Fail cake 'n' Onions

Oh yes, you did read it correctly, fail cake.
On Sunday the 7th of September, I attempted to make Battenburg cake as per the recipe I found in a wonderful book called Baking Magic by Kate Shirazi with Susannah Blake. Everything went well up to the stage of icing. My pink cake was slightly taller than the yellow, but did not look to bad. in this book, instead of rolling logs of the cake in Marzipan you use glace icing to coat the whole square. This, for me was the epic fail, and the first few I did were not edible and looked atrocious. In the end, I dunked one side in very runny icing before rolling that side in coconut. This ended up giving quite a nice, if not traditional effect. Next time, I think I will use marzipan (or I am sure sugar paste would give the same effect) But it was tasty, the jam kept it moist and the cake was pleasantly light.

Here we have a perfect display of Fail Cake :P

But all turned out well in the end!

The really interesting thing about this book Baking Magic is that, in most of her cakes, Kate Shirazi uses margarine not butter. Personally, I prefer to use butter. Though I am sure margarine would taste equally as good, I use butter out of habit and 'tradition.' But really, what ever you have in the fridge 9/10 times will be just fine - just don't try to make butter cream icing with anything but butter in its most pure, rich and creamy form! ;) But I really like this book, while the copy I have at the moment is from the library, it is one I would really like to buy!


Speaking of buying...!
For my birthday I got the most awesome apron from Jo and Jac (see the link to Jac's Blog on the side!) So when, on Sunday I walked into one of my favorite stores ever (Your Habitat) you can imagine my delight when I saw that they were selling matching oven mits! After a surprisingly small amount of begging, my dad let me buy one (love you dad!) I have a thing for matching, and this just feeds the fire of my fetish! But it looks just to cute when I use it when wearing my apron. I also got a new reusable icing bag and some more nozzles, which I am sure will produce many pretty edible goodies in the future!

The adorable matching oven mit!

Now, let us sidestep into the onions! I decided to make some French Onion Soup using my dad's recipe (I also stole some of the caramelized onion and made some tarts for my school lunch box - but more on them later!)Which meant I started by chopping about 1.5kg of brown onions. Now, I ca hardly chop one without my eyes watering - so by the end of all of these it was agony! But, once they were frying and the yummy smell of cooking filled the room, it all became well worth it! I also made a lamb stock to put with the onion to create the soup. It took a long time for the onions to be ready but the finished product is delectable. Best served with crunchy croutons, this is a dish for any occasion! The tart I made using the onion, some bacon and lastly cheese were also really good - it seems my friends at school enjoy eating my lunch just as much as I enjoy making it! My friend group always shares lunches, so quite often i will trade food with my friends - sharing is caring ;)

The onions frying

The lamb stock. In it you would find:
 parsley, bay leaves, carrot, celery and, of course, a lamb bone!

So, that is me for now! Got a maths test tomorrow - wish me luck!
Happy cooking
Ims :)