Month: October 2009

Cryfield 3: the start of the pudding competition

Perhaps it was inevitable? … that food would be involved in my scheme for breaking down cultural cliques, sharing British culture and encouraging social integration and between UK and international students. I discussed it with Lucy, the resident tutor in Cryfield 1, last night who came up with this and the action plan. Tonight I mooted the idea of a pudding competition with several groups of residents in my block and they loved it. So folks, it is definitely ON!

The rules are relatively simple (but not yet set in stone so suggestions welcome).

  1. The competition will happen on the same evening in the next fortnight (an evening that the Cryfield resident tutors will choose).
  2. There are seven kitchens so there will be seven types of puddings. Each kitchen makes a pudding – or several of the same version.
  3. I’ll give them each the name of the pudding to make and a recipe for it, which they can either choose to follow or adapt. We need to be able to recognise what pudding it is once it’s finished.
  4. Each kitchen must involve all the people (who would like to take part) in the making and baking of the puddings.
  5. At a certain time the puddings are to be brought down to the common room where the judging will take place.
  6. There will be a criteria for how the puddings will be judged – to be revealed later.
  7. I’m mulling over the idea of giving extra points to kitchens if they involve 3 or more international students in the process.

Currently, I am thinking that judges will be the Cryfield Resident Tutors. I haven’t discussed it with anybody else yet.

I’ve also given them some more suggestions to think about:

Everyone who would like to take part contributes 50p and the proceeds go towards their favourite charity (as a block) and covering the costs of the food.

Or – they could choose to cover costs of food amongst their kitchens and make it a social event.

So, I need seven suggestions of british puddings. And if you’d like to be a judge then it can be considered…

Lemon Drizzle Cake with Sunken Dark Chocolate Chunks

Lemon Drizzle Cake with dark chocolate chunks

This was the first, and only, cake that I baked to be entered into a baking competition. One of the subwardens at Leicester was raising money for a good cause related to cancer research and ran a cake bake sale. I was really excited about contributing a cake towards it and got to enter the competition too.

I think that this was the moment when I started to realise that I could bake cakes that tasted yummy enough to win prizes. Being a tad competitive, I set my eyes on 2nd place – a bottle of wine. (First prize was some sort of subwarden duty cover, I think, and didn’t interest me. Now, I’d consider that prize slightly differently. How things have changed!) I wanted to try out a new recipe from Green and Black’s Chocolate Recipes because it is such a good recipe book. I haven’t yet found a dud recipe in there yet. The Lemon Drizzle Cake with it’s sunken dark chocolate chunks sounded so moody yet light that it stood out to me (and won me 2nd prize – hurrah!)

So, when I was making it again tonight, I was reminded about how easy this cake is to make. You pretty much whisk all the ingredients together, add chocolate, add it into the oven et voila.

So, Lemon Drizzle Cake with sunken dark chocolate chunks, adapted by yours truly from the amazing Green and Black’s ‘Chocolate Recipes book.
Ingredients
125g/4.5oz unsalted butter
60g/2.5oz caster sugar
2 large eggs (except this time I used one egg and the vinegar + bicarb of soda trick)
150g/5oz self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
grated rind of 1 large lemon
3 tbsp milk
75g/3oz dark chocolate, chopped

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4. Line the loaf tin with baking paper.
2. Whisk the butter, caster sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and lemon rind together for about 2 minutes with an electric whisk, longer if you’re doing it by hand.

Zest and Batter. Prepare

sift, sift, sift

3. It says in the recipe book to ‘Whisk in the milk to make a soft dropping consistency’. When do you know it is a soft dropping consistency? I pretty much guess each time and kept adding a bit more milk in. The original recipe says 1 tbsp of milk by the way. However, I’m sure that I ended up adding in 3 to achieve that ‘soft dropping consistency’.
4. Stir in the chocolate.

stir in the chocolate

5. Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin. I always use my pampered chef spatula now for this part. It gets all the cake mix out of the bowl so that I can eat that wee bit more cake. Smooth the surface and bake for 40 minutes or until the centre of the cake springs back when gently pressed. Remove from the oven.

I love Lemon Drizzle it does make the cake. Mmmm…
Mix 50g/2oz golden granulated sugar and the
Juice of 1 lemon

Prick lots of holes in the cake where you’d like the lemon drizzle to soak into the hot cake to make it refreshing and moist. I use metal chopsticks to do this but you could also use a cake testing skewer or bamboo skewers.

using metal chopsticks to prick the holes

Then pour the lemon drizzle over the cake when it is just out of the oven. I find it useful to use a teaspoon towards the end to ensure that the sugary syrup spreads evenly on the cake and into the little holes. Remove the cake from its tin and place it on a wire rack to cool. Ta da!

ta da