Quick Cake to share!

Currently Listening to: "My Friends - Sweeney Todd" by Stephen Sondheim

Well it's been a very long time I last blogged and I really do miss it so I decided to kick things off again and keep my blog alive!


Dissertation boredom and final project insanity is starting to kick in so today I decided to try something I've seen on a few blogs recently - "5 min Cake". Much to my disgust my local Tesco doesn't sell "Cocoa Powder" so I've adapted the recipe and tried out a few flavours. We've experimented and adapted the method to come up with what we think is a rather good formula:

Ingredients:

• 4 Tablespoons of normal flour
• 1 Teaspoon of Baking Powder
• 4 Tablespoons of Sugar
• 2 Pinches of Salt
• 1 Egg
• 4 Tablespoons of Milk
• 3 Tablespoons cooking oil
• Flavour of your choice!

Method:

1. Mix Flour, Baking Powder, Sugar, Salt and you chosen flavour in a large mug.
2. Add the egg and lightly mix.
3. Pour in the Milk and Oil, and mix well.
4. Put in Microwave at full power (750watts) for 3mins.
5. Let stand for 30secs.
6. Empty onto plate and eat straight away!

We have so far tried three flavours: Coffee, Vanilla & Raisin and Chocolate. A wee warning, for the flavours to work well you need to make it quite strong... we don't know why but it takes a lot to get the flavours come through.

Coffee

Our first attempt was coffee, so to make the flavour we used two heaped tea spoons of instant coffee mixed with two table spoons of boiling water.

This cake was nuked for 4mins which was too long as the texture was rather rubbery, and we only put in half a tea spoon of baking powder making it rather heavy.

Vanilla & Raisin

By now we'd learnt out lesson about over nuking and using too little baking powder. For the vanilla and Raisin we put in some vanilla extract and raisins into the mix. This made a beautiful texture and flavour.

Chocolate

Our local Tesco is rather lame and doesn't stock Cocoa Powder so to make this flavour we took a large lump of Nutella and mixed it with a little bit of boiling water before adding to the mix.

In retrospect we should of used more nutella as the taste wasn't strong enough...

These cakes are great quick and easy to make, I can see them becoming a drunken munchies snack in my house!

Watch this space for more flavours and the continuation of my blog!

New Job!

Currently Listening to: "Il Postino (main theme)" - Luis Enríquez Bacalov

Firstly I better start off with a HUGE apology as I haven't blogged for over a month... It's been a stupidly busy time for me recently, and because I'm living at home I don't cook as much as I do when I'm at uni.

Anyway, today I started a new part time job in a little restaurant called "Michael's". I initially applied for a job as waiting staff but they noticed on my CV that I had some kitchen experience so they offered me a job as Sous Chef. I obviously bit their hand off as the Chef -Patron (Michael Wichmann - it gets a bit confusing as myself the other assistant chef and the the chef-patron are called Mike) has worked at some of the worlds leading restaurants and has a couple of Michelin stars under his belt.

Well I thoroughly enjoyed my first shift and is by far the best kitchen I've worked in to date, all the food is prepared from fresh produce and there isn't a freezer in sight! I only took a picture of my first copy cat creation (Michael's signature desert) Chocolate Moose. Basically homemade white and milk chocolate mouse stacked and sandwiched between thin wafers of dark chocolate with a few raspberries thrown in for good measure. My decoration could do with a bit of work but I was generally pleased with this first attempt...

If anyone is up in Birkdale in the coming weeks for the British Golf Open it's well worth booking a seat in this great little place for some fantastic food (I know I'm a wee bit bias but hey!).

Speak soon

Mike

Rocky Roadkill

Currently listening to: A choral piece I started working on today! Don't normally listen to my stuff after I've stopped composing for the day but one little bit is nagging me so i need to listen to it over and over to try and solve it! Anyway I've uploaded an extract of some of the piece, sorry about the high pitch buzz, windows movie maker is playing up. Please click here

Anyway; I've been using a lot of creative juices today whilst composing so I needed a HUGE sugar boost. Also we're my house is watching the BAFTA awards tonight (looking out for ex-college people in Cranford and Gavin & Stacey) so I wanted to make a snack for us to dip into all night...

Rocky Roadkill

My rocky roadkill is a variation on a rocky road cake; just replace the cherries and raisins with Jelly Babies! This makes it full of sugar so I also omit the the syrup that I normally use to make it more sticky.

700g Milk Chocolate
4 small bags of Malteasers
1 large bag of chopped Marshmallows
2 bags of Jelly Babies

Melt all the chocolate (I use the microwave, stirring frequently)
Cover deep baking tray with foil and pour 1/3 of the melted chocolate to cover the base.
Scatter the Malteasers, Marshmallows and Jelly Babies over the coated base and cover with the remaining chocolate.
Pop in the fridge for about 90-mins
Enjoy!

Due to omitting the syrup the result is more like a Rock Road slab then a rocky road cake, still a great snack. In the past I've used chopped nuts instead of Malteasers and chopped fruit instead of Jelly Babies.

Hope you are all well.

Mike

Australian style Thick-shake

Currently Listening to: "Hide & Seek" - Imogen Heap

It has been beautiful weather the past few days, so I've been working out in my "garden" on the laptop, whilst trying to catch some rays! I've been writing library music for the Welsh version of Songs of Praise this week - quite ironic considering I'm an agnostic non-welsh speaker!

Halfway through the afternoon today I really needed a sugar boost that was also nice and cold so I made a Thick-Shake. I picked up the "chilling thickening" idea whilst travelling Australia a couple of summers ago and decided to give it a go again.

Chocolate, Vanilla, Banana and Nutmeg Thick-Shake

Put 4 healthy scoops of vanilla ice-cream (I used Tesco Cornish ice-cream as it's gorgeous and cheap...), one large roughly chopped banana, enough chocolate milkshake powder (I use Milka powder, unfortunately you can only get it on the continent so i have to my Austrian friend to bring some over every time she flies home) and 1 pint of milk into a blender and blast repeatedly.

Pour into tall glasses and grate dark chocolate (Lidl do amazing 70% stuff) and nutmeg on top to taste.

Serve immediately

That really sorted me out for the afternoon.

Right, got to get back to my composing...

Mike