Cakey cakey cake cake - BEDM Day 14

Today's BEDM topic is Food Glorious Food so I thought it would be a good opportunity to do a bit of an update on my Not Really Resolutions, one of which was to bake once a month.

It's safe to say the first quarter of the year hasn't been a massive success and there's no way that Mary, Delia or Nigella need to be quaking in their boots just yet. In fact, a small child armed only with a fork could probably have had more spectacular results...

Gingerbread cookies

Some of you are going to go mental when I tell you how I made these. I made these from a ready-made dough that you can pick up from Tesco.

Hahahahaha. Guess what? I don't care.

I had to roll out the dough and cut the shapes and put it in the oven and bake them. Therefore it counts as baking.

And do you know what? They tasted really really good. I can't lie. There was the perfect amount of ginger in them, they cooked well and were the right side of chewy and best of all, there was no bloody mess making them. No 12 million bowls used. No spoons all over the shop. No light coating of flour over everything in the kitchen. Marvellous.

I'm not even sorry. I'd do it again.

Cookie Monster Cupcakes

We don't really need to talk about this again do we? Read this post and don't make me re-live the hell again.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Aah I had such high hopes for these cookies from the Hummingbird Baking recipe book. But it just wasn't successful. People who write recipe books must assume that the people who are reading them are like me - basically an idiot. So you need to tell me everything. And that includes giving me just a tiny cue as to how much dough I'm supposed to be splatting on my baking sheet. Just a hint would be lovely.

Which is why I ended up with gigantanormous cookies because I was putting way too much dough on the sheet.

This would have been fine if I hadn't made my second mistake which was to be afraid that they were too squishy and leave them in a few minutes too long. So I basically had really massive and really hard to eat cookies. Well done me.

The dark chocolate in them was horrible too. You can take your 80% cocoa and go whistle down the wind - I should have just used el cheapo milk chocolate and I'd have probably been a happier bunnier. Although still at risk of losing a tooth.

Raspberry Bakewell Cake

Technically this should have been April's bake. But it wasn't. I made it in May instead. Now the keen eyed among you may go "But hang on a minute, she said she would bake once a month, what a weaselly cheat!" and to those people I say, "Shut up". I'll bake twice in May to make up for it alright?!

God. Some people.

This cake has turned out the best out of all the bakes so far, although that doesn't seem difficult given what it's up against. I got to use my sister's fancy Kitchen Aid which I couldn't work and which sent flour flying all over the room - I'm yet to fall under the Kitchen Aid spell.

The mixture is very thick. You put half the mixture in the tin, then add the raspberries and then it says to "dollop the remaining cake mixture on top and roughly spread - you might find this easier to do with your fingers."

They are not kidding. It is not a pouring cake and I had to splat the mixture on and then smear it around. Sounds gross but it turned out ok, apart from the fact that it burned around the edges a little. I'd probably chuck in a bit of almond essence for good measure if I made it again - I couldn't have done with more of a kick of almond.

Recipe here

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So I think we can say that it hasn't gone well. But that's cool, you know I only do these things so badly to make you feel better, right? That's what it is.