Cake!

There is no such thing as too much cake, well there probably is but I am yet to discover a time.  I think mainly because I don't eat that much cake.  I love to bake and in reality I don't eat all that much cake compared to the amount of cake that I bake.  My hubby on the other hand probably would say there is too much cake in our house at times.  My mum once thought I was going to kill him through food with the amount I was baking.

I have a tendency to bake when I am anxious or particularly low, I am not sure why I think it is because by baking I am giving people a part of me and sometimes that makes me feel happy for a fleeting moment or less anxious while I bake.  I was anxious on Tuesday because I was going out for the first time in the longest time to get my hair done at a friend's salon but I was going it alone, I had no-one holding my hand.  I know it is silly I really shouldn't have been worried but I was and ultimately she did the best job so there really was nothing to worry about at all.  Here is the before & after shot.

This week I have made the most lemony, lemonicious, lemon cake with crunchy topping.  Honestly this was pretty divine the recipe came from Sammie at The Annoyed Thyroid, the only change I made was that I substituted the flour for a gluten free self raising flour premix bought at any supermarket.  This cake could be easily made without a Thermomix by in the cake mixture simply substitute raw sugar for caster sugar and instead of peeling the lemon grate it and then just mix all the ingredients in a normal mix master.

Today I had a beautiful mate dropping by and while I saw that there was still some lemony goodness on the bench it was in reality a couple of days since I had made it.  I am nothing if not a good hostess and I will not serve stale cake up to anyone except well maybe family.  Though typically cake doesn't really last long enough to get stale around here, except of course lemon cake because the kids have decided they don't like it.  

So I did what any good hostess would do.  I made another cake!  This time I made the gorgeous Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim's Epic Chocolate Fudge Cake.  I did modify this a little bit mainly because I had the Thermomix there so I used that, basically I just popped all the ingredients in at the same time and mixed on speed 5 for about one minute.  I also used gluten free premix plain flour.  

Chantelle bakes hers in a square tin and decorates with sprinkles.  I only had a round tin down and wasn't climbing a ladder to get my square tin and well frankly I wanted white chocolate on top instead of sprinkles.  So I blitzed some white chocolate in the Thermomix to get my sprinkles and it is a round cake! 

The cake itself is pretty amazing but seriously the ICING was something else all together!  

I think all in all that is a pretty successful baking week.  Now all I need to do is learn how to take better photos of my cakes! 

Thank you to both Sammie and Chantelle for sharing your amazing recipes.  Have a great weekend everyone.  

Happy baking 

Cathy xoxo