Romantic relationships, being 33 and cupcakes

Ladies aren't supposed to reveal their ages but - in conclusive proof that I'm definitely not a lady - I'm about to reveal mine. I'm 33 and so too are several of my friends.
What I'm beginning to realise is that 33 seems to be the age at which women of my generation start to feel the pressure. The pressure to settle down with a man they love and start a family.

Today is Valentine's Day and in the past few days, I've had several conversations with my single friends about this. In fact, since the year began, I've had countless conversations about love, the lack of it and what this means for a woman in her thirties.

Some of my single friends are beginning to worry. A few of them are on the brink of panic. And the older they are, the more anxious they are feeling.

It's not just my single friends either. In the past two months, I've consoled friends who have been casually and cruelly jilted. I've congratulated others who have joined dating agencies in a pro-active attempt to meet men who are ready for commitment. I've listened to one friend who is seriously unhappy in her marriage and another who has just finalised her divorce proceedings.


Here's what I've learned from their many different experiences:
1. Men - grr! - have it lucky. Most of them are blissfully oblivious to the ticking of a biological clock and they can sail through their thirties, forties and even fifties without feeling any pressure at all.

2. Love is ridiculously difficult to find.

3. Even if you do find it, you'll soon that the sentiments behind the Beatles' 'All You Need is Love' aren't quite truthful. You need a lot more than that if you want your relationship to succeed: you need commitment, honesty, a willingness to devote time and care to each other and quite a lot of luck.

If you've got someone to love who loves you back, tell them just how lucky you consider yourself to have them (today and every day).

I'm not going to utter any tired clichés to those of you who are single and wish you weren't. What I will say, however, is that people who are confident and happy attract other people. So, take time to focus on yourself. Take part in activities you enjoy: travelling, painting, scuba diving, salsa dancing, astro physics, whatever. Become the person you were meant to be and you will attract all sorts of like-minded people; friends and maybe even potential loves.

In the meantime, here's a cupcake:

And not just any cupcake, a sticky toffee cupcake with salted caramel buttercream from Fiona Cairns' 'Bake & Decorate'.

This recipe makes 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients for the cakes:
180g dates, pitted and chopped
1tsp vanilla extract
180g self-raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
80g unsalted butter, softened
150g light muscuvado sugar
2 eggs

Ingredients for the buttercream
125g white caster sugar
80ml double cream
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste; I actually added a little more)
1 tsp vanilla extract

160g unsalted butter, softened
200g icing sugar, sifted

Place the chopped dates in a heatproof bowl, pour 180ml of boiling water over the dates and leave to soak for 20 mins.

Preheat oven to 180 degress/ 350 degrees F/gas mark 4.

Sift the flour and the bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar for 5 mins or until the mix is light and fluffy.

Add the eggs gradually, beating between each addition and slipping in 1tbsp of flour about halfway through to prevent curdling.

Lastly, fold in the remaining flour and the date mixture, to which you have added the vanilla extract.

Spoon into cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 15 to 20 mins (until the tops spring back when pressed with a finger).

Leave to cool.

While the cakes are cooling, dissolve the sugar and 60ml of water in a small, heavy-based saucepan over a gentle heat.

Once dissolved, turn the heat up and boil the syrupy solution.

Wait for a few minutes, watching the syrup carefully. As soon as it changes to a caramel colour (like strong tea) and becomes a thicker consistency, remove it from the heat and, standing well back, add the cream. (It may splatter a little and you may think it has gone wrong but it hasn't.)

Keep stirring and add the salt and the vanilla.

Leave to cool.

Cream the butter and the icing sugar for 5 mins or so and then add the caramel.

Pipe this icing onto the cupcakes and you've got gooey, sticky, sweet toffee cupcakes with a sophisticated hint of saltiness.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!

A birthday girl needs cake

Today is a friend's birthday. This is good news for her but it's also good news for me. I now have an excuse to try my first recipe from 'Bake & Decorate' by Fiona Cairns. I've had this cookbook for a few weeks but in an attempt to be virtuous for the month of January, I've been studiously avoiding the temptation of the recipes contained inside.

This is coming to an end right now because I'm going to bake this cake, a flourless chocolate hazelnut cake:

This cake ticks all of my boxes.
Chocolate?
Yes.
Gooey, moist chocolate?
Yes, yes, yes.
Gooey, moist chocolate with chocolate ganache and raspberries?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES...!

Here's the recipe:
Ingredients for the cake:
90g unsalted butter, cubed
60g blanched hazelnuts
150g chocolate, 70% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
90g golden caster sugar
3 eggs, separated

Ingredients for the ganache:
100g chocolate, 70% solids, broken into pieces
50ml double cream
25g unsalted butter
400g raspberries

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
• Butter a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking parchment.
• Roast the hazelnuts in the oven for 5 mins or so. (Watch carefully to make sure they don't burn.)
• Cool the hazelnuts and grind finely in a food processor.
• Place the chocolate, 70g of the sugar and the butter in a bowl over gently simmering water (make sure the bowl is not touching the water) and melt together very gently.

• Remove from the heat and stir in the hazelnuts.
• Beat the egg yolks together until they change to a paler colour, something like this:
  

• Then add them to the cooled chocolate mixture.
• In another (very clean) bowel, whisk the egg whites and then slowly add the remaining caster sugar until the mixture forms soft peaks.
• Take a large spoonful and fold it into the chocolate mixture to lighten it a little.
• Then fold in all of the remaining egg whites as gently and as lightly as you can, using either a large metal spoon or a spatula.
• Pour into the tin and bake for 20 mins.
• Leave to cool for 15 mins then run a knife around the edges to loosen it from the tin.
• When the cake is cool, turn it very carefully out onto a serving plate, using the base as the top.
  
• To make the ganache, melt the chocolate, cream and butter in a bowl over very gently simmering water (again making sure it doesn't touch the water). Stir together and then cool a little until it thickens.
• Pour over the cake and spread with a palette knife.
• Stud the surface with raspberries and you should have something that looks like this:

Yum! Now to deliver it to the birthday girl...

(This cake is very easy to make. It's ready in next to no time. The fact that it's flourless means that it's suitable for people on gluten-free diets. I'll definitely be making more from this cookbook.)

Addendum: In fact, I liked this cake so much that I made it for my boyfriend within 24 hours of delivering it to the birthday girl. This time, I omitted the butter from the ganache and I thought it worked better. I don't know if anyone else finds this but every time I make ganache with butter in it, the butter separates and forms a not-very-attractive film on top. Anyone got any ideas why this might be?

I love cake

I love making (and eating!) cakes. I've always loved them and the reason for this is not just because they taste great (although they do). It's because I love seeing that greedy look that comes into people's eyes when they spy a luscious chocolate cake. I love the way so many people feebly protest that they simply shouldn't before digging into a slice of cake, licking their plate clean and then asking for seconds.

I also love the way that cakes are a treat. I love that they are special; that people celebrate with cakes; that people use cakes (especially cupcakes) as a pick-me-up when they are feeling down; and that turning up at someone's house with a cake makes you especially welcome.
I suppose a lot of this goes towards explaining why I set up a cupcake and sweet treats stall at Dingle's Farmers' Market, where I make cupcakes like this:

As a result, I'm delighted with the current fashion for baking. I've been tuning in to Lorraine Pascale's 'Baking Made Easy' on BBC1 (where she truly does make baking cakes, bread and tarts seem simple). I've tried her lemon cream millefeuilles which were delicious.

So, you can imagine how delighted I was to receive an advance copy of 'Bake and Decorate' by Fiona Cairns in the post. What a perfect cookbook for me!

Like Lorraine's TV show, this book aims to show even the most inexperienced of bakers how to create delicious tasting and wonderful looking cakes. From fruitcakes to chocolate chilli cupcakes, Fiona shares techiques and tricks to make it all seem easy.

I'd never heard of Fiona Cairns before and immediately wanted to know who she was. This is her first cookbook but she is a very experienced baker. Her company produces 750,000 (!) cakes a year for the likes of Waitrose, Liberty, the Ritz Hotel, Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum and Mason in the UK. She has also been commissioned to make cakes for Bono, Sinéad O'Connor and Paul McCartney. Ooh er!

So, is her cookbook any good? My first impressions are positive and I love the girly cover. I'm also taken by her introduction where she talks about the comfort, pleasure and luxury of baking; how cakes are not essential but are vital for our souls. (She sounds like a woman after my own heart.)

She also brings back some of my first memories in the kitchen; memories of helping my mother bake cakes, hoping I'd get to lick the batter off the wooden spoon. In a family of seven children, this was a hotly-contested treat!

Fiona aims to bring pleasures like this back to our lives. She wants to make baking and decorating cakes as enjoyable as the eating of them and she encourages even the least confident among us to give it a try.

You can start with something simple, like a Victoria sponge or a no-cook chocolate tiffin. Follow the instructions carefully (baking is a precise science) and you'll soon discover that you can do it.

You can then move on to more elaborate creations. There's a range of chocolate cakes (because you simply can't have enough chocolate cake recipes!) including a dark chocolate mousse cake and this wonderful flourless chocolate hazelnut cake:

There are other tempting treats too such as white chocolate and cardamom rosewater sponge, sticky ginger cake with lime buttercream, lemony crunch cake, fruit cakes, pistachio and orange blossom cake and so much more.

There are also cupcakes. I'm eager to try the sticky toffee cupcake with salted caramel buttercream and the mint chocolate cupcakes.

And that's not all. There are also recipes for macaroons, meringues, biscuits and shortbread.

The first half of the book is devoted to baking while the second gives you tips on decorating. This includes everything from how to apply fondant smoothly and how to make crystallised flowers and leaves to how to use gold leaf and lots of ideas for using nuts, flowers, sweets and ribbons.

At several stages in the book, Fiona shares tips and advice. She recommends using golden caster sugar instead of white for flavour (something I always do in my own cupcakes). She says that you should always use ingredients and equipment that is warm or at least at room temperature. And she even gives advice on saving the inevitable disasters.

I've earmarkeed several pages in this book already but first on my list are the sticky toffee and salted caramel cupcakes followed by the chocolate mousse cake. I'll keep you posted on my progress!