Harry Potter Birthday Cakepocalipse

Mode: Massive Multiplayer Office Game
Hardware: Pretty much every piece of cutlery, tray, and bowl in my kitchen.
Accessories: Joy and wonder.

So as you may know, it's customary at my office to provide cakes for your co-worker when it is your own birthday. Because I'm a massive show-off, each year I get as many of my family members over as possible for a weekend of family fun and then ask them to help me make a metric FUCK TON of cakes. Cakes designed by me.

Why the Harry Potter theme? Well the LEGO Harry Potter series is currently being worked on by a lot of my hardworking peers who have been doing much overtime (holla!) But also there's the fact that I thought there's kind of a lot to work with, thematically speaking.

So it all begins with a shit load of cake mix. The foundation for pretty much everything here. Butter, flour, eggs, sugar.

I made 4 kinds of cupcakes, using my cupcake maker. The cupcakes are going to be themed around spells...

Yellow flavoured with lemon juice, Blue flavoured with Peppermint essence, Green flavoured with vanilla essence, and red flavoured with fresh carrot, cinnamon and chili powder.

 

For the centerpiece cake, Mum (codename pending?) worked on a large tray of chocolate brownie, and two vanilla sponge cakes made in curved bowls, in order to fit them together to create a cauldron shaped cake.

 

The chocolate tray portion is decorated with melted chocolate to look like a wooden desk.

 

 

With some fondant icing (which just happened to be blue for some reason) the cauldron is shaped over the 'ball' of spongecake.

 

...and painted black with some black food colouring. painting it instead of dyeing it means it could have a sort of 'glazed' look that actually makes it look a bit like cast iron. We also pressed in chocolate chips for rivets, and plaited licorice laces into a matching handle.

For these battenburg type sponge cakes, there would be one for each of the Hogwarts houses, with a matching colour scheme and appropriate flavour combination. Lime and coconut for Slytherin, blueberry and coffee for Ravenclaw, banana and chocolate for Hufflepuff, and strawberry and orange for Griffindor. I used whatever I could find for flavouring. Some were cordials, some were fresh fruits, as well as cocoa and coconut milk, etc.

 

When the cakes were baked, we cut them into strips and alternated them, rebuilding a cake and sealing them together with an appropriate flavoured jam and coating them in an appropriate coating.

Honey and marzipan for Griffindor, lime jam and coconut for Slytherin,  nutella and chocolate icing for Hufflepuff, and bramble jelly and coffee glazed marzipan for Ravenclaw.

 The final job before transporting was to ice the cupcakes. 3 of them were made with buttercream icing, flavoured to match the cupcake, but the green ones were topped with lime jelly.
 

 

My sister had a recipe she likes to use, where she makes edible shards that look like broken glass out of melting down boiled sweets or sugar. I used these to decorate the blue cupcakes. I also had various sprinkles and some edible glitter handy.

I don't seem to have any pictures of the cookies we baked, but I also made sugar cookies out of a big log of cookie dough which we cut in half really zig-zaggy, added some food dyes, and re-assembled and sliced into cookies and baked.

While me, my mum and my sister did all this, Ben H wrote down the display cards for each cake in calligraphic handwriting, for that authentic wizardy-feel. I'm not sure why wizards hate computers, but they do. Except for installation wizards.

Phew! That was 2 days of work, but don't worry we went out for dinner and a cinema trip to relax in the evenings. Cowboys and Aliens was pretty decent.

The next day we drove all the cakes down the road to the office, and badgered a couple people into helping me carry them up the stairs. But we're not just finished yet!.

I had to arrange ingredients in the cauldron cake, add pocky wands to the 'spells' and slice the battenburgs.

...

Okay, NOW It's done. Here you go, guys. I'll type out what it said on the display cards.

CAULDRON CAKE

Indulge yourself with a slice of thick CHOCOLATE BROWNIE wizard's desk with DARK AND MILK CHOCOLATE coating.

Or take a chunk out of the Cauldron itself, made from VANILLA SPONGE and FONDANT ICING joined with NUTELLA

Or just pinch some INGREDIENTS

GRIFFINDOR

If you are the bravest sort, you will have to try some STRAWBERRY and ORANGE&MANGO sponge joined with HONEY and coated in MARZIPAN.

RAVENCLAW

 If wit beyond measure is your greatest treasure, perk up with some COFFEE and FRESH BLUEBERRY sponge joined with BRAMBLE JELLY and coated in MARZIPAN.

HUFFLEPUFF

 If you're warm of heart and quite loyal to chocolate, have a big slice of CHOCOLATE and BANANA sponge joined with NUTELLA and coated with CHOCOLATE FONDANT.

SLYTHERIN

If you're the devious sort with unusual taste, try LIME and COCONUT sponge, joined with LEMON AND LIME JELLY and iced with