'Coals to Newcastle' or 'Crocker to Conneticut'

So the great BC backlog continues. Though not for much longer. The cupboard is almost bare:


<Sniff>

As documented earlier, my brother came over from the US in November. In his honour, and partly in recognition of the fact I swiped all the Crocker with no mention to mother or brother, I whipped up the Yellow Cake.

(Yes, Crocker-naive British readers, it really is called Yellow Cake. It's not Victoria Sponge. Its a sweet sponge-type cake which is yellow. There is also White Cake.... Which is also not Victoria Sponge. And Angel Cake, which is probably similar to White Cake, and similar - but different - to the Angel Cake we used to get just occasionally from M&S back when it was still called Marks and Spencer).

The best way with Yellow Cake is always Brown Frosting. (Oh go on then, 'Chocolate' Frosting. But a pitiful 8.5% cocoa powder. I just checked). Oh, gosh, it really is yummy. Anyway, my tins are too small (established previously with the carrot cake) so I made some cupcakes too, and when Flesh and Papanomicron turned up for supper I foisted one upon Pap and presented the whole cake as dessert. Which was lush.

Pound cake

There's one package in the BC backlog that intrigues me. It catches my eye every time I open the larder cupboard and ritually glance up (possibly to check they're still there). It's smaller than the others, and the package photo doesn't involve frosting. It's a loaf shape, but it's just plain. No marbling, no chips, no fruit. Plain. And in a smaller package. Pound cake. What is pound cake? There's not a scrap of a clue on the box. It's intrigued me for weeks.

So, with the carrot cake eaten (thanks here to Becky, who helped out on Monday*), this morning I overcame my prejudice against non-flavoured foodstuffs (cf 'vanilla' ice cream, madeira cake, shortbread) and I made it.

The dogmatic precision of Betty Crocker instructions is scary. Baking is too precise for my brother, who likes to cook but does not bake, because you can't ad lib with baking [paraphrase], and Betty Crocker's exhortations that I beat on a low speed 30 seconds [sic] scares me into counting.

She makes me an obedient little apprentice. There were sincere warnings on the package that if my loaf tin were smaller than 9"x5" I should use two loaf pans, or batter will overflow [sic]. So with a 9"x4.5" tin, I exercised due caution and made 3 cup-cakes.

30 seconds on low, followed by 3 minutes on medium turned it from yellow to pale, pale cream, and made it really, really thick. 48 minutes at 170C (fan) - an (whisper it) approximation based on the 350F instructed.

And you know, it turned out fine. More yellow than I expected, more dense than I expected - though kind of light with it - and pretty tasty for a plain cake.

I'm still not sure what pound cake is.



"So...?" I asked Terry. "Umm.... It's quite hard isn't it?"

Wikipedia says it's a decadent cake, made with a pound of flour, sugar, butter - yikes - and is a staple of the South. On my second cupcake in two days (this truly is a dieter's - not a decadent - cake), I nailed it: it tastes, looks and has the texture of those sponge cakes and sponge fingers that my mum reserved solely for trifle. Decadent.

* "So is this real carrot?" Heh heh heh.

BC backlog saves the day!

In another example of our collective domestic ineptitude, when my old friend Megan* called on Saturday to invite herself over, we had nothing in.

But of course, though we have gotten through BC brownies, BC oatmeal cookies, Eagle Brand Turtle Temptations and Pilsbury brownies, there were - really, thank heavens - still a few BC boxes to get through.

Terry, who loves cooking, doesn't really do baking, so it took some cajoling to get him to make the carrot cake while I attended to something inevitably involving tidying or childcare. We used the most reliably non-stick cake tins,** which, it turned out, were a tad too small, so we had two beautifully mushrooming cakes to sandwich. Fortunately, my completist father also supplied the BC cream cheese frosting, so when I went up the road to fetch Megan, I charged Terry with sandwiching and frosting the cakes. As a novice, he queried the best way to sandwich, and asked me if he should slice the top off one to make it a flatter bottom layer. I said yes, and left him to it.

The cake was delish, and we got through it:



But rookie error: you up-end the bottom cake when you glue them together with frosting. We had a frosted mushroom atop a frosted mushroom.


*We met aged 15 on a local coach trip to see The Cure at Wembley. I think we probably see one another twice a year at best, with virtually no chit chat in between.

**Tellingly, the most reliably non-stick cake tins belonged to my grandmother, who died in 1999.