Cake of the Week - Victoria Sandwich with jam and cream

Every now and then, I like to get involved with Cake of the Week at Casa Costello. Helen is a very talented cake maker who makes beautiful cakes for a living. She has some brilliant cakes on her Cake of the Week feature and she encourages people to join in and link up their own cakes.This week, she has a fantastic Very Hungry Caterpillar cake that she made for her own daughter's 1st birthday which is gorgeous.

This is mine. I promised Monkey I would bake with him as I only ever seem to bake with Missy Woo these days. Not only that, I had a new mixer to try out - I won a Kenwood K-Mix hand mixer for our Christmas Cake - you can see all the winners here. It arrived on Friday so I was itching to get making with it but I had no plans for the weekend and cakes on the horizon. And Monkey was being notoriously elusive - forever out playing with his friends.

Then, all of a sudden, a window of opportunity presented itself. The only problem was, I didn't have much in. So, what do we make? A Victoria Sandwich, as that needs no special ingredients. However, we decided we wanted cream AND jam in the middle, so my husband and Missy Woo popped to the shop, whilst I stayed at home to make the cake. I used Mary Berry's all-in-one recipe so very very simple and all I did different was whip some cream for the filling and spread it on top of the jam. The handmixer was great although different to what I'm used to and will take a bit of adjustment, especially as the pulse function is next to off, so I kept turning it off and switching it back on by mistake!

So here is my cake. We made it late in the afternoon, so we had it for pudding - well, half is still in the fridge and it's calling to me. And I say we - Monkey had two pieces and asked for a third so had more than his fair share but Missy Woo is still claiming she doesn't like cream so only had a tiny piece then claimed she was "full" and didn't finish it. This is the child that loves yogurt. It is very nice and I hope a worthy addition to Cake of the Week this week.

Do you have a Cake of the Week? Why not join in with Helen's linky?

A jam packed day

We have this blackcurrant bush in our garden that was bought last year, I think. I am fairly sure that it was reduced from either Woolies or B&M which has replaced it in the local town. I noticed a few weeks back that it was heaving with ripe blackcurrants and hatched a plan to make jam with it. I've made jam once or twice before and found a recipe in a book on jams I have that was basically blackcurrants, sugar and water.

I was not expecting the odyssey that it became to make this bloody jam.

Monday - I go to the shop and buy a big bag of caster sugar with the weekly shop. On getting home,  I decide I will go pick the blackcurrants once the shopping is packed away. I am about to start when I notice it has started raining. I decide to wait until it stops as it looks like a lot to pick. It is still raining 9 hours later.

Tuesday - it's raining when we get up, but after clearing up the kitchen after school run, I notice it's not too bad, and head outside. It is now 10am. I figure it's going to take me half an hour. After half an hour, there's still loads to pick on the bush. I tell myself I'll stop, at the latest, at 11am. By the time 11am rolls around, I feel like I've just got a few more to pick so I tell myself I may as well finish clearing the bush as more rain is forecast and the berries might rot. I finally finish at 11.20am with a huge bowl of blackcurrants to show for my labours.

Fresh from the garden

I get inside and it starts to rain again about 10 mins later and doesn't stop for the rest of the day including some complete deluges triggering flash floods. My timing, it would appear, was apt - for a change.

I wash, pick over and weigh the blackcurrants. Nearly 2kg! The recipe I have is for 1kg. Simple, I think - I'll just double the recipe. I have a large stockpot I've used before now. The recipe states a lot of water (and I think I'd add less definitely in future, as from what I know of jam-making, you need to cook the fruit and reduce it to an extent for it to be the right pectin level to set. Too much water is going to slow down how long this takes). So, I think my first mistake is to blithely double the amount of water needed to the pan.

Noon - The blackcurrants need to boil and soften apparently before the sugar is added so the pan goes on the hob. And I wait. My problem is that the stockpot is so big that leaving the lid off means it doesn't boil properly, and putting it on means it boils over too easily. And that amount of blackcurrants and water take a looooooong time to get up to boiling point. It's nearly 12.20pm by the time it starts boiling when I encounter aforementioned problem with keeping it boiling. More than once, the pan boils over and makes a mess of the hob. The recipe says boil for 15 mins but I easily leave it for double that to ensure it has boiled enough. Whilst this is happening, I wash the jars I am going to use and place in the oven to sterilise.

1pm - I finally add the sugar and start to stir, to dissolve it. It takes about 15 mins of stirring to dissolve the sugar completely and I turn up the heat again. Obviously now, there is even more in the pan and boiling over is an even greater likelihood. I resolve to watch the pan but yanno, I have things to do and I'd already made and let two cups of tea go cold. Again, the recipe says boil for 15 mins before starting to test for a set but it keeps boiling up, I have to take the lid off or risking it boiling onto the hob, then take the lid off and it stops boiling. I then double - again - the length of time I need to leave it cook because of this, and also because I have to keep skimming the scum off the top, which means leaving the lid off.

2pm (ish) - it looks like I could start testing for a set but the first couple of goes show it needs to cook for longer. At least the jars will be well sterilised by now - they've been in the oven for nearly an hour and a half, but only need about 15 mins. Finally, the test shows it's starting to set, so I leave it a few minutes to go and make an important call because I'd had someone on the phone hassling me about something.

The call takes a bit longer than planned but no more than about 5 mins and I go back into the kitchen and OMG! Boiling over is probably a euphemism for what has occurred - there is a river of jam on my hob. The lid was on, wasn't it?

2.30pm (less than an hour till school run) - I hastily put all the jam into jars, and start the process of clearing up the hob, the burners, everything and bunging anything that is removable into the dishwasher. After a LOT of scrubbing and scraping, I finally get the hob clean.

Lots and lots and lots of jam.

3.10pm - FINISHED! I look at my watch and think it's time to leave for school. And all I have to show for my day is a few jars of jam. But the jam, the jam is fabulous - and all the more satisfying because the fruit was free and really fresh when I made the jam. Intensely flavoured, still slightly tart, but with enough sweetness to balance it out. I made so much, I gave away 3 jars as presents and still left us with about six months' supply of blackcurrant jam. It is not a stiff set so it is lovely with natural yogurt and I think it would be nice on ice-cream too.

I noticed that the jam recipe says it takes an hour to make. Ha, I started at 10 and finished past 3. I make that 5 hours (although admittedly, the recipe doesn't expect you to pick your own first!) and counting. As my plan was to make jam AND chocolate cake during the day whilst the children were out, my evening was somewhat filled with cake making and icing.

Next time, I will make smaller batches of jam though most of the recipes online seem to use the amount of blackcurrants that I had. Maybe I just need special jam-making equipment. Or maybe I just need to concentrate more.

OK, OK.....I am officially rubbish at blogging.

My last post was 4 days ago and I've got nothing in the pipeline. For the second week in a row, I am devoid of inspiration for the Gallery. I've got some ideas in my head but nothing laid down in concrete form that will make any sense to anyone but me. My online brand, if I were to have one, is being neglected. In my defence, it's nearly the end of term and I spent about 5 hours of my child free day yesterday (I get 6.5 hours to myself) making blackcurrant jam!

However, I hope you've noticed I've made some changes to the blog over the last few days. I've added a whizzy button to get an RSS feed of my blog and you can now also subscribe via email so that you get sent you new posts if that's what floats your boat. And this evening, I found I could add the little buttons at the bottom of the post that allow you to post links to all sorts of random places.

This is on top of the new commenting system I added last week, and the fancy new layout I found on Blogger's new Template Designer.

I may not be sharing my wisdom with you, but I've been tinkering away and making me look a bit different and hopefully, this blog will be easier for you to "drive".

Come back soon when I have real wisdom to share with you. Pretty please. I'll try to make it good, honest.