Glenrothes Road Run Cakes

Not my best photo admittedly but I was in a rush.  I took the picture just before I finished packing them away in the box (you can just see one of the layers below the four on top) and heading out the door.

Saturday night I made 32 fairy cakes from my basic recipe which were supposed to be for all the kids in the class I work in who showed up to take part in the Glenrothes Road Running Festival on Sunday.  Unfortunately only two showed up so I ended up handing out a bunch of them to random people and then taking the rest into school on Monday for the teachers to eat.

Originally I was going to ice them completely yellow...except I did not realise I only had a small amount of icing sugar.  Even the stuff I had needed to be supplemented with a few melted marshmallows.

Simple but still yummy.

Sourdough Cake aka Chain Letter Cake

This was a strange thing and what I have been referring to as 'chain letter cake' talking about it with someone.  In the middle of last week, one of the students in the class I help out in presented my boyfriend's mother with a container of liquid and a set of instructions, saying she had to take care of it and in the end would get a cake.  Since I'm the avid baker, the thing was foisted off onto me.  So I took it home and it was living on my worktop for ten days as the instructions dictated with me having to feed it flour, sugar and milk.

The reason I call it 'chain letter cake' is because on the ninth day, you feed the mixture and then split it into four, passing three parts off to friends.  Admittedly I did not do this bit.  I left the remaining 3/4 in a jug, where it grew overnight and split over my work top.  After that it ended up in the sink.  I'm kinda wishing I had kept it now since the cake I ended up with has gone down well.  Not with me, because I do not like cinnamon or apple or raisins in cakes.  (Picky, I know.)

Making the cake itself was very easy.  Basically putting all the ingredients into the remaining part, mixing it up and baking it.  I had to bake it for longer than instructed.  The middle would just not cook.  Eventually I was getting fed up because it was taking forever to cook the middle at the bottom so I moved it down a shelf to speed it up.  Within a few minutes the bottom was burnt so I'm a bit miffed about that.  I think I'll move that shelf up a bit.  That's the second time something has burnt sitting on it.

After researching, it turns out that what I was given was a sourdough starter, which is used by a lot of bakers.  You feed it regularly and it will grow into more sourdough thanks to the yeast that develops inside.  You can then use some of it to make things like cakes and bread.

Unfortunately this means I cannot give you the whole recipe because you need a sourdough starter.  But if you can acquire one, then you can do this cake too.

Recipe: adapted from the recipe that came with my sour dough starter

Makes a 20cm square cake

• 1/4 pint/150ml sourdough starter
• 200g/7oz caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 256g/9oz plain flour
• 150ml/5 fl.oz cooking oil (I used rapeseed)
•  2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 cooking apples
• 1 cup raisins (or sultanas or a mix of the two, which is what I had)
• 2 heaped tsp cinnammon
• 2 heaped tsp baking powder

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and grease a 20cm/8inch cake tin.
2. Cut the apples into chunks. 
3. Mix everything together in a large bowl and then pour into the greased tin.
4. Bake in the oven for about an hour, or until a skewer pushed through the middle comes out clean (mine took almost 2 hours to cook).

Rainbow Pinwheel Biscuits

So, when I last made spiral biscuits, what I was actually aiming for was something like this.  What a difference the right biscuit dough and good quality food colouring makes!  I recently invested in some more Sugarflair Blossom Tints, having previously purchased the yellow one for making the chicks on my Easter cupcakes.  I was a bit unsure how well the powder would do at colouring dough that was going to be baked in the oven.  But it did not fade!  I was so pleased.

I made these for my friend, Jess.  She was the one that showed me the coloured biscuit idea and said I should make them so since I was seeing her today I wanted to try again and hopefully make a better go of them.  And I did, except for burning a few.  Still getting used to my new oven and this was the first thing to be baked in it.  I put one batch too low down and their bottoms went black.  Oops.

The recipe for the biscuit dough comes from my boyfriend's mum.  This is what she uses for her Easter biscuits and for biscuits for Father Christmas.  It ended up being a good dough, though does start out a bit sticky.  Tastes good too.

Recipe - adapted from a recipe from Mrs McGinlay, and Sounder Studios

Makes about 24

• 225g/8oz self-raising flour
• 115g/4oz butter
• 115g/4oz caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg
• Food colouring
• Hundreds and Thousands

1. Rub the butter into the flour.
2. Add the sugar and the baking powder.
3. Beat the egg in a separate bowl and add a little at a time until you get the desired consistency.  (I added my whole egg but probably shouldn't have because it was a sticky dough).
4. Divide the dough into equal amounts and put into separate bowls depending on the number of colours you're using.  I had 5 colours so had five bowls with pieces of dough weighing 98g in each.
5. Add a different colour to each bowl and mix into the dough until distributed evenly.  If your dough is still a bit too sticky, add some more flour to it.
6. Prepare 2-3 baking trays with greaseproof paper and preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.
7. Break off a small piece of dough from each colour and roll each into a ball.
8. Roll the balls of dough together into a bigger ball to get something that resembles a beach ball.
9. Now roll that out into a long sausage.
10. Curl the dough around itself into a circular spiral, twisting the dough as you wrap to swirl the colours.  This does take a bit of practice so don't worry if you don't get it right straight away.
11. Roll the edges in the Hundreds and Thousands and then place on one of the trays.  Space them a reasonable distance apart because they do expand a little when baking.
12. Repeat steps 7-11 until all the dough is used up.
13. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes.
14. Transfer to a cooling rack after baking.