Geeky Goodies: Fish Fingers and Custard

I freely admit I am a terrible blogger but this latest hiatus has been stupidly long. Since my last post I have been on holiday, done a lot of overtime, had zero baking inspiration and had real life gang up on me all of which has left me with very little energy to devote to this place. And it's very hard to find the effort to work on something once you've gotten out of the habit of doing it! But the inspiration fairy has struck and now I’m back with a vengeance. I hope.

Now unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so you should be aware that this Saturday (23^rd November 2013) marks the 50^th Anniversary of the cult classic Doctor Who. Whovians across the globe have been counting down the days to Saturday for months now as a special anniversary episode featuring 3 incarnations of the Doctor  (including one previously unknown) will be broadcast. Now is there a better reason to do some geeky baking? As a proud Whovian I don’t think so.

But what to bake? Dalek and TARDIS shaped cakes are too cliché, so I turned to the show itself for inspiration and there in the episode titled “The Eleventh Hour” was the answer. Fish fingers and custard.

I won’t bore you with the background to this combination but if you have no idea what I’m talking about I suggest watching the clip linked below.

Now in the show the Doctor ate real fish fingers with custard, I however don’t like fish fingers so I had to bust out my Fez and do some thinking. And then it came to me, chocolate brownies. And for once one of my mad cap ideas actually looked like the vision I had in my head, so I am proud to present a cakey version of an iconic dish.

Adipose approves of this

Ingredients
Your favourite brownie recipe
Vanilla flavoured frosting
Digestive biscuits
Custard

Method
Bake a batch of brownies as per your recipe. I’m pressed for time this week so I cheated and used the Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Brownie mix (which is incredibly tasty). Ideally you want your brownies to be quite firm and not too gooey in the middle. Once baked, leave to cool and when completely cold carefully cut the brownie into thin rectangles. Mine were about 1 inch by 4 inches.

Now using a food processor (or by hand) crush the biscuits until they look like very fine breadcrumbs (just like when making a cheesecake). I used about 200g of biscuits. Pour the biscuit breadcrumbs onto a plate and put aside for the moment.

With a palette knife, carefully cover each slice of brownie with the frosting. Make sure it is completely covered including the bottom of each slice. Then put the brownie onto the breadcrumb plate and cover it with the biscuit crumbs. Move it around until all the frosting is covered with biscuit crumbs. Put the finished fish finger on a plate and continue until you run out of brownies. Any biscuit crumbs you have left over can be stored in an airtight container for another day (I’m thinking mini cheesecakes would be a good use for them!)

Now get yourself some custard, sit back and enjoy your brownie “fish fingers”. I think this recipe would be a great one to make with children as it is very easy and somewhat messy to do!

If you are feeling brave why not check out The Geeky Chef and have a go at making real fish fingers. I gather the combination is actually rather nice.
http://www.geekychef.com/2012/11/fish-fingers-and-custard.html

And as a bonus, here is this week’s episode of Nerdy Nummies in which Ro made adorable Adipose cupcakes! I am going to have to try this, the Adipose are my favourite aliens. 

And if that isn't enough Doctor Who themed goodies for you, head to Lakeland as they currently sell some brilliant Doctor Who themed baking equipment and party ware. I love the chocolate mould!

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/p18038/Doctor-Who-Bakeware-Range

  

Recipe: Peach and Raspberry Cupcakes

Ok my promise to be a better blogger didn’t go particularly well... but in my defence after I wrote the last post the UK got hit by a serious heatwave! I know temperatures of over 30 degrees are normal in a lot of the world but here it really isn’t and the UK is not set up to deal with extreme heat (only shops and the like tend to have air conditioning for example) and I don’t cope well in hot weather. Seriously for the last month I haven’t been able to think about anything more intelligent than ice cream! If I could get to my ice cream maker easily (and had space in the freezer) I would have posted some ice cream recipes for something, but I haven’t been able to and my freezer is full. The only advantages of this crazy weather is that my potted herbs are growing nicely and the solar powered fountain in my garden is working! But all is not lost, last week there was a brief temperature drop and I was able to do some baking!

So here is my latest cupcake recipe, I know a recipe post on a Friday? Well I've decided to drop "Monday Recipes" and just post recipes when I have them to post! I’m afraid this post marks a return to the fruity cupcakes though.

For once these cupcakes were not made in the cupcake maker, but they should work in there though! Obviously they’ll be smaller and you’ll probably get more cakes than the stated amount. Please play around with the quantities of fruit to get the amount you prefer, the stated quantities arose from me using whatever I had lying around!

Makes 12

Ingredients
115g/4oz softened butter
115g/4oz caster sugar
115g/4oz self-rising flour
2 eggs
110g fresh raspberries
1 peach, approx 110g in weight

Method
Gently wash the raspberries put them to one side to dry out. Chop up the peach into small chunks, I left the skin on but feel free to remove it if you prefer that.

Cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the eggs. Sift the flour and fold into the mixture, then fold in the peaches and raspberries. Divide the mixture evenly between 12 paper cases and bake in a preheated oven at Gas Mark 4/180 C for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the thickest part of the cake comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack and enjoy. In normal temperatures these cakes should keep for a few days in an airtight tin, beware in hotter climates the cakes may spoil quickly due to the fruit content.

Happy 1st Birthday Princess Cupcake!

I've neglected this place terribly recently, so I've only just realised that Princess Cupcake's Cakes is one year old today!

I like to think that I've come a long way since that first post, even if my update schedule has been somewhat sporadic of late... But things are going to change and I'm going to get better and stay that way (I know I've said that before but I actually mean it this time.)

Happily I've just got a load of new baking equipment (including the most amazing cookie cutters) so I will start posting again soon.

So thank you to everyone who reads this blog, I've been terrible to you all recently but I do appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you for showing me that people do read this blog and that there is a point to me doing this! I promise I shall treat you all better from now on!

Charlotte

PS. I've just looked at Bloglovin for the first time in ages and discovered that Google Reader has been shut down, so if you have been using that to follow me please follow me by email (I have a handy gadget for that in the sidebar!) or switch to Bloglovin. You can use the gadget in the sidebar to switch (in theory I have this blog verrified as mine but I have no idea!)

If you need help on switching to Bloglovin this blog post is quite useful :)
http://notyourmommascookie.com/2013/06/switching-from-google-reader-to-bloglovin-what-you-need-to-know/

Monday Recipe: Strawberry and Marshmallow Pop Tarts

So this recipe is actually something I made during my recent hiatus, I’ve only now got round to actually writing it down and posting it! To be honest these are so easy to make I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to post this.

Pop Tarts have to be one of my favourite snack foods, even if my indecisive nature means I can’t decide what my favourite flavour is. So imagine my excitement when I found an episode of Nerdy Nummies in which Ro made Nyan Cat Pop Tarts! Now I’m not a fan of Nyan Cat but I was extremely happy to see just how easy Pop Tarts are to make. So here is my attempt at making Pop Tarts!

In the video Ro used a packet mix for the pastry but I prefer to make my own pastry. This quantity of pastry made about 3 tarts (I only made a small batch as this was an experiment) but this is obviously dependent on how big you make them. If you want more just double up the quantities. Mine are strawberry and marshmallow flavour, but please change the filling to whatever you want.

Ingredients
225g/8oz plain flour
110g/4oz butter or margarine, cubed
cold water to mix (as cold as possible)
1 tbsp icing sugar
pinch of salt

Filling of your choice, I used Original Marshmallow Fluff spread and strawberry jam.

Method
In a large bow sieve together the flour, sugar and salt, then add the cubed butter. Using your fingertips rub the butter into the flour until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then add the water 1 tbsp at a time, mixing with your hands, to bring the mixture into a dough, there is no exact measurement amount of water you need, every batch of pastry is different. So just add the water a little at a time until the dough is ready, it is ready when it just clings together. The dough shouldn’t be sticky but should come cleanly off the sides of the bowl as you gather it together. Wrap the dough in cling film or place in a sandwich bag and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180 C.
Then remove the dough from the fridge and leave it for a couple of minutes to warm up, dust the work surface with flour and roll it out, you want the dough to be about 0.5 cm thick. Once it is rolled cut out 6 rectangles all the same size.

Carefully spread the jam and Marshmallow fluff (or your filling) onto 3 rectangles making sure to leave a gap of about 1 cm around the edge. Brush the edge with a little water and place one of the untopped rectangles on top. Use a fork to press the edges together and poke a few holes in the top of each tart. Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown, transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly before eating.

These tasted delicious when cold, I left them un-iced so that in theory they could be reheated in the toaster but they er didn’t last than long...

Something new

Hi everyone, this post is kind of a sequel to the Game of Thrones decorating tutorial that I posted the other day. As I mentioned in the first post I made those cakes as a competition entry, and it being a Youtube contest that means a video was required!

So in case you guys are interested, here is the video version of that tutorial.

Honestly I'm not sure if the instructions make more sense spoken, but since I'm planning on getting a new camera later this year I might be able to record some videos for this place. Would any of you be interested in that? I could do tutorial videos on techniques (e.g. icing a cupcake etc.), decorating tutorials like this one or even product reviews.

If something like that would be interesting to you my readers please let me know; email, comment, PM whatever, I'd love to get some feedback on this idea!