Valentines Brigade

MEETING 23

DATE: 10th February 2011 (I think?)
PLACE: Faulkner's
MEMBERS: Faulkner, Bradley

Once again, this Brigade meeting was a fair amount of time ago, so I can't recall the details precisely. However, I do recall finding heart shaped cake cases in Sainsburies. Whether or not this was the inspiration behind this meeting, or whether we were going to make cupcakes anyway, I don't remember.

VALENTINES CAKES

 Using a basic sponge recipe, we intended to make one batch of plain cakes, and one of chocolate. As such, we halved the mixture for the plain cakes before adding coco-ah to the remainder to make the chocolate ones. I think, however, we used too much coco-ah, or something went wrong that ended up with us hurriedly adding more butter and eggs and flour to even up the mix. As such, we ended up with a hell of a lot more chocolate cakes than we had originally intended.
I'm sure we put iced them some way or another, but I neither have the photos nor the memory.

RATING ****
As far as I can remember, they tasted good. But as you may have guessed, I don't remember much about them at all.

















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Experiments with Coffee, by Non-Coffee-Consumers

MEETING 22

DATE: 3rd February 2011
PLACE: Faulkner's
MEMBERS: Faulkner, Bradley, Polson


The purpose of this meeting was to make a 'thank you' cake for a certain now-revealed-to-be-a-douche male friend of the Faulkner clan, and as such, a Coffee Walnut Cake was decided upon due to said douche's preference. However, none of the brigade members like coffee, or walnut for that matter, so we followed a recipe down to the finest detail, although whether this was a good thing or not has yet to be determined.

I have a feeling that we also made flapjack, I may be wrong though. It was a long time ago.

COFFEE WALNUT CAKE

 To make this cake, we followed the recipe from a bakery book donated to the Cake Brigade by Bradley Senior. Now, as I have explained previously, none of us like coffee. None of us drink coffee. So when the recipe said to add 4 teaspoons of instant coffee, we added 4 teaspoons of instant coffee. NOWHERE DID IT SAY TO MAKE IT INTO LIQUID FIRST. We only realised our mistake after the coffee grains didn't dissolve in the cake mix. None the less, we carried on anyway, and I have to admit, it at least looks pretty good. It matches the photo in the book almost perfectly.
We don't know how it tasted, having not tried it, but I believe it all got eaten so it cant have been that bad, surely. Maybe a bit strong, or grainy, but edible all the same.

RATING ***
An average score purely for the presentation. Next time, make the coffee into liquid before adding it to the mixture, obviously. I doubt we will make it again.
















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The One Where Members Bradley and Edkins Were Super Helpful

MEETING 21

DATE: 13th December 2010
PLACE: Faulkner Base
MEMBERS: Faulkner, Bradley, Edkins


Member Faulkner has a male friend that appreciates Faulkner making him lemon drizzle cakes. He also appreciates Terry's Chocolate Orange. He also celebrates the anniversary of his birth in December, and so Faulkner invited the Brigade around to help her make a Chocolate Orange Drizzle Cake.

This was something she had experimented with before and had given to Member Bradley to taste test as she doesn't like it herself. Bradley thought that it was good.

As such, Bradley and Edkins showed up to help with good intention, but then spent the entire evening out of the kitchen with Faulkner Senior buying Avon from Bradley while Faulkner slaved away on her own.

THAT my friends, is true dedication to the meaning of the Cake Brigade.

CHOCOLATE ORANGE DRIZZLE CAKE

Having not been present for the making of either version of this cake, I cant tell you much about the making of it. I believe she adapted the recipe from a Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe, instead using orange with chocolate buttercream and chocolate orange segments to decorate.

As far as I am aware, she encountered no major problems, and I don't believe there is anything that we would change if we were to make this cake again.

As you can see, it looks great and I can assure you that the first version at least tasted great, too.

RATING *****

I would like to make this again one day, just so I know how. The best bit was eating the left over chocolate orange, although we did so quickly and consequently felt sick.

I don't remember much else about this Brigade meeting, other than that I made quite a lot of money for Avon.

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