Emergency Cake!

Got home from work and disaster! No chocolate or pudding in the house!  Time for a rummage through the cupboards and some emergency planning.

The answer- the emergency sponge cake!

Ingredients
175g  Self raising flour
175g  Soft brown sugar
175g  Margarine
2 tbs  Cocoa
3 medium Free range eggs

Method
Preheat oven to 190 deg C
Cream together the sugar and margarine
Beat the three eggs
SLOWLY add the eggs to the mixture, stirring constatntly
Add the flour and cocoa and fold in
Grease two 20cm (8 in) cake tins
Spoon the mixture equally between the cake tins
Cook for 20 mins
Turn out and leave to cool

Emergency Icing (use buttercream icing if you can)
Ingredients
1 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs margarine
2 tsp Cocoa

Method
Mix all the ingredients together until it looks something like mud or icing!
Spread thinly on the cooled down cake and sandwich together

Tasted quite good for an emergency!!!

Politically Correct Puddings

ODD!!!

I don’t really have much time for political correctness at the best of times, but when I learned that they were renaming Spotted Dick to Spotted Richard, I almost fell off my chair laughing. What is going to be next?

Dick Turpin becomes Richard Turpin
Moby Dick becomes Moby Richard
What is going to happen to Fanny by Gaslight?
Football will become Footsphere

It has gone a bit insane. Perhaps there is something more sinister going on, as we are having our vocabularies dumbed down and reduced. Most individuals think in words and if you have less of them, then there is less you can think.

Spotted Dick Recipe- (For the rebellious!)

285g (10oz) Self-Raising Flour
150g (5oz) Shredded Suet
150ml (¼ pint) Milk
110-160g (4-6oz) Currants or Raisins
85g (3oz) Castor Sugar
1 Lemon, zest only, finely grated
Pinch Salt

Mix all of the dry ingredients, including the grated lemon zest, together thoroughly
Add enough milk to produce a soft dough.
Turn out onto a floured surface.
Roll out the mixture to produce a roll approximately 15cm (6 in) long and 5cm (2 in) in diameter.
Prepare either a tea towel lightly dusted with flour, or sheet of kitchen foil or a double thickness of greaseproof paper, brushed with melted butter.
Wrap loosely but securely, leaving enough space for it to rise.
Tie or seal the ends.
Place in the steamer and cover tightly.
Steam for 1½ to 2 hours.
Serve cut into thck slices with hot custard.

Fridge Cake

Another nice recipe, especially if you use really good quality chocolate

Ingredients
8oz biscuits (try ginger nuts or digestives)
4oz margarine
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 dessertspoon cocoa
2 dessertspoons drining chocolate (for something a little different try an individual sachet of options)
1 dessertspoon of sugar
100g chocolate (green and blacks is good)

Method
Smash up biccies into small bits- rolling pins work well (this is the fun part)
Melt everything (except the biccies and chocolate) together in a saucepan
Add the biscuits to the mix
Press into a baking tray (or 8 in cake tin)
Melt chocolate (in microwave or by whatever method you like)
Pour over the mix and spread out with a knife.
Put in the fride for a while to cool and set (or just eat it if you really cant wait)

Variations
During a spreading accident it was found that if the chocolate was mixed in with the biscuit mixture, it tasted really good, it just looked like a dogs dinner
Try using white chocolate instead of dark or milk

Below is Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall's version

Peanut Butter Oaties Yum!

PBOs or Peanut Butter Oaties are scrummie, here is the recipe

What You need
55g (2oz) Margarine
55g (2oz) Peanut Butter
pinch of salt
1/3 cup sugar- I use dark brown sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup oats
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons of water

How to make them
Put the oven on to 190 Deg C (thats 375 F)
beat the margerine and peanut butter together in a big bowl
add the salt and cream in the sugar (at this point I sometimes add cinnamon becasue it goes with anything and everything)
add the flour, oats, bicarb and water
MIX MIX MIX really well with a fork
turn out onto a greased baking pan (or cake tin) and press it down firmly
Cook for 15-20 mins in the oven
slice, cool and eat...  amke some more!!!

Things to be careful of
- don't use a tablespoon of bicarb, like I did once, or they will be nasty
- they taste very nice when still hot, but crumble everywhere

Trivia
PBO have their own theme song (music to come soon)

P B Os PB PB Os

It is traditional to sing it whilst they are cooking

When I next make some I will post a picture :-)
(but here is one I found on google)