How to Make a Raspberry Milkshake Cake!

It all started on Sunday morning rather early.

Or rather, it all started on Sunday morning rather early after an epic trip to the Central Hornsey District Allotments and Horticultural Society annual show in an autumn wardrobe in blistering heat with the SIBF, but that's another story...

This story is about the World Famous Raspberry Milkshake Cake!

Whenever you need to bring a celebration cake out of the bag or the hat (or really actually a food blender would be a more appropriate object from which to extract the aforementioned cake but whatever), this has to be the ultimate cake to bake because apart from anything else you can have fun asking the question "Is it a milkshake or is it a cake?" and then answer it with "It's both! It's a Raspberry Milkshake Cake!" and quite frankly if that doesn't give you a kick nothing will!

The recipe comes from Dan Lepard in the Guardian but he hasn't provided fun step by step pictures so you might like reading about it here instead, although please accept my apologies in advance for the New Kids on the Block lyric references...

Step One ("We can have lot of fun"):

Put your milkshake ingredients in a 1950's looking blender!

Step Two ("There's so much we can do"):

Blitz up the milkshake!

Step Three ("It's just you and me" - ok, I know, that doesn't really work but if I'm going with the Step by Step lyrics I can't miss out Step Three, I mean that line was sung by Jordan!):

Add the milkshake to the whisked egg yolks and sugar and beat it in along with the flour and baking powder. It turns the mixture pink!

Step Four ("I can give you more" - fashion tips for instance);

Always wear accessories that are the same colour as your cake! This will help with your baking.

Step Five ("Don't you know that the time has arrived" - to take the Raspberry Milkshake Cake out of the oven???):

Take the cake out of the oven revealing the pink splendour of not just the cake, but your carefully colour-matched outfit!

And after a bit of tricky cutting, cream whisking and icing making there you have it! Your very own party favourite Raspberry Milkshake Cake. It can be seen below with a hello kitty sugar bowl. This is optional. (But preferable.)

The major difficulty with making a RMSC is one of transportation; it's a bit too tall to fit into tupperware. I was desperately trying to cover the cake in a little tin foil house without getting the foil stuck on the icing when my SIBF suggested I simply took the cake apart and put it in tupperware in two different layers. This was a very good idea but not one I would have come up with myself, so having de-constructed the complicated three-tiered construction of the triple layered cake, we finally made our way to the bus stop.

There is no Step Six in the New Kids' wonderful song, but if there was a Step Six it would be something along the lines of "Step Six: Don't try and take a structurally complicated cake on public transport when invariably there will be scary shouting and swearing old men and you'll only have to get off the bus and walk to your final destination anyway". So as you can probably imagine, it was in true to form Silver Whimsy Nervous Bakedown style that we made our way to the party on foot. Once we had arrived and re-constructed the RMSC, we happily set it on the table amongst the other beautiful cakes made by my amazing cousin and relished watching people eating and enjoying it. Hooray! It was quite a spread at the party as you can see below!

Until next time,

Cupcakes and Kisses,

Silver Whimsy x

PS Still no news of Mike deCuisine....

Oh Manchester, So Much To Answer For!

It all started with a trip to Manchester.

Or rather, it all started with a trip to Manchester in the rain in high heels with several bags and a great need for a cup of tea.

It was a bit like time travel. I felt as if I had fallen into Life on Mars except it was Life on Mars; The Britpop Years and starred me instead of John Simms. I was trawling through rails of vintage clothes at the Afflecks Palace in Manchester remembering the days of A Level English Seminar Day Trips with Sally, where we always got an hour or so off at lunch time and headed straight to Oldham Street. I thought I'd go to Cafe Pop and have a milkshake but when I got there it didn't feel the same as it used to and no-one even said 'Hello!' when I walked in so I thought I'd try and find somewhere else.

I wondered down Thomas Street Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain and came across a glass fronted cavernous tea shop with it's door wide open and lots of tea sets in the window as if to say "Welcome Traveller! Have a cup of tea! Come inside and shelter from the rain." It would have been rude to refuse the invitation so in I went to CUP.

It's a super-cool cafe belonging to Mr. Scruff and was filled with pretty young things being modern on their apple mac lap tops but not in a remotely irritating way. I ordered some tea and malteser cake. I've generally stopped eating cake that hasn't been made by me but I couldn't resist on this occasion. A nice man brought my pot of tea over and informed me that this tea was Mr. Scruff's very own brew! He had become so sick of having a bad cup of tea that he went off on a quest to find his own. Very sensible indeed. You can tell that Mr. Scruff is a man who knows a thing or too about tea because look at the fabulous colour of this cuppa;

What's more, they even give you a little cartoon entitled 'how to make a proper brew' just in case you weren't sure. Sorry that this photo is so out of focus but ever since I dropped my camera my photography has been a bit hit and miss. You can find out all about Mr. Scruff's tea here; www.makeusabrew.com .

I didn't intend to write about other people's baking creations on this blog, and I have to say the cake was unexceptional (although it was PERFECT for what I needed at that moment - it reminded me of a homely tasting malty flavoured cake that you might purchase outside in the wet weather at a local historical monument that was having a charity fayre) but the tea was so stunning it commanded a new post.

I will be baking next week for my cousin's daughter's party (and you never know what might happen between now and then) so more adventures to follow!

Actually, my SIBF's still asleep...maybe I'll do some baking right now...

Until next time,

Cupcakes and Kisses,

Silver Whimsy x