Culinary Creativity

Meeting 18 - Culinary Creativity

Date: 2nd December 2010
Place: Cake Brigade Member Bradley's Unit Base
Members: Bradley, Faulkner, Palmer


You may remember how a few posts ago, I mentioned how we were bored of always making the same things. Which is true, as without anything to challenge us, we have lacked the ambition to brigade over the past few months. However, following my discovery of this and this, we found some inspiration, and gave our newest cake brigade member; Member Palmer, a baptism of fire.


As you can imagine, even though the Rainbow Cake is a simple enough thing to bake, it look time. We had to bake 6 cakes of different colours, and allow them all to cool completely before we could frost it. To begin with, we struggled with the colourings, as it is hard to tell what colour the cake will bake to and we didn't want any of the layers to be too similar. We needed it to stand out; to look as vibrant as possible without the amount of food dye compromising the density of the cake itself. The most problematic layer was the orange, but in the end, they all turned out well. We left the cake to cool overnight, and then I frosted it with a ridiculous amount of chocolate butter cream. Originally, we had be unsure about using a dark frosting as it might dull the effect of the coloured layers, but chocolate butter cream being the most tasty, there really wasn't much else we could do, so in the end we had no choice but to submit to the chocolaty goodness.


Here follows some animated GIFs. Yeah, they're cool.

For the Cupcake Stuffed Cupcakes, we first made mini plain cupcakes, and left them to cool before we frosted them with chocolate butter cream (what else). We then made the batter according to the recipe linked earlier, and filled the normal cupcake cases with the mix, squishing in a mini cake and covering with more batter. Originally, we had planned to do cupcake stuffed cupcakes stuffed with cupcakes, but had to reign ourselves in when we realised it was quite late, and so our muffin cases went unused.

In theory, they worked well; they are, after all, cupcakes stuffed with cupcakes. However, the batter did spread somewhat during baking, and the outer cupcake layer was quite thin, so it may have been better if we had used the mini cakes to stuff the muffin sized cakes rather than the ordinary sized ones.

No GIFs this time, you can have normal pictures.

<# x

CBA TBH

Meeting 17: C[an't] B[e] A[rsed] T[o] B[e] H[onest]

Date: 29th September 2010
Place: Cake Brigade Member Bradley's Unit Base
Members: Bradley, Faulkner



For members Bradley and Faulkner, this day was a day of great importance. Having just bade farewell to Polson for her 3 month holiday, we set off on our own adventures. First, we discovered Mountain Dew, and we found that it was good. Following this, we found that party rings being catapulted into the foot well of a fiat punto did nothing to change their yumminess. Then, we discovered that Kinder eggs didn't react well to being posted through letter boxes. After this, we attempted a cake brigade, and found that we couldn't really be bothered.


We started with good intentions, spicing up the usual boring recipe with some bright blue food colouring and splodging it in a target-like pattern. However, by the time that it had cooked, we couldn't be bothered to make anything to fill it with, so we just sandwiched the two layers together. Dry. I said we could lick it and stick it, but Faulkner didn't seem keen, so we didn't.


We called it 'the lazy blue splodge cake'.

<# x

Fake Posh with Randomness

Meeting 16 - Fake Posh with Randomness

Date: 23rd September 2010
Place: Cake Brigade Member Bradley's Unit Base
Members: Bradley, Faulkner, Polson


For Edkins, the last in our trio of birthdays in September, I'll admit, we struggled to think of a suitable theme that we hadn't done already. We had three meetings to discuss this birthday, and Faulkner and I made all the decisions and planning within an hour in the early hours of the morning of the party, after we had made the cake under a completely different theme. However, the cake was still awesome, as was the party, and serves as a testament to what results when Bradley and Faulkner are left alone to make decisions for their best mate!

At the point of making the cake, the theme we had settled on was one of 'Random Mess', which entailed mixing all our previous themes together, from vegetables and farmyard animals to superheroes and the colour purple. Therefore, the cake itself was a plain sponge, which we mixed in food dye to turn it purple. As we used one large cake tin for the double mix rather than the usual two sandwich tins, it needed much longer in the oven, and so we had to keep checking on it at regular intervals rather than leaving it be. As it cooked, it turned a slightly greenish brown, which made it look more like a giant pork pie than a purple coloured cake.

