Earl Grey Blue Lady Cake

Here's our cake of the week. It's made with an amazing tea, Earl Grey Blue Lady that has beautiful little cornflowers in it. The smell is absolutely gorgeous... in fact we thought good enough to eat! So we steeped some fruit in it and made a light fruit cake topped with a butter cream. Fancy a slice? Well it's this week's "Surprise Me" but better still you can come into our shop where you can buy the tea too!

Broken Glass Cake!

I can't help it, I see a wacky recipe and begin to look for an excuse to bake it... except this time there was no baking involved! A refreshing summer pudding and the perfect party alternative to jelly and ice-cream (a lot more grown up). The recipe itself is one that was run on the back of Jello packets in America in 1950s. It's easy to make but takes time to set so make a day ahead.

Recipe

2 packets of jelly (4 half packets for lots of colour really) choose your favourites
300ml whipping cream
100ml pineapple juice
1/2tsp powdered gelatine
1/2tsp vanilla extract

• Make the jelly up as per the packet instructions and chill until set
• Put the pineapple juice in a sauce pan and sprinkle with gelatine, allow to dissolve
• Heat this gently until melted, remove from heat and add 50ml of cold water, leave to cool (not set)
• Whip the cream and vanilla until stiff peaks are formed.
• Whisk in the pineapple mixture.
• Chop the jelly into cubes
• Add to cream but DO NOT mix as this will cause your jelly to break up
• Pour into a lined 6" cake tin and leave to set preferably overnight but at least for 3 hours 

This really is a delightful pudding. One which I think will be a big hit with the kids tonight and possibly a big hit with the adults! So here's to summer, get the BBQ going and have yourself a broken glass cake for dessert!

A Merry Unbirthday!

Today we have a guest blog from Colin Shelbourn. The wonderful illustrator who designs all our cartoons, including the lovely cake lady herself and our new Limited Edition Cake Cards. Here he is to tell you more about how it came about!

When an illustrator receives a commission, the client usually has a specific remit in mind. Sometimes too specific and the illustrator becomes a hired pencil. Cartoonists don’t respond well to that. You hire me, you get the ideas as well as the pencil (or brush pen and Wacom tablet, in my case). 

By contrast, a Twitter conversation with Abi at The Cake Nest sparked the faintest of faint notions and I immediately knew this was going to be a fun project. No brief, no deadline, just a generous “what if?” commission. What if people had something to celebrate on the days when they didn’t have a birthday?

I’m often commissioned to draw postcards - you can see some of them here (http://www.shelbourn.com/xhols) - but have been thinking for a while that a range of my own greeting cards would be fun to try in my online shop. And Abi was after something unusual for The Cake Nest, so … a couple of days later, the first of the Un-Birthday card designs appeared. 

It’s a rolling commission so watch out for new designs over the coming weeks. They’ll be on sale as cake cards to begin with - Abi sparked the idea off, after all - and then later as greetings cards over at Radiocartoonist.com 

Either way, we hope you’ll find them delicious.

Learn to Bake

Delia Smith is an amazing woman. I really think that her approach to cooking is fantastic. It's not rocket science, it just needs a little practice. I thoroughly encourage you watch the clip and to have a go. Yes, I realise I bake for a living but what we do is offer a surprise to someone far away that you cannot surprise yourself. Why not surprise Mum this year with a homemade cake on Sunday. It will taste better than anything you can buy from Tesco, why? Simple, because it has that added ingredient, Love. 

 

Episode 1: Classic Sponge Cake from Delia Online Cookery School on Vimeo.

Polocini's Cycle Coffee Shop

"A cyclists' cafe is more than just a coffee shop, it's a workshop and a riders' hub – and a shared love of cake." - Matt Seaton

How do you combine cake, coffee and cycling? By opening a coffee shop of course.

Our friends Al and Clare have just done that, bringing together the three C's (cake, coffee and cycling) in the fantastic Polocini coffee shop in Romiley, Cheshire. 

Here you can rack you bike safely, enjoy a freshly ground coffee with a slice or two of homemade cake, catch up with fellow cyclists or maybe watch some cycling action on the screen.

On the wall there is a great display of cycling memorabilia that Al has collected from various races from all over Europe, from vintage cycling jerseys to the deviation arrows that the professional rides follow on race day.

As well as opening the coffee shop, Al successfully runs Polocini which encompasses cycling tours, cyclo-sportives and events which cater for all riders of all abilities. They have built up a reputation for providing the best food at their events, now they can boast at having the best coffee! Follow them on twitter too for all the latest news.

Derbyshire Life

I just wanted to say thank you to Andrew Griffiths for writing such a lovely article on us in The Derbyshire Life Magazine. I thought I would take this opportunity to share it with you all, we hope you enjoy it too and that it give you a slice of what we do here.

Halloween

A strange time of year filled with fun but with a sinister background. I'm going to focus on the cake side of things but maybe that's not much better... A soul cake is a small round cake  traditionally made for All Saints Day or All Souls' Day to celebrate the dead.

Bonfires were lit to ward off evil spirits and, it is said, an ill-fated lottery began. If you were unfortunate enough to select the burnt cake you wouldn't see it through the night... human sacrifices are said to have been made to ensure good crops the following year.

However, there is an alternative... while soulers (mainly children and the poor) went around the village singing and saying prayers for the dead. It is said that each cake eaten would save a soul from Purgatory. Perhaps this was the beginning trick-or-treating. I prefer this idea. Whatever the truth is be careful what you eat this week! 

WOHOOO It's our birthday!

It's Friday and that means cake club surprises... what can I say it's our birthday too, 3 years this month, so it had to be something special! Chocolate Dipped Cake Balls all round it is! These delicious bites of cake mixed with buttercream and then dipped in chocolate are gorgeous we hope you all enjoy them. 

And to show that we love you all you can grab a box now for the same price as a slice for this week only at £4.95. Don't take our word for it, try them yourself!

sorry offer now ended

Thank you