Geeky Goodies: Fish Fingers and Custard

I freely admit I am a terrible blogger but this latest hiatus has been stupidly long. Since my last post I have been on holiday, done a lot of overtime, had zero baking inspiration and had real life gang up on me all of which has left me with very little energy to devote to this place. And it's very hard to find the effort to work on something once you've gotten out of the habit of doing it! But the inspiration fairy has struck and now I’m back with a vengeance. I hope.

Now unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so you should be aware that this Saturday (23^rd November 2013) marks the 50^th Anniversary of the cult classic Doctor Who. Whovians across the globe have been counting down the days to Saturday for months now as a special anniversary episode featuring 3 incarnations of the Doctor  (including one previously unknown) will be broadcast. Now is there a better reason to do some geeky baking? As a proud Whovian I don’t think so.

But what to bake? Dalek and TARDIS shaped cakes are too cliché, so I turned to the show itself for inspiration and there in the episode titled “The Eleventh Hour” was the answer. Fish fingers and custard.

I won’t bore you with the background to this combination but if you have no idea what I’m talking about I suggest watching the clip linked below.

Now in the show the Doctor ate real fish fingers with custard, I however don’t like fish fingers so I had to bust out my Fez and do some thinking. And then it came to me, chocolate brownies. And for once one of my mad cap ideas actually looked like the vision I had in my head, so I am proud to present a cakey version of an iconic dish.

Adipose approves of this

Ingredients
Your favourite brownie recipe
Vanilla flavoured frosting
Digestive biscuits
Custard

Method
Bake a batch of brownies as per your recipe. I’m pressed for time this week so I cheated and used the Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Brownie mix (which is incredibly tasty). Ideally you want your brownies to be quite firm and not too gooey in the middle. Once baked, leave to cool and when completely cold carefully cut the brownie into thin rectangles. Mine were about 1 inch by 4 inches.

Now using a food processor (or by hand) crush the biscuits until they look like very fine breadcrumbs (just like when making a cheesecake). I used about 200g of biscuits. Pour the biscuit breadcrumbs onto a plate and put aside for the moment.

With a palette knife, carefully cover each slice of brownie with the frosting. Make sure it is completely covered including the bottom of each slice. Then put the brownie onto the breadcrumb plate and cover it with the biscuit crumbs. Move it around until all the frosting is covered with biscuit crumbs. Put the finished fish finger on a plate and continue until you run out of brownies. Any biscuit crumbs you have left over can be stored in an airtight container for another day (I’m thinking mini cheesecakes would be a good use for them!)

Now get yourself some custard, sit back and enjoy your brownie “fish fingers”. I think this recipe would be a great one to make with children as it is very easy and somewhat messy to do!

If you are feeling brave why not check out The Geeky Chef and have a go at making real fish fingers. I gather the combination is actually rather nice.
http://www.geekychef.com/2012/11/fish-fingers-and-custard.html

And as a bonus, here is this week’s episode of Nerdy Nummies in which Ro made adorable Adipose cupcakes! I am going to have to try this, the Adipose are my favourite aliens. 

And if that isn't enough Doctor Who themed goodies for you, head to Lakeland as they currently sell some brilliant Doctor Who themed baking equipment and party ware. I love the chocolate mould!

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/p18038/Doctor-Who-Bakeware-Range

  

Decorating Tutorial and Recipe: Game of Thrones Cupcakes

Ok so this post took me slightly longer than I was expecting to write, and it’s a really long post so for once I shall make use of the jump break feature! Seriously I've written essays shorter than this post! There are also quite a few pictures.

I’ve wanted to do some Game of Thrones (GoT) themed baking for ages and in a stroke of good fortune one of my favourite Youtube channels is hosting a GoT themed contest right now. This gave me the perfect excuse! So here I present 2 designs of cupcake; one is incredibly easy while the other is a bit more advanced. I’ve also included my lemon cakes recipe.

