The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall 3.0

Dear Readers,

I have kept you waiting with baited breath for too-too long. And now it is finally time to reveal images of The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall 3.0. Yes! We had a full re-boot this year and TSWCS was the sparkliest bestest incarnation thus far!

 The main key to our success was the addition of the help (not just of strangers this year) of baker extraordinaire Miss F. The two of us together made Whimsy a force to be glittered with and both stall and customers went away with extra sparkle as a result.

 Pictured above are Miss F's epicurean white chocolate and raspberry slices and pictured below is the ubiquitous Silver Whimsy record player. (People have tried to purchase the record player EVERY single year, but it is amazing how cheap the people deem the price of a battery-operated Japanese import portable record player!!) Also, note the edible creations in the pretty polyphene - a new idea for 2012; Whimsy Cakes to take away and eat later!

 This image shows another of Miss F's inventions - Space Cakes! Popular with grown ups and children alike, these fairy cakes come to life in your mouth with the special ingredient of popping candy and a lollipop to eat as a post-cake snack!

 We had the most wonderful variety of cakes on offer and the people commented over and over again about how amazing it was to have such choice! I started making a Victoria Sponge but after the cakes were made, I felt the need to do something a little more interesting and came up with the Raspberry Cream Dream Cake (pictured below). Oh Readers, 'twas so delicious! Raspberry coloured and flavoured buttercream on the inside with freshly whipped cream with raspberries spun through it on the outside and vanilla sponge in the middle!

It was a wonderful day at the Jester Festival, West Hampstead's greatest local gathering, and we had an amazing, glittery day! The people love TSWCS and TSWCS loves the people! Roll on 2013!!
Recipes to follow,
Silver Whimsy x

Lemon Drizzle Cake - a firm family favourite

When I was little, my grand parents lived abroad and the most magical thing was getting to see them and eating my Grandma's lemon drizzle cake - it was (and still is, really) my favourite cake. She would always make hers round and the smell of it, just out of the oven, permeating her flat along with the general aroma of chicken soup is a Proustian memory. 

Years and years later, I use her cake tins (thrust upon me when I went round with a lemon drizzle loaf for her), but I make mine in a loaf shape and follow Nigella's recipe (Grandma never did give me hers). 

The smell of it baking is the same though, and always brings back those memories. 

You will need:
Pre-heated oven at 180 degrees / 170 degrees fan assisted / gas mark 4
125 g unsalted butter (pref organic)
175g fair trade caster suagr
2 large free range organic eggs
the zest of one lemon (pref unwaxed or you're eating chemicals)
175g self raising flour
4 tablespoons of milk
The juice of 1 and a half lemons
100g icing sugar

You will also need a buttered and lined cake tin. I know it's a hassle but it is essential and worth the effort. Some people love lining cake tins. I do not. 

 First you need to cream the sugar and butter together. Top tip; have a packet of butter that you leave out of the fridge ready for baking. This way creaming butter and sugar will be ten million ties easier. (As regular readers know, I do everything by hand as I don't have a magimix so thinking in advance is essential!)

 Then, add the eggs one at a time, beating in well, along with the lemon zest. Be generous on the lemon zest front and adapt according to the size of your lemon - if your cake mixture does not smell lemony you must add more!

Next, sift the flour into the mixture and fold in with a large metal spoon. When 'The Kitchener' opened in NW6, I went and bought two WONDERFULLY large Alice-esque metal spoons that truly changed my baking. Up until that point I had somehow been managing to fold in using tablespoons?! I actually don't know how my cakes ever rose...

Once the flour has been thoroughly (but gently) folded in, add the milk and fold in til it's soft dropping consistency.

You should have an extremely smooth, creamy coloured mixture.

 Pop the cake in the oven on the middle shelf and bake for 40-45 mins. I normally check at 40 as it turns very quickly. It should be well risen and a cake skewer will come out clean when it's done.

 Ten mins before the cooking time is up, begin to make the syrup. (Aside: My friend Sonja bought me this amazing lemon squeezer when she discovered I squeezed oranges by pushing them through a sieve...!!!! This, along with the large silver metal spoons, has made making a lemon drizzle cake a billion times more straightforward!)

 Squeeze one and a half lemons and add to a small pan along with 100g icing sugar. Heat very very gently until the sugar dissolves. Don't stir it, but you can swizzle the cake skewer across the bottom of the pan if it needs a little help to get going...

