Neopolitan Cake

Firstly, I'd like to apologise because I got my inspiration for this cake from a blog I read the other day, but I can't for the life of me remember which blog it was! So if it was yours, or you know whose it was, please comment and I will edit this post.

Edited: The blog I was looking for was  The Organised Penguin - also looks like this is where I first saw Lakeland's Duo Piping Bags I link to below - so thanks on both counts :-)

So, I read this amazing blog post about neopolitan cupcakes and I thought YUM! Off I went to the shop to buy pink colouring and strawberry flavouring - I had everything else I needed. I really *should* have visited the local cake decorating shop to buy my colour as I usually buy the gel colouring from there when I want to colour cakes. I find that the liquid colour you can usually pick up in supermarkets is OK for icing but you can never get a vibrant cake colour with it. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I nipped into Tesco to find Silver Spoon 'Colour Creator' in pink (and lilac, which I might well be going back for - another step in getting all my rainbow colours!) for just 79p. That's a lot cheaper than the gel stuff I usually buy.

Making this cake was a great excuse to use the magnificent KitchenAid, which whizzes up cake batter in a matter of seconds, enabling you to grease trays, lay out cupcake cases and begin tidying up whilst your cake mix is getting beaten. I chucked in all the ingredients - I'm a bit lazy and tend to use a VERY easy recipe from Baking Magic by Kate Shirazi - I even use the 'cups' version as it's even easier - I have these amazing russian doll cup measurers from Fred I got for a present once. That company is a great one to turn to for funky kitchen gadgets if you ever need a present for someone who likes baking/cooking!

After whizzing up the mix (as I said I am a lazy baker and figure extra whizzing makes up for things like sieving the flour - I don't think I am GBBO material just yet ;-) ) I separated it out into 3 parts, adding a spoonful of cocoa powder to one, vanilla essence to another and both strawberry flavouring and pink colour to the third.

I decided that instead of cupcakes I would make the cake in a loaf tin to add to the 'neopolitan' style. I carefully spooned the mix into the tin in stripes. I added the cocoa first as the mix was firmest due to the added cocoa (this recipe does give quite a firm cake batter, which helped), then the vanilla, then the strawberry. GBBO-ers would no doubt have fished out the piping bag to make this step a little smoother. As you can see, in typical lazy baker style I am using a silicone liner to save me from having to grease the tin.

My only problem was timing the bake. I find that loaf cakes take so much longer than you expect to cook - and this usually makes me turn bake to my trusting cup cakes or tray bakes which cook in about 12 minutes. I seemed to be waiting forever for this one.

It turned out looking quite good, although as you can see from the picture I clearly didn't split my mix quite evenly. The cake itself was also a little dense, although I think that was my fault for not beating it enough. This was my first time using the KitchenAid to make cakes, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

I think it would look great with nice tidy piped rows of buttercream icing on top, but decorating is not my forte really. Especially as this was just an experiment to be eaten at home - not sure we really need the extra sugar to be honest! Later I made cupcakes which turned out much lighter and still had a really good effect but what I really need to get my decorating on is one of the Lakeland Duo Piping Bags - or ideally for this bake one that does 3 colours - how cool would that look!

Diaries of a Domestic Goddess...

Yesterday I was a domestic goddess - well, as close as I am ever likely to get anyway, ha ha! Of coure, first priority was having fun so we spent the morning at the Children's Centre playing, then came home for lunch and nap when I IRONED my BEDLINEN! I can't remember the last time I used the iron, but I suddenly had the urge to do it, as it was very crumpled after the wash. It looked nice and felt nice, but I fear the crispness will have worn off tonight. Oh well, once in a blue moon makes it all the more special, yes?

On the meal plan was homemade pizzas. It was time to face the KitchenAid - the most extravangent and wonderful birthday present from my gorgeouss husband (you may have seen them featured on the Great British Bake Off last night - first step pizza dough, second step miraculous piles of meringue... maybe).

Luckily with my powerful Google-Fu I was able to find a recipe here http://www.acouplecooks.com/2012/01/pizza-doughstand-mixer-method/ as my trusty-baking-friend is currently away on holiday (how selfish! Just when I need her most!) Equally luckily the recipe mostly consisted of 'Chuck all ingredients in and leave to prove' - this is my favourite type of recipe (hmm, on reflection maybe not yet ready for miraculous meringue concoctions a la GBBO).

After proving for an hour it was time to drag Harry out of the garden to construct the pizzas. The dough was super-cool to play with. I pretended I was a Pizza Express Chef by chucking it in the air and spinning it around between my fingers. Fun! Then we spread on the tomato and chose our toppings - we had a choice of mozzarella, cheddar, ham and chicken. Yum yum! Harry really enoyed this part, although he was a little stingy with the cheese so I had to help him out there.

Just in case you were wondering, the hand washing after we came in from the garden was rather, um... enthusiastic. Hence no t shirt.

I popped them in the over and they came out looking like golden pizza-y piles of yum. Which was the look I was going for, so hooray! I had forgotten to put salt in the dough though so it was a little bland but it was miles better than the non-yeast types of base I've made in the past and I am SO looking forward to making dough balls next time. I is buying garlic butter in bulk from work so we will be able to have the full pizzeria experience in our own home. Harry's looked like this - you'll have to excuse the quality of the photos, they are just quick snaps from my phone.