Dream Bars for World Cat Day - they're purrrfect (maybe).

Dear Readers,
I have managed to keep to my Sinitta-esque daily blog-a-thon and here I am with a new recipe for Nigella's 'Dream Bars'on this most feline of days.

Gratuitous Photo of Tildred Enjoying World Cat Day

When choosing a recipe, I have found that I am more likely to go for something with a picture rather than without. Today, I decided to choose a recipe based on the inclusion of Brazil Nuts rather than an enticing visual aid. Those of you reading yesterday will recall the thrill with which I re-told the events relating to the creation of BRAZIL NUT TOFFEE. Well, today I realised that I had 175g of Brazil nuts remaining meaning that I could attempt another Brazil Nut based recipe. (And, indeed, the super-saving will continue on Saturday when I bring you a Double Espresso Brazil Nut Cake.) Brazil nuts are quite expensive - my organic ones cost £3.65 for 250g BUT if this equates to three separate recipes then I think they become quite financially viable. I was also convinced by Nigella's recipe based on it containing several different types of sugar. If, like me, you have a tendency to hoard different varieties of muscavado sugar bought during a reckless baking shopping-spree, then this is the recipe in which you can use up ALL of those sugars. However, if I'm honest, as I type I think I know the real reason why Nigella's publishers chose not to include a picture of the 'Dream Bar' and that is that whilst your kitchen does smell truly dreamy whilst you're making them, they are not remotely dreamy to look at. In fact they are decidedly un-dreamy (especially if, like mine, they have managed to burn) and they also look *shock* *horror* healthy which is ridiculous because whilst a bar with nuts and coconuts and no chocolate at all might *sound* like a healthy option, bear in mind this is Nigella's recipe and it is not healthy. No. There is no remote healthiness in this here 'Dream Bar'. The simplified version of the recipe would read:
Take some sugar. Add more sugar. Mix in lots of butter. Add more sugar. The end.
The actual recipe is as follows:

For the base:
200g unsalted butter
4 tablespoons light muscavado sugar
4 tablespoons caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
250g plain flour
For the topping:
3 large free range eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
125g muscavado sugar
3 tablespoons self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
100g shredded coconut
75g roughly chopped brazil nuts
75g raw unsalted cashews
Oven at 180 - I forgot to adjust for my fan assisted oven so my bars burnt - I'd suggest 170 fan and 180 conventional.

 The base (as you will have gathered from the ingredients) is basically a very rich shortbread. Cream the butter and sugars together until they are perfectly light, fluffy and creamy.

 Add the flour and vanilla and stir to form a shortbread base.

Use your fingertips to press the shortbread base into the tin and then part-bake it for ten minutes.
Allow it to cool a little as you begin making the topping.
Beat the eggs together with the vanilla and then continue beating as you add in the muscavado sugar. It's a very dark colour as below:

Stir the flour and baking powder together and then fold it into the mix followed by the other dry ingredients. This is quite fun because the baking powder immediately begins to react to the eggs and flour and it all starts to bubble. Although this is also the stage where you understand why Nigella's publishers left out the 'Dream Bar' photographic entry...

 Pour the sticky mixture onto the pre-baked shortbread and spread it out evenly gazing in awe at the ugliness of your creation and the fact that it clearly looks *healthy* when it so clearly isn't.

Pop in the oven and bake for thirty minutes. At this point you can erase the image of the uncooked 'Dream Bar' from your mind and feast on the amazing scents of it instead.
To be fair to this 'chewy, fudgy, nutty, crisp tray bake' (Nigella Lawson, 'How to be a Domestic Goddess') it looks a lot better when you cut it up and it *is* true to its creator's description.

Chewy and nutty and I think it will last well in a sealed container. The shortbread base would be worth making by itself and would be the perfect Millionaire's Shortbread base. In fact, the shortbread is very dangerous as it makes the bars exceptionally more-ish and because they *look* healthy it feels completely possible to keep going back for more.

Will I be making 'Dream Bars' again? Probably not. Am I glad I tried them out? Yes, definitely.

Until tomorrow,
Silver Whimsy x

PS Serving Suggestion: best served with a magical pot of coffee.

'full stop.' Brick Lane's finest!

Dearest Readers of Confessions,                

Well! It has been an age, has it not, and yet so much cake has been both baked and consumed over these months - what excuse could I possibly have for not keeping you up to date with all the latest in, ummm, cake-eating and coffee-drinking? Well, aside from Jubilantics with the SIBF which mostly consisted of using gold card and double-sided sticky-tape to transform our ever-suffering cat Princess Tildred of Cumberland into HRH (see photo below) I have been busily making cake for young people as of yet uninitiated in Whimsenomics which, incidentally, appears to have taken over Europe. 

But moving swiftly on... I have returned and today come with news of a fantastic and utterly unpretentious cafe on (be prepared for a shock)  Brick Lane! Yes! It is possible for a cafe thereabouts not to be pretentious and, indeed, to be deemed worthy of a review from Whimsy! 

 The SIBF and I were escaping the Jubilee (having re-enacted the flotilla at a friends suggestion by floating Tildred on a tray in the bath) by attending an amazing FRIENDS gig at Rough Trade. But the lure of cake was too much and, after much to-ing and fro-ing we stumbled upon FULL STOP., roughly mid-way down Brick Lane. How could we resist a beautiful black-board featuring the incantation below...?

 On entering 'full stop.' the first thing one must comment on is the beautiful de-marcation of space consisting of the gorgeous vintage conservatory feel of the area towards the shop-front and the rather more sultry, sofas n papers n your dream of a place you could hide from a torrential downpour if stuck in the middle of London, towards the back.

 I was rather taken with these divine roses,
and struck by the whimsical beauty of it all! 

The next fabulous thing about 'full stop.' is that they have four variations of hot chocolate on the menu! Dearest Readers! Thant is not one, not two, not three, but four different types. I may not be brilliant at maths, but I do know that that is approximately four times more sub-genres of hot chocolate than your archetypal cafe! We went for the straightforward 'milk chocolate' variant and, oh, the joy to Whimsy when it arrived in a small glass with perfectly formed creamy froth on top AND a LONG SPOON for better drinking, stirring and sipping!

We also ordered the 'FRESHLY BAKED!' banana loaf and I was pleased to be offered it toasted - a delightful proposition on such a miserable day. In honesty, whilst I *did* enjoy eating it, I also did find it rather peculiar but not in a bad way - just in a is this completely cooked/isn't it/how much cinnammon (sp?!) is in this/what is in this/how do you make a cake with a crust and a squidgy centre?! kind of way.

Well, with that it is time to say tootle-pip for now and also to give you advance warning that TSWCS 3.0 will be taking place this year on July 1st in the usual place... 

Until next time, I'll leave you with some Brick Lane Bunting! 

Fondest Fondant Fancies, 

Silver Whimsy x  

PS Why didn't I ever start up my bespokebunting.com website? I would surely have made a fortune by now!

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