 Now for the fun bit! As soon as the cake is out of the oven, pierce it all over with the cake skewer. Make sure you cover all angles as the syrup needs to cover the whole cake.

 Pur the syrup into the holes and watch the surface of the cake begin to sheen. Leave to cool completely in the tin (which should be on a wire cooling tray) before taking out. Your kitchen will be smelling heavenly by this point.

 Once cooled you can, if you like, ice it with a simple icing sugar and lemon glaze. It doesn't really need this, but I suppose it makes it look more 'finished' if you like and helps it to last longer. This cake will last for a very long time though - it stays moist because of the lemon drizzle - and you can change the lemons to oranges or whatever takes your fancy if you happen to have extra citrus fruit in the house.

A quintessential British summertime afternoon tea treat. Yum! 

Fondest fancies, 

Silver Whimsy x 

PS Coming to a Jester Festival near you soon! 

The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall (2:0)

And so it was, Dear Readers, that a Whole Year passed and it was time for The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall (2:0) to be held once more at West Hampstead's finest Jester Festival!

The aim this year was for everything to be slightly less frantic, slightly more calm and slightly less damaging to general physical, emotional and mental health and...guess what?? With the help of my ever suffering, completely amazing SIBF (who has cleaned the kitchen so many times over the past three days that he deserves a medal, or alternatively beer for life), super-star cousin Lee (who both baked delicious peanut butter cookies and gave us a lift to the festival site with our ten stone trestle table), and bestest friends Sally and Dave Emery (who left thir tea-towel empire to come and visit the festival and took all these WONDERFUL photos), it was!

Obviously, that doesn't mean that there weren't any nervous bake-downs over how to make enough cakes, or crisis' over the fact that, whatever the trendy magazines say, Whoopie Pies actually do just taste horrible, but generally speaking things went a lot more smoothly and there was a lot less to cry about! The major difference this year was that we actually have our own super-cute and phenomenally indie kitten called Tilly,

which meant that I didn't have to go all Hepburn over a stray cat that turned out not to be a stray cat after all... (New readers check out entry number one for more info...) This had both positive and negative implications. Positive because I knew there would be a kitten waiting for me at the end of the day but negative because I had to keep the kitten out of the kitchen for a few days which meant that she was a little bit cross with me.

Anyway, a lot of baking products were purchased to make all the sweet treats for the festival. I started off by making the Pistachio Meringues because they keep for quite a long time so could be made in advance.

I even phoned up Ottolenghi for advice on how best to store them! Then I moved on to the Lemon Drizzle Cake which is a phenomenally popular cake stall cake.

A lovely gentleman bought four slices and then returned the next day to buy some different cake because he'd enjoyed it so much! That was one of the best things about the festival. I had repeat customers from the previous year! People were so charmed by the spirit of Whimsy that they remembered the stall and sought it out, and if they were new customers then they returned for Day Two because they loved it so. The only problem with this was that I actually sold out of cakes on Day One which meant that I was up all night re-baking for Day Two! I found myself making meringues at midnight...

and fairy cakes at four am!

I was particularly proud of my Victoria Sponge

made with organic raspberries and freshly whipped Vanilla Cream.

Last year, a number of people asked me if I had a Carrot Cake so this year I decided to make one and it was The Surprise Hit of TSWCS!!!

Who knew that out of all the super-enticing sweet-treats the Carrot Cake would sell out first?! Possibly, it was because of the addition of the trademark Silver Whimsy mini-flags, but who knows? All I do know is that I had to make another one at 10pm on Saturday night because it had been so popular! The My Little Ponies (Lickety Split and Baby Bonnet) helped to sell the Scrummy Chocolate Brownies and enjoyed frolicking on the pink lace table cloth of Whimsy.

All in all, 'twas a fabulous weekend (made all the more special by visits to TSWCS by the wondrous Lara and Dan) and a marvellous festival of general community madness. I was very excited and also quite nervous that The Kitchen Table (West Hampstead's best cafe) and Walnut (West Hampstead's finest restaurant) tasted my meringues, and was very happy that they both enjoyed them! Hooray!

I might have a little bit of a baking break for now so, until next time, kisses and cakes from

Silver Whimsy x

PS Once again enormous gratitude to Dave Emery for allowing me to use his fabulous photographs x x x