Walking in Glasse Slippers Chapter One

Next month's Clandestine Cake Club is going to be a very special affair. It's part of the Newcastle EAT festival, and people have snapped up tickets for the event at only £10 each for all-you-can-eat cake. The theme for this meeting is 18th Century Cakes.

Last year, someone told me about Hannah Glasse, who I had never heard of before. She was an 18th century food author who wrote a book called The Art Of Cookery Made Plain And Easy. And as she grew up in Northumberland, it seemed like a good idea to try out some of her recipes.

During a quick scan of the contents of the book, a seed and saffron cake caught my eye, so I decided on making that one. The recipe?

To make a fine ſeed or ſaffron-cake. YOU muſt take a quarter of a peck of fine flour, a pound and a half of butter, three ounces of carraway ſeeds, ſix eggs beat well, a quarter of an ounce of cloves and mace beat together very fine, a pennyworth of cinnamon beat, a pound of ſugar, a pennyworth of roſe-water, a pennyworth of ſaffron, a pint and a half of yeaſt, and a quart of milk ; mix it all together lightly with your hands thus : firſt boil your milk and butter, then ſkim off the butter, and mix with your flour, and a little of the milk ; ſtir the yeaſt and ſtrain it, mix it with the flour, put in your ſeed and ſpice, roſe-water, tincture of ſaffron, ſugar, and eggs ; beat it all up well with your hands lightly, and bake it in a hoop or pan, but be ſure to butter the pan well. It will take an hour and a half in a quick oven. You may leave out the ſeed if you chuſe it, and I think it rather better without it, but that you may do as you like

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/glasse-making-cakes-15.php
Copyright © celtnet

I had assumed that there would be a modern version of the recipe, but after a fairly lengthy search, I've been unable to find one. However, I was determined that this was the recipe i was going to use. So I got my calculator out....


.... To be continued.

Blue Velvet Cake

Hi again,

So as you know, My cake for the January Clandestine Cake Club meeting was a Blue Velvet cake.

I was quite worried, given the disastrous attempt at blue velvet cupcakes, about how this cake would turn out. But it turned out to be very fun to make (although not quite as fun to clean up the kitchen afterwards)

Mixing the blue and violet colouring with the cocoa

the mixture in the tins waiting to go in the oven... The colour is really quite disconcerting.

I cut each cake into half to make 4 layers

And some little sugarpaste robins to decorate the top of the cake.

And a piped quotation from the film...

And the finished article is complete:

In case you haven't seen Blue Velvet, and you're wondering "why robins after Christmas?" it's because of a famous key moment in the film, where Laura Dern says to Kyle Machlan

I had a dream. In fact, it was on the night I met you. In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren't any robins and the robins represented love. And for the longest time, there was this darkness. And all of a sudden, thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed that love would make any difference, and it did. So, I guess it means that there is trouble until the robins come


At the end of the film, of course the robins do appear.


Moe cake clubs pics to follow...

Greige Velvet Cakes

Hi folks,

So this month's Clandestine Cake Club's theme is "inspired by the silver screen"

So, a while ago I got to thinking about cake inspired by film. It seemed to me that you either had to do something clever including cake in a film name, or find a film in which a cake is prominent and attempt to copy said cake. As a self-professed film snob, I also had to make sure that it was something that the Good Dr Mark Kermode would be proud of.

Citizen Cake? Then, along came some inspiration... Blue Velvet.

That's right people. I am going to recreate the 1986 David Lynch neo-noir film about sexual violence in cake form. Obviously, by producing a blue velvet cake with some sugarpaste robins and possibly a sugarpaste human ear.

As I've never made any form of velvet cake, I thought I'd better have a bit of a practice. So, as it was my friend Hesther's birthday party, I thought we could have a go at making some blue velvet cupcakes to have a try at some different colour combinations.

However, disaster struck as the paste food colourings I'd ordered (as recommended by every recipe i'd looked at) hadn't arrived. So I had to make do with liquid food colouring, which i don't really like using.

Still, two bottles should do it, right?

WRONG!

Not even a turquoise appeared. Instead, the mixture just because a mushroomy colour which I can only describe as "greige". Not the most appetizing of  tints, I must admit.

I don't even have a picture of them at the moment. I think i'm too embarrassed to show you. We did pull it back however with a clever covering of bright blue buttercream. With cupcakes, copious buttercream covers a multitude of sins.

We now just have to hope and pray that the actual cake turns out rather better.