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!

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