Hopeless Baker's Guide to Perfect Cakes

If you've not been too successful at baking, hopefully this recipe will help; I've given thorough explanations for each stage. The advantages of home baking are:

1) you can get round intolerances/allergies without wasting time scouring supermarket shelves for expensive alternatives;

2) it's generally cheaper. The ingredients for these cakes will cost as little as 47p using: tesco savers self-raising flour, silver spoon granulated sugar (can be made into caster sugar), stork margarine (in a tub) and tesco value eggs ;

3) they're healthier than shop bought cakes, which will contain preservatives and other nasties;

4) your kitchen smells wonderful after a bit of home baking ;

5) home baked cakes taste so much nicer than shop bought.

I've chosen fairy cakes as I think they're the easist the make; no messing around trying to extract stubborn sponges from tins, only for the whole thing to fall apart thereby ruining your hard work. Also you can freeze them (uniced) and pop a couple in the kids' lunch boxes every morning.

Ingredients for about sixteen cakes: (DO NOT estimate quantities, measure everything!)

• 4 oz caster sugar OR 4 oz xylitol OR 2 oz xylitol and equal volume (not weight) of artificial sweetener (eg Silver Spoon's sweetness and light - something maltodextrin/aspartame based). I'd recommend trying not to use maltodextrin/aspartame as there is considerable controversy about their safety, but if the xylitol may not be sweet enough for you. If you have a mini-chopper, use it to make caster sugar (since shop-bought caster sugar is just expensive, chopped up granulated sugar.) Granulated sugar will work instead, but in my experience isn't quite as good as caster sugar.
• 4.5oz soft spread (such as Stork or Pure - dairy free - spread). Make sure whatever spread you use is suitable for baking (I once had a very unpleasant result with some spread not designed for baking. It was a little like eating one of those sponge tennis balls.) You can also use hard margarine, but results are better using soft spread in a tub.
• 5oz self raising flour. You can instead use plain flour and add baking powder to make self-raising flour. (Tip: don't forget the baking powder!!)
• 2 eggs (medium sized or large, doesn't matter too much)
• possibly a splash or two of milk (or rice/soya milk)
  

Equipment you'll need:

• An oven, set to 190 degrees celcius/ 375 degreed farenheit / gas mark 5
• A radio/CD player (nothing like a bit of music when baking)
• A mixing bowl (a smallish one will do, you don't want a large mixing bowl - it'll be too hard beating up the fat & sugar properly)
• Something to mix the ingredients, like a wooden spoon or a stiff spatula. Also a teaspoon, a fork and a knife (an ordinary cutlery knife for eating dinner with)
• Scales (very important. Baking is a scientific process and requires ingredients to be in accurate proportions)
• Two fairy cake tins (or if you only have one, cook the cakes in batches)
• Fairy cake paper cases
• A sieve (the purpose of a sieve is to incorporate air into the flour. If you don't have a sieve, try shaking the flour into the mixing bowl from a height of about a foot so that some air gets in there)
  

Method:

1. Measure out the sugar and fat, mix them up and give them a good beating till the texture becomes fluffy and light and the colour pales. This is the most important stage in cake making; whereas cooking (eg soups, main meals etc) is a process of combining flavours and achieving palatable textures, baking involves reordering the tiny molecules of each ingredient (I'll spare you the scientific detail. If the "all in one method" has failed for you, this is probably why; the ingredients can't combine properly.) Beating the sugar and fat at this stage not only combines the molecules but also incorpororates a lot of air. Therefore you need to go nuts beating the sugar and fat together till your arms ache; stop occasionally to get other ingredients ready, set the oven temperature, put the paper cases in the baking tins etc. It is hard work, but worth it. Also it burns off lots of calories, thereby enabling you to enjoy the cakes guilt free.

2. Break the two eggs into a mug/cug and give them a brisk beating with a fork (just a few seconds till the white and yolk is mixed together). Pour about half into the sugar/fat mixture and briskly stir it in. You can't be too forceful as the mixture will be fairly runny at this point and you don't want cake mix splattered all over your kitchen. (I imagine you don't anyway.) Then stir in the other half of the mixture. The mixture might curdle at this stage (it'll go all lumpy). This doesn't matter too much as the flour will stop this in the next stage.

3. Sieve in the flour (and baking powder if you're using plain flour). At this point the mixture has a sex change and where it used to be a bloke and you could beat it around and it was great, now it's a delicate lady and you should touch the mixture as little as possible. This is because in the previous two stages, lots of air was incorporated into the mixture and we don't want to lose it. Fold in the flour till it's just mixed. "Folding" definition; the best way is to slide your spoon/spatula deep into the mixture and keeping it as flat as possible, draw it up to the top of the mixture and then turn it upside down. This will bring up the ingredients lying up the bottom of the bowl and put them on top. Since the mixture's quite liquid, it all slops together naturally and becomes combined (you'll have to scrape round the sides of the bowl a few times though). DO NOT beat the mixture at this stage; doing so will get rid of all the air you incorporated in stage one. DO NOT over stir the mixture. As soon as the flour is mixed in, move onto stage 4. If the mixture is too stiff and you can't fold it in properly, you'll need to move on to stage 4 to help.

4. You will most likely need to fold in a splash or two of milk at this stage. The mixture should be slightly sloppy, a spoon should NOT be able to stand up rigidly in it (it should slowly fall over). On the other hand, it should NOT be liquid enough to slide off a spoon easily. It should be gloopy and slowly slide off a spoon.

5. Put the mixture into the fairy cake cases in the muffin tins. The easiest way is to use a teaspoon to scoop up a big dollop and use a knife to push it into the cake cases. There is no need to level off the mixture; since it's slightly liquid, this will automatically happen when you put the cakes in the oven. Do not fill each case to the brim; there needs to be space for them to rise. Dividing the mixture between 16 cases should be the right number.

6. Put trays in oven and bake for 15 (possibly 20) minutes. How to tell when they're done; sponge will darken to a light tan colour and if you press it lightly with your finger, it will bounce back. If you insert a sharp knife/cocktail stick into one of the cakes, it should come out clean(ish); this means there's no soggy, uncooked mixture hiding under the surface. Let the cakes cool on a wire rack. Should they still be there when they've cooled, you can ice them (tip: use hot water to make glace icing to prevent lumpy icing). Icing suggestions: any sweets (eg minstrels, M&Ms, jelly babies, smarties, chopped flake bars), grated/curled chocolate, silver balls, coloured piped icing, cherries, hundreds and thousands*. Or freeze cakes un-iced.

7. Bribe kids/spouse/flat-mate into clearing and washing up for you. Suggested conversation:

You: I've just made some cakes for us, I'm exhausted after all that hard work, could you do the washing up please?
Your bus boy/girl: No.
You: Fine, you don't get any cakes then.
Your bus boy/girl (on smelling beautiful aroma eminating from the oven): Where's the washing up liquid?

Variations on the above recipe:

• Replace 1 oz of flour with 1 oz of cocoa for chocolate cakes. Chocolate cakes taste great when covered with Supercook's chocolate cake covering.
• Add 1 oz of sultanas or raisins to stage 4.
• Replace 1 oz of flour with desiccated coconut (and a bit of grated lemon rind if you fancy). This helps to sweeten the cakes, particularly good if you're using xylitol.
  

* Apologies to any fellow Candida sufferers who I just forced to read that list of sugar infested yumminess.

Have fun baking, let me know how it goes :)