And Have I Stopped

baking, after cancelling the subscription  is another questions which may have occurred. Again the answer is no, but generally when I 've made anything recently I've just done cupcakes - not the huge American ones smothered in buttercream but what as a child I called fairy cakes, and although they're very nice and get eaten up very quickly, they're not worth putting on the blog every time I do them. 

However I recently received a baking book in a swap parcel called 500 Cakes to Bake. Now it's not actually  500 different cake recipes, it's a selection of basic recipes with variations and I thought it might be fun to do the  basic recipes and then work through the variations.

I started off with a basic layer cake (again when I was a child these were called sandwich cakes, but whatever .... )

 I halved the amount of buttercream the recipe suggested! 

Then I moved on to the chocolate version. Rather than the buttercream suggested I put a layer of jam through the  middle and topped it with melted chocolate. 

When we got back from Yorkshire I took two days to make and decorate the lemon one as I felt so 'off'; this time I did do buttercream and it was delicious, very lemon-y. 

and finally this week I did the almond version although again just with jam through the middle and a dusting of icing sugar on the top. 

Things I learned; next time put a lot more ground almond in the almond version or the OH will think it's plain cake, and I don't really like chocolate cake. Not sure whether I used to and have gone off it, I have certainly eaten plenty of the stuff over the past few decades, but I'm definitely not keen now.  

There were supposedly two more variations; strawberry and blackcurrant but really that just related to the flavour of jam you used so I'll pass on that. Next up is something called cherry and marzipan loaf cake, but I won't be tackling that for a few days. The almond one is not all eaten up and I am determined to clear and clean my baking cupboard before I do any more baking. I think that's tomorrow's job, but it will depend on when/if there is any gymnastic coverage on the television. Whenever I get it done though, you can place your bets now on the oldest thing I throw away. I discovered this week I had two bottles of almond essence; the one that said 'best before end 2013' went in the bin.