For the decoration, we centered the design around an icing sheep, surrounding it with jelly bears, jelly tots, jelly snakes, chocolate buttons and marshmallows. We used chocolate butter icing to stick everything down, although the majority of it hadn't set even a week later. To finish the whole thing off, we used curly wurlys to create a tipi around the sheep.


As you can see, the cake did turn out purple, if not a little green around the edges!

As for the rest of the night, we started out all dressed up, Jon having kidnapped the birthday girl for us, and Faulkner and I played waitress as we served hors d'urves in the form of bread and butter, cheese and cucumber, mini quiches and pizzas, and cheese savoury stuffed skips. We then got Chinese and ate it off the best china, while drinking coke, sprite and fanta in wine glasses served from wine bottles. Afterwards, we got into our PJ's, and watched 'Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging' with face packs on.

For a party that didn't even have a quarter of the planning of the others due to the lack of decisiveness and Edkins' creative input, I think it went pretty darn well.

<3 x

Kid's Party

Meeting 15 - Kid's Party

Date: 15th September 2010
Place: Cake Brigade Member Bradley's Unit Base
Members: Bradley and Edkins


Imagine the scene. Bradley is walking home feeling woozy and calls Edkins to talk to her until she gets home in case she passes out in the street. Edkins does so, and then comes round a few hours later to feed her yummy soup. Then they make an epic cake. That, children, is how dinosaurs are born.

Now, we like to push our limits sometimes, and we like it even better when we pull it off.

This dinosaur was born for Faulkner on the anniversary of her birth 23 years ago. Based on the theme of children's parties from when we were little, and of course styled after the ever awesome caterpillar cake, we made a chocolate dinosaur cake, stuck together with chocolate butter cream, topped with melted milk chocolate and decorated with flying saucers and smarties. It really was the VISION OF COOL.

Edkins and I made this cake, and I'll be honest with you, dear reader, we have been more motivated to bake. Due to this, you can imagine our surprise at how well the cakes rose and turned out with our half hearted efforts.

We made the cake in three parts, using one cake for the main body, another for the head and tail, and the remaining cake for the legs. After cutting the cakes into the desired patterns, we covered them in chocolate butter cream to prevent crumbs and help with icing, which is a little tip we picked up from a website which I forget the name of and cant be bothered to find out. We were a bit cautious at first, thinking it wouldn't help, but by jingo, it made covering the cake with the melted chocolate the day after a hell of a lot easier! We used a skewer to hold the head in place on the body, and a wedge of cake under the neck to hold the skewer in place and prevent it from slicing the head in half. Now you know what killed off the dinosaurs. They didn't have cake wedges to hold their heads together.

We coated the pieced together cake in a generous layer of melted chocolate, and then lined the spine with flying saucers and dotted the back with smarties to make it a greater spotted chocosaurus.


We then proceeded to playing waiting for Faulkner to come home, treasure hunts, three legged races, egg and spoon races, throwing egg competitions, pin the nose on the clown, speed eating jelly and other such hilarity.

A good time was had by all.

<3 x

Vintage Tea Party

Meeting 14 - Vintage Tea Party

Date: 12th September 2010
Place: Cake Brigade Member Faulkner's Unit Base
Members: Bradley, Polson, Faulkner, Edkins and Mander



So, its uh, been a while. Umm, so how are you? Kids doing well? Uh ... yeah.

Just because the blog went AWOL for a few months, doesn't mean that we didn't bake, oh no! September is a busy month for us of the Cake Brigade, with three of the 'Zante Six' having birthdays within two weeks of each other. Inspired by a walk in the woods during near torrential rain, we decided to make SURPRISE the theme of the birthdays this year.
The first of these birthdays was Cunnane-Neilan's, and being the first, she got the majority of the crazy ideas, namely kidnapping. Yes, we kidnapped her. bundled her into a car filled with sunglassed suits and blindfolded her before taking her to an undisclosed location, where there was a vintage style tea party waiting for her. It was lovely.
But first, we had to make the cakes! We decided that rather than one large cake, we would make her lots of cupcakes. Lots of cupcakes. So, to do this, we headed to Faulkner's, all Cake Brigaders minus Neilan in tow, and set about making probably close to 100 cakes, both plain and chocolate. We topped them with pink or blue coloured buttericing for the ones going on the cake stand, and cut out letters in royal icing spelling 'Happy 23rd Birthday Elle' or words to that effect for the birthday cakes.

