Baking Society

The finished article

I started my second year of university last week and it's going well, although I'm still getting used to the early mornings! There was a Baking Society meeting this evening and I went along (last year it clashed with Italian classes). I made a passionfruit and lime sponge cake and it went down a storm. In fact, it went so well that I came first in their impromptu competition! The cake also got demolished within the hour so I have to apologise to Sarah and Grace as I promised them a slice - if you come over next Wednesday to watch Les Enfants Du Paradis then there will be a replacement cake waiting for you to help the three hour film go down more easily.

Passionfruit curd

The passionfruit curd was bought from one of the many markets in Central Manchester (one of the ones in St Ann's Square last June and also from the Christmas market) and is made by The Cherry Tree. I highly recommend them as it tastes incredible and they have other lovely flavours, like raspberry curd. My lime icing involves the zest and juice of 2 limes and then enough icing sugar to make a thick water icing (I do it by eye and so can't tell you the weight of the sugar). I got a new citrus zester today and they're really hard to work out the correct angle but once you do they're awesome and much better than my blunt grater!

A purple rose

I also made a purple sugarpaste flower to top my cake as I got annoyed by the society's email asking us to bake something that shows off our skills - a little intimidating, I thought. Sugarpaste roses aren't as hard to make as they look but they do require patience. In a future post I hope to explain how to make them, with photos of course.

The demolished cake