BackTrack : Pip's Birthday Cake.

The wonderpuss, miss Phlippila celebrated her birthday in (gluttonous!) style through food in September. She hosted a potfuck which you can read about on her blog. I am going to now talk about the cake I made for Pips.

I have to say at the outset that because of the use of Stout (coopers. my favourite) in the cake batter, it isn't really 100% gluten free, but I made it okay for myself by just putting lots of booze in it and in my belly anyway so I was due to suffer from -something- that night, in any case. Wheee!

I've finally gotten around to looking at the photos my housemate, Riva let me take using her camera, so I can blog with pictures about food. like it's actually a food blog, for reals.

I used this recipe from Susie's Parsnip Parsimony. Which is a blog I love and adore and wish she would get bloggin' again because I feel like I'm for-real really learning when I read her blog. And she does cute things and is a big science nerd. A few things went wrong in the making of this cake so it only ended up as two-tiere and I didnt want to waste the icing if I fucked up with my piping bag (I don't know how to use it, ok. i use a spatula. that'll do) but it was all my fault, and not Susie's. Susie can do no wrong. Science can do no wrong. Well. That last sentence, maybe.

Things that went wrong (from my memory, this feels like ages ago!):

• I bought a really delicious looking raspberry jam to use, that came in a big jar so I could still have some for myself to do private-things with (like, put it on rice and gross stuff like that which I do when noone's looking), hehe, and would make a good storage jar after I was done with the jam. My sister called me whilst I was on the tram to the bus that I take to get home (I travel an hour each way between my house and work, three times a week, lots of room for conversation) and as I walked from the tram to the bus, the jam jar kamikaze'd itself infront of the bus. I cut up my hand a fair bit cleaning up the mess, and missed the bus. Damn distracting family exploits! bah! So I had to buy cheaper smaller jars of raspberry jam the following day, for a less friendly price.
• I am absolutely USELESS with our oven in this flat. It is electric, and I think it tells me lies. and the oven thermometer confuses me. and I just can't bake like I used to. so the first layer was slightly burnt. and then collapsed a little. so I couldn't split the damn thing and make the ultimate decadance of cake-piss-ups for the Pips.
• WTF would I get liquid lecithin drops for? I settled for lecithin granules, and they seemed to do the job? I don't know why I needed them, but they didn't ruin anything so Its okay.

I replaced the flour with a standard general-mix of Gluten Free Flour, from a supermarket. For the icing I used Bacardi and I found a vegan vanilla pudding mix at Rishon's in Balaclava. Ummmm.... I also melted down some lindt chocolate and mixed in coffee essence, because the Pip loves coffee.

When the cake collapsed, it left this chunk crumb. I put the filling, some chocolate and some icing and a raspberry on it to serve to Riva as she had international guests staying with her and couldn't attend the potfuck. The mini-cake was much more photogenic and adorable than the mama-cake, but man did the mama-cake work a treat with booze.

x x