You could tell who had iced which cakes by the amount of icing on them, as Edkins seemed to think that each cake had to be as high as Mount Everest to be acceptable. The rest of us were far more stingy.

Now, I am an idiot and neglected to take any photos of our creations, so unless someone wants to send some to me (hint hint), you'll have to cope with this one solitary photo that I have managed to steal off Twitter.

Edit: Faulkner, you are awesome personified.

<3 x

Had to stop myself from adding my footnotes then ...

Something Utterly New and Different

Meeting 14 - Something Utterly New and Different

Date: 2nd June 2010

Place: Cake Brigade Member Bradley's Unit Base

Members: Bradley, Polson, Faulkner, Edkins


After a very successful fajita party, (I love fajitas. I'm salivating just thinking about them. Yumyumyumyum) the assembled members of the Cake Brigade decided to make a whole host of new, exciting things.

So, we made brownie, flapjack, and chocolate cornflake cakes.

Good Job Guys.

I feel they need no introduction. Moses knows I have written up enough about these things!

CHALLENGE: MAKE SOMETHING NEW NEXT TIME. LIKE WITH AN AUBERGINE OR SOMETHING.

<3 x

A Two Layer Cake Just Isn't Enough Anymore

Meeting 13 - A Two Layer Cake Just Isn't Enough Anymore

Date: 12th May 2010

Place: Cake Brigade Member Faulkner's Unit Base

Members: Faulkner, Bradley, Polson, Cunnane-Neilan


In the last post, I said there comes a time when a girl just needs chocolate cake. As if to prove my point, just a few days after my need, myself and the rest of the Cake Brigade simultaneously felt this need, as so we self medicated.

Our first dose was to get the brownie started so we could eat that while the cake was cooking. It was a packet mix, which always tastes so much better eaten out the tin while still warm, so this is what we did, in true Cake Brigade style.

Cake Brigade Member Faulkner decided to eat it all to her self, which Member Cunnane-Neilan looks far too happy about. Member Polson and Member Bradley were probably three seconds away from ripping it out of her hands. In the end, Member Faulkner decided to share, and we all scoffed it down in record time. I think we felt sick afterwards.


As if the Brownies chocolaty goodness was not enough, we then decided to make a three layer chocolate cake, obviously without measuring the cocoa (which has now officially been renamed phonetically - so co-co-ah), and sandwiched with CHOCOLATE EFFING BUTTERCREAM. For some reason, it went a bit wrong and was very thick. The reasons may have been too much icing sugar and cocoa, or too hard butter, but never mind. To spice things up a little, we added giant chocolate buttons on top of the buttercream and on the top too!


I think our chocolate cakes needs were successfully sated.

<3 x

Brigading It Loner Style

Meeting 12 - Brigading It Loner Style

Date: 7th May 2010

Place: Cake Brigade Member Bradley's Unit Base

Members: Bradley. (Yes, on her own. Yes, like a right loser)


Sometimes, a girl comes to a point in her life when she just needs cake. And not just any cake, she needs chocolate cake.

People with high levels of will power can control these urges.

I cannot.

So I made a chocolate cake! Simple sponge mix, but I didn't measure out the cocoa, so it was quite cocoa-y, which wasn't a bad thing! I sandwiched it with a generous layer of chocolate butter cream and apricot jam, which was quite frankly, amazing, and then topped the whole thing off with chocolate icing.

It didn't last 24 hours. Hell, I don't think it lasted 12.

It was epic.

I had to share my masterpiece.

Diet re-starts tomorrow.

<3 x

Chocolate Butter Cream Will Take Over The World

Meeting Eleven - Chocolate Butter Cream Will Take Over The World

Date: 9th April 2010

Place: Cake Brigade Member Polson's Unit Base

Members: Polson, Faulkner, Bradley, Cunnane-Neilan, Edkins. FULL HOUSE!