Decorating Tutorial: Easter Nest Cupcakes

I almost completely forgot that it is Easter this weekend, easy to do when there is snow on the ground in March! Though as I write this the sun is coming out which is nice, I’d almost forgotten what it looked like! So sadly I haven’t prepared much Easter themed content, but I do have a couple of things prepared starting with this tutorial on Easter Nest cupcakes.

These cupcakes are absolutely adorable and are so easy to make, I think they’d be great for children to have a go at. So let’s get started!

You will need
1 batch of cupcakes, I used double chocolate cupcakes.
Icing sugar and green food dye
Chocolate frosting, I used a tub of Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge frosting as I was feeling lazy
1 bag of mini chocolate eggs
Bird cake toppers, one for each cake
Piping bag and star shaped nozzle

Step One

Mix together the icing sugar with a splash of water and some green dye, mix well. You want a thick icing that is slightly runny, I can’t give quantities as I just dumped some icing sugar into the bowl! Cover each cake in the icing and leave to dry, I left mine overnight.

Step Two

Fill the piping bag with the frosting. Then pipe a blob of frosting onto the middle of each cake.

Step Three
Pipe one continuous spiral of frosting around the blob. Or pipe a circle around the blob, and then pipe a second circle on top of the first one. Finally add a couple of chocolate eggs to each nest and insert the cake toppers.

I hope these instructions make sense and that you have fun making these cakes. If you make these please let me know I’d love to see your results!

Halloween Decorating Tutorial – Spiders and cobwebs

Expanding on last week’s post on quick and easy decorating ideas here is a quick tutorial on how to make simple spiders and cobwebs on cupcakes and biscuits. Both of these tutorials are really easy to do; they literally take minutes and don’t require any fancy equipment so they are great for kids to try. I also happen to find them rather adorable!

IngredientsFor the spiders you will need:
Chocolate buttons or large circular sweets
Eyes, I like to use coloured chocolate dots but blobs of icing or chocolate chips work equally well.
Prefilled icing tube, the sort you find in the supermarket baking aisle.
Cakes or biscuits to put them on

For the cobwebs you will need:
A prefilled icing tube
Cakes or biscuits to put them on

SpidersTo make the spider, take one sweet/chocolate button and attach the eyes. As I use chocolate dots for this I put a blob of icing on the dot and then stick it onto the sweet. Then place a blob of icing onto the cake or biscuit where you want the spider to be and stick the sweet down, finally using the icing tube draw 8 legs from the sweet down onto the cake, simple as that. I then like to add an extra blob of icing on top of the eye to create a pupil, I think it makes them look much more friendly!

For these spiders I used Galaxy Minstrels and black icing

These work best if you match the icing colour to the chocolate/sweet so use black icing with milk chocolate, white with white chocolate .etc

Last year me and my friends used white chocolate which resulted in albino spiders! 

Cobwebs
The cobwebs are equally simple; however I forgot to take a picture of them so please enjoy my awful MS Paint diagrams! All you need for these is a surface to apply icing to (cake or biscuit) and an icing tube.

To start draw a 6 point line star on the top (honestly I have no idea what to call this shape!), bonus points if the lines are straight and all the same length!

Then around the centre draw a series of small lines, this should connect all the longer lines and make a circular-ish shape. Again bonus points for getting the lines all the same length!

Continue drawing lines in this manner until you use up all the available space, I try and leave a little of the long lines poking out but that is just a matter of personal preference.

For an extra spooky effect why not add one of the candy spiders once you’ve finished?
Or how about this idea, follow the pattern above as normal but draw it onto greaseproof paper or baking parchment using melted chocolate or royal icing. Leave to dry, then peel off the paper and hey presto you have a spiderweb. These look great sticking out of a pile of frosting on top of a cupcake, or make lots in different sizes and glue them onto a large cake.

So there we go; two tutorials for simple Halloween cake decorating. And considering its half term here in the UK it’s a perfect way to keep children amused!
(I hope these instructions make sense, I have apparently lost my ability to type English today!)