The Great Purple Alpha-Bake | B for Banoffee pie

So i’ve been excited about making Banoffee pie since I decided to do this whole Alpha-Bake. I am a Banoffee lover but, as is the randomness of my nature I don’t actually like bananas, especially not between caramel and cream as they tend to be quite brown and soggy and I am often sat in front of a plate of brown soggy bananas at the end of a dinner date. I was once pleasantly surprised, when I ordered banoffee at a restaurant called TheShip, where there were no bananas in sight, just banana flavoured cream… Yum!! Result!!

So when the day came I decided I would make Banoffee sans actual bananas, banana flavouring in the cream was my initial idea, but then I decided to blitz a couple of bananas into the caramel, oooh yeah, experimenting with recipes after only 2 weeks, get me.

I spent 2 hours loitering in the kitchen, over come with nervousness, waiting for my inevitable bad luck to cause the condensed milk cans, I had to boil for caramel, to explode!! I topped up the pot so many times to prevent said explosion I was pretty sure that when I opened the cans the condensed milk would still be in the exact same state it was in when I’d started. I had been told to buy the caramel condensed milk that I wouldn’t have to boil, and would’ve saved me 2 hours, but how often do you get to boil cans of milk? So I thought I’d go the traditional route.

Nothing about the pint of double cream or 2 tins of condensed milk I needed aroused my suspicions as to the huge restaurant style serving I would end up with. It ended up being 2 huge Banoffee pies which I had to phone family and friends to come and eat. Luckily, it was delicious (if I do say so myself), no brown, soggy banana to ruin the experience. Just yummy smooth banana flavoured caramel, crunchy biscuit and cream. A success!! Think this may be my new dinner party dish, not that I ever have dinner parties – lol.

My first Alpha-Bake success and only the 2^nd letter. 24 to go, fingers crossed ;-)

The Great Purple Alpha-Bake | Almond & Orange cake

So the Alpha-Bake started, but i've been so busy the past 2 weeks I just haven't had a chance to upload photos and post... So better late then never, here it is ;-)

Almond & Orange cake

Prep: 2hrs 15mins / Cooking: 45mins

For some reason I came in off the street took my coat off, washed my hands and started baking. Sounds perfectly feasible until I tell you I still hand on my brand new boots, scarf and sunglasses… Excited?? Possibly. Honing my stylish chef personality?? Obviously, but also constantly losing focus and just forgot to remove them.

After spending the past few weeks buying all the baking utensils I thought I’d need (including mini silicone cupcake cases, which are infact the work of evil fairy bakers) I found myself caught short with no greaseproof paper or apron!! Oh well, new boots and sunglasses totally made up for it.

I put my oranges (which needed to be simmered for 2 hours) on the stove (is it still called a stove?) and took mini-me to ballet. That was the hardest part. When I came back I put all the ingredients in the food processor, blitzed it and put it in an oven proof bowl in the oven. Oven proof bowl and not cake tin as of course I had no greaseproof paper!

The cake took 45 minutes to cook, but unlike normal cakes the clean knife test was no good as this cake contained 6 eggs and no flour so the consistency would be slightly different. It smelt delicious coming out of the oven and looked quite nice too, I had my fingers crossed that it would come out of the bowl as I’d buttered and floured it within an inch of it’s life as i'd overlooked the fact that greaseproof paper was quite important to the whole baking process. It slipped out like a breeze and stayed in one piece. Looks good, smells good, feels kinda sticky-ish, more pudding like then cake-like, but I figure that by the time it cools it'll be more cake-y (are these actual words?)

So it cools and before I gather everyone for the tasting I cut myself a piece, and am immediately disappointed. The texture is weird, kinda grainy, but also still kinda wet. Initially i'm not sure that I don't totally like it. It isn't very orangey or sweet or anything really, it's kinda 'blah'. Neither here nor there. I could take it, but much more easily I could leave it (I don't say this about cake often). It's weirdly damp, which is probably the main reason I don't like it. I check the recipe to make sure I baked it for the right time, yep 45 minutes. Nowhere in the recipe description does it mention it being wet and pudding-like. The word cake is in the title, this is not cake!!

So I decide (in all of my day old baking wisdom) that the only sensible thing to do is put it back in the oven "for a bit" like a twice baked souffle type thing. Maybe that will make it better... It didn't... It was awful... It was binned.

So "A" in The Great Purple Alpha-Bake is a huge fail!! There is room to grow, i'm only just beginning.

This week it's Banoffee pie, one of my favourites. If I mess it up i'm quitting - lol

The Great Purple Alpha-Bake...

So I mentioned previously that I had been inspired by Julie and Julia (recently read the book and watched the film) and had set myself a baking challenge...

To bake through the letters of the alphabet, a recipe a week for each letter.

I have trawled through recipe books and websites galore and one of the things I realised is that every recipe needs to have a photo. It is very hard to imagine something based on a list of ingredients and a name. I’ve also had to be creative with some of the names as finding desserts beginning with X etc… was pretty darn difficult.

So, here is my Alpha-Bake list:

• Almond and Orange Cake
• Banoffee Pie
• Cherry & Apple Pies
• Dark & White Chocolate Fondants
• English Apple & Cinnamon Crumble Tart
• Fresh Cream & Strawberry Victoria Sponge
• Ginger Sticky Toffee Pudding
• Homemade Toffee Apple Tart
• Iced Cinnamon Buns
• Jam Bakewell
• Key Lime Pie
• Lemon Meringue Cake
• Macaroons
• Nutty Hazlenut Frangipane
• Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
• Passionfruit Roulade
• Quince & Pear Puffed Pancake
• Rose Cupcakes of course
• Salted Caramel Tart
• Tiramisu Layer Cake
• Upside Down Pineapple Cake
• Vanilla Ice-Cream cake
• White Chocolate and Raspberry Brownies
• Xaggerated Baked Cheesecake
• Yule Log (Choc swiss roll)
• Zalabia

So the challenge begins next friday (17th Sept). I shall post recipe details and photos (whether they are good or bad). All my friends who say they want to taste test can do so under the proviso that they leave a fabulous review :-)

Let the baking begin!!

Ohhh and while I was making my list I whipped up these beauties...

Lemon Meringue & Chocolate cupakes

Banana Cinnamon Pancakes

Sultana Scones

Last night I dreamt of San Pedro....

Actually I didn't dream of San Pedro (unlike Madonna). I dreamt of Dessert... Delectable, Delightful, Desirable Dessert in all it's Damned Deliciousness... Cupcakes, gu puddings, banoffee pie, tiramisu, apple crumble, pecan tart thingy’s from the dessert deli down the road, eton mess, haagen dazs ice cream, fresh cream & strawberry victoria sponge, syrup sponge pudding, apricot swiss roll, caramel waffles, hot fudge sundae, krispy kreme caramel dreamcake donuts and… Me!! Eating it all.

I have never dreamt of food before, well certainly not in such a memorable way. But I guess this is because I’ve never restricted my food intake quite so significantly. Yes, i've done a couple of failed fruit and water only detoxes, and there have been failed attempts at eating 5-a-day, but never for any meaningful length of time. It has been a full week, which is 7 whole days, 168 hours and minutes I don't even want to think about since I started my 'no dessert or confectionary type foods challenge' and I am dreaming, in a full pantone spectrum of colours, about what I am missing. Regular dieters must literally wake up drooling and chewing their pillows on a regular basis.



I do find it quite poignant that chocolate did not feature at all in my dream, not even in a supporting role. Which leads me to believe that all these years of chocolate 'loving' have been sheer peer pressure and media hype. Maybe when I go back to being the almost normal version of me, who eats sweet things on a semi-regular basis, rather then as the main food group I can eliminate the 'I must have chocolate' phase altogether. Hmmmm.... Could I really do without those Lindt Lindor balls that melt so tantalisingly on the tongue?? Or that M&S Organic Rose flavoured chocolate that is the most amazing thing... Not so sure. Maybe the chocolate dream is saving itself for another night :-)