At the moment, we committed Cake Brigade Members are trying our darnedest to meet more often to make more exciting things.
Well, 'trying' may be an overstatement, I think we all agreed on it once in passing. But still, the sentiment was there. Thus, all members of the Cake Brigade met to make a whole host of tasty treats. After waiting for Cunnane-Neilan to finish work. And a slushie. And threat of a parking ticket. And a meal. We didn't have dessert though. Hence the baking. Stop typing, Heather.

Now, what Cake Brigade Meeting would be a Cake Brigade Meeting without a cake? This time, inspired by the multicoloured cake from last time, we made a traffic light cake, because we are three-year-old children. Zoe was in charge of this one, and it consisted of three simple sponge layers sandwiched together with chocolate butter cream.
Yes, another none chocolate item 'chocolified' with chocolate butter cream!
And yes, we realise it is the wrong way around, but the red one broke a bit. So you can just look at it upside down.


After the success of the brownie from last meeting, we decided to make it again, but left it in the oven for a teensy bit longer. Elle and Linzi took control of this. I do believe that this is the recipe they used.


I have always wanted to make fudge, because I do love it so. Therefore, Rach and I tried our hands at this chocolate and ginger fudge recipe, minus the ginger. It turned out quite well, as it was easy enough to make that me and Rach started doing this * because we had so much free time, and it didn't taste bad either.


Something we had made before, but failed to document despite how well they turned out, was Malteaser Muffins. Therefore, Elle and I teamed up to make them this time, or rather I made them and Elle told me what to do. I have to admit, the mix of this was vile smelling due to the buttermilk, and it didn't look much better, but they turned out pretty well despite Elle forgetting to add the honey. We even added smarties to them, which Elle decided to announce looked like old ladies fingernails, which was just lovely.


The final thing to be made this meeting was some good old fashioned Cake Brigade Cookies, courtesy of Linzi. This time, we shook up the recipe by making three sorts, one sort with chocolate chips, one with smarties, and the final batch with chocolate orange. I thought the chocolate orange ones were pretty darn epic, but that may just be due to the chocolate orangeness of them. I love chocolate orange.


It still blows me away when it comes to sharing out the goodies and the bill that we can make this amount of stuff for a hell of a lot less than one cake would cost you in the shops. I think home baking is the way forward.

<3 x

* I'm the one on the left. Rach is on the right, because when you have been with someone long enough, they say you start to look alike.

Taking the Stripe Cake to a Whole New Level

Meeting Ten - Taking the Stripe Cake to a Whole New Level

Date: 25th February 2010

Place: Cake Brigade Member Polson's Unit Base

Members: Polson, Faulkner, Bradley


After a brief sabbatical from the Brigade, we came back revived and ready to go, with more creativity and a wish to make more exciting baked goods.

Despite this, we stuck with an old favourite, chocolate chip cookies, as they have never let us down in the past, and are frankly, damn good.


Having not made the Stained Glass Biscuits at Christmas, despite having all the ingredients for them, we decided to make them now, along with some that didn't have the sweets in, using some cookies cutters that had amused Zoe when she had seen them at my house, not realising that she had got her own set. The recipe we used had called for ginger or something, but we did not put this in, and they still turned out great, so I don't think they really needed it! Zoe made this all by herself, as in this meeting, we all made things at the same time rather than working together on each item.


Linzi made this brownie from scratch. Watching it being made was like watching a heart attack waiting to happen, and it tasted the same too, which meant it was amazingly good. Even if the top did look like skin.
I stuck with another old favourite in this flapjack, as Zoe had some oats she wanted using up.


At this point, Linzi had to go, so while Zoe and Linzi were dividing up the rest of the meetings creations, I whacked the ingredients for a sponge into a mixer all at once, and then added food colouring, striping the mix in the tin to get this cool cake. It was as flat as a pancake, as expected, but look how awesome it looks!


<3 x

Christmas Edition

Meeting Nine - Christmas Edition

Date: 23rd December 2009

Place: Cake Brigade Member Polson's Unit Base

Members: Polson, Faulkner, Cunnane-Neilan, Bradley.


Twas the night before Christmas Eve, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except three randommers baking cakes.
Yeah, so I changed it a bit, you still get the idea.

This meeting was filled with Christmas cheer and creativity. We even had super cool Santa Aprons from Linzi's mum! Having googled Christmas Cakes, we set about making a Yule Tide treat fest that would even make Father Christmas proud. Or throw up, either way.

We made these Cupcakes to look like raindeers, and they turned out so well. They were just a simple chocolate cake mix, topped with chocolate butter cream, and decorated with silver balls for eyes, red Jelly Tots for noses, and set melted chocolate antlers. Obviously, the remaining Jelly Tots made our jaws hurt again. Chewing is hard work.


We then made these Santa biscuits, which were decorated with red icing and marshmallow hats, white icing beards, and silver balls for eyes. You can tell Saint Nick is an old man, and we are all for authenticity, because we even gave him cataracts. A simple operation can cure that though. Its called being eaten.


We had also planned to make some Stained Glass biscuits, but we unfortunately ran out of time.

<3 x

Birthday Brigade

Meeting Eight - Birthday Brigade

Date: 10th December 2009

Place: Cake Brigade Member Faulkner's Unit Base

Members: Polson, Faulkner, Bradley


The primary reason for this Brigade Meeting was to help Linzi make birthday cakes for her Nan and her wand-maker boyfriend, Gregorovitch.

For her Nan, she made a simple sponge, sandwiched with butter cream and decorated with writing icing and a dusting of icing sugar. Plain and simple, because old people like familiarity.


However, with Greg's cake, we were able to go more to town. True to form, we made a Stripe cake. Linzi, knowing her Greggy Boy liked jelly tots, had brought some to decorate the cake with, so Zoe and I convinced her to mix some in with the butter cream, which was much more yummy than we expected. Linzi then decorated the cake with more jelly tots and silver balls spelling out the birthday greeting. While Linzi was showing her creation to her mother, Zoe and I promptly had a contest to see who could eat the most of the remaining jelly tots, resulting in a near vomit fest and aching jaws. Lots of jelly tots are ridiculously hard on the jaws.


By this point, we had made two very delicious looking cakes that we were not able to eat, and so, feeling very sorry for ourselves, we made some flapjack. This made us feel better, along with being able to finish off the jelly tot butter cream.

<3 x

Chocoholics Anonymous

Meeting Seven - Chocoholics Anonymous

Date: 8th December 2009

Place: Cake Brigade Member Polson's Unit Base

Members: Polson, Bradley, Faulkner


As the name suggests, this meeting was filled with chocolate based goods. I doubt this was intentional, but seeing as we are all girls in our early twenties, it is not surprising.

After the success of Jon's birthday brownie, we made another from the same sort of kit, which turned out just as well as it had done previously, as demonstrated by the fact it did not even last long enough to get taken home.


We also made some more double chocolate muffins, which turned out much better than the last batch. One even had a tongue, so we added eyes, because we thought it was amazing. Now, when we think of muffins, we think of this cute little fellow.



We are always willing to try something new, so being rather close to Christmas, we tried our hand at making truffles. They turned out quite well, despite the fact they seemed to take an age to set, and were very easy to make. We also got to use the cute mini cake cases, which is always a bonus.


After seeing a cake decorated like a clock a few meetings ago, we had all decided that it would be an amazing thing to make, but until now, we had always run out of time. however, this meeting was the perfect opportunity, as so we made this Clock Cake. As far as I remember, one layer was chocolate, and one layer was plain, of course sandwiched together with chocolate butter cream. We iced it with pink icing, decorated with large chocolate buttons and fingers for the clock hands. Ha ha, fingers for hands.


<3 x

Biscuits and Cookies

Meeting Six - Biscuits and Cookies

Date: 1st December 2009

Place: Cake Brigade Member Bradley's Unit Base

Members: Bradley, Polson, Faulkner


Always willing to try new things, this meeting we made Melting Moments. I always used to have these at junior school at break time, so I was excited to see how these would turn out. They were quite messy to make, as you had to roll the sticky biscuit mixture in oats. I remembered that they always used to swell out really well, to become huge biscuits, and they have cherries on top which makes them even more awesome. Here is a before and after baking comparison. Yeah, they didn't spread out quite as much as I was expecting, but they were still awesome.


Using a simple recipe off the BBC Food website, we made these chocolate chip cookies, which did spread out lots! They were a nice chewie American style cookies, and this wasn't the last time we made them! You can beat a good ole favourite.


<3 x