June 2013: Microwave cake, Black Tea cake, Green Tea cake, German Buttercream, Cakes in a toastie maker...

June was a month of experiments with tea and cakes, and Pastry cream. looking back, I have no idea how I managed to bake so much, but it kept me occupied while I got used to hubby being back at work.

There are times in life of course, when what you really want is cake, quicker than now. I found a really good Cake in a mug recipe which was super easy, and topped with squirty cream - irresistible.

The great thing about this recipe is that there is no, eggs, milk or butter so it's dairy free for anyone who suffers from allergies. They have some good variations for different flavours on thier website, and I imagine would great if you had one of those, quick someone's coming round and I havnt done any shopping moments :D

For some reason in June I was obsessed with Tea in cake. I found out a lot of interesting things like how you shouldn't bake with tea leaves unless they're organic because the pesticides they spray on tea leaves arn't water soluble (hence why you can have them in your tea) but aren't great for you if you ingest them.

I made an organic black tea cake with honey and Lemon butter cream, which was nice.

I also played with Organic Matcha, which if you don't know is Japanese green tea, ground into a powder, it has this lovely green hue and an interesting slightly bitter taste. I tried lots of different  pairings. Chocolate cake with Green tea Creme Patisserie was probably my favourite.

Green Tea cake and Chocolate cake both with Green tea Creme Patissiere

Lemon swiss roll with Lemon German buttercream

Green tea and Organic black tea cakes with honey and lemon icing

I discovered that if you add butter to pastry cream it's called German Buttercream and is this lovely mousse-y texture. I have to be honest I havn't yet discovered a reliable way of making it, sometimes it comes out delicious, sometimes it comes out curdeled. Another thing you can do is add half as much Double cream to the amount of Pastry cream you have and whip it up into a light fluffy custard which is much more reliable. Both are very versatile and VERY tasty.

Vanilla cake with German Buttercream

Last but not least. The failure that was curd filled toastie cakes. The internet informed me you could make cake in a toastie maker. This was an exciting prospect for the Topsy Turvey Picnic.

I covered the plates in butter before adding the cake batter...and they still stuck. Disaster. It took forever to clean up the toastie maker, They tasted great though.