Baking apple cake...

Gawd help everyone. I've been at the baking again. A couple of weeks ago, I went for scones. Blueberry and white chocolate chip. Just a basic scone recipe with fresh blueberries and white choc chips added instead of raisins. Mainly simple...

But for the fact that the blueberries explode a bit during cooking. I imagine them swelling up a bit like Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:

This is what they looked like when they came out the oven. Carnage. But they pulled apart nicely and tasted great. Winner!

And so, following that success, I decide to venture back into the world of cake again. I mean, I've made my Christmas cake now (I'm writing this on the 23rd and it isn't decorated so I'm not showing it yet. Plus, it just looks like a big white blob anyway. It was made with loving care and much ginger gin liqueur though and will taste great) but this is a casual Sunday night "fuck, I need snacks for Christmas eve tomorrow at work and the weather was too shit to go out today and get anything" cake. The best kind by anyone's reckoning.

Being the top blogger that I am, I of course forgot to take pictures of any of the process. Here's what I got for you:

The basic loaf recipe came from the classic Be-Ro book. My mum had a Be-Ro book when I was wee and a few years ago she gave me my own. As ever though, I'm only vaguely working with the recipe. Partly because I never actually have all the ingredients that one might require, I usually have something else I want to add AND I have some misguided desire to try to be 'original' (in high school it was hippy skirts and fimo beads. Now it's fucking with cake recipes). So, today I had apples to use. This is what it looked like once I'd made the mix and taken it all out of the bowl:

But, prior to that, I stuck to the flour, butter/margarine and sugar bit of the recipe. So far so good. I flung some raisins in for good measure. And a crushed Wispa. Then I peeled and grated about 8 smallish apples. Apples grate so easily! I read something saying that one should squeeze out the apple juice and put apples in a cake as drained as possible. That sounded wasteful to me. I added some brown sugar to the grated apples and mixed them into the flour part, juiciness and all and, whadya know? I didn't need any milk cause the apples added enough moosh on their own! Yas! Little Scribbler baking VICTORY! And look:

Yeah it's a bit sunken but it looks pretty golden. As well you'll know from my previous baking exploits, one should always bake with a glass of wine. I won mine in the work Christmas raffle last week - score! It even tastes alright. I'm a big fan of alright tasting free wine. And, in even better news, the cake tastes good too! Yay! And, on account of all the bloody apples in it, I reckon it's verging on healthy. I'd wager, there's at least half of one of your 5-a-day in there. Gawd, I'm good.

I hope you're all having a very eff-ing Merry Christmas!

Herman the German

We once met a German called Herman when I was on holiday as a kid. Even back then I loved a good dose of wordplay so I found the moniker 'Herman the German' immensely satisfying. This post isn't about him (though if you're interested, he was dead tall and rocked a Speedo.), it's about a cake. Herman the German friendship cake. I'd never heard of such a thing until I was given a piece of the mixture from whence Herman springs. He was given to me by a lovely lady I met on jury duty (that's my most recent excuse for having not been hanging about here for, like, aaaaaaages) and, in a nutshell, he's like a chain letter but in cake form. You get given a bit of cake mix, which you add to for 8 days, split into 4, giving 3 parts of the mixture away to unsuspecting friends/eager bakers/ anyone you can find who reckons they can get another 3 folk to take a bit. You add some extra basics, some fruit, bake it and, voila, a fully formed Herman. Here's how it goes - be warned, this isn't one of those gloriously shot food posts. In fact, he doesn't look great most of the way through. Who cares though, right? Hopefully the words are painting a tiny picture and I can tell you that he tastes bloody lovely! Enjoy.

Mmm, non-descript cake mix.

Adding to the mix on day 4.

Masquerading as a giant jar of jam.

Warning, do NOT taste Herman raw. He is not a spoon-licking kinda cake. Who woulda thunk it with all that milk in him, sitting out for days. He's a bubbling bad-ass.

Herman split into 4, the rest of the ingredients are added, including apples and raisin. Fruit means he's totes healthy, innit?

I had so much cake mix, I had to bake two Hermans...

The Herman bits that got stuck in the cake tin. Perfect with ice cream on top! Yum!