some of the buttercream made today)
While the Banana cakes are baking I make a Tiffin. Melting chocolate, butter, golden syrup then adding broken biscuits, sultanas, cranberries and marshmallows. All mixed together then poured into a rectangular traybake tin lined with cling film. This will be firm enough to cut in the morning.
All Done! So lucky I don’t have to wash up thanks to our potwashers, but I do have to clean down my ‘station’ and put all the cakes away. I will put details of all the recipes on soon.Phew as I write this now I feel like I have baked it all again! Time for me to relax, before I start again in the morning! On the cake list tomorrow are Brownies, GingerCake, more Carrot Cake, Bakewell Tart and Coffee n Cardamon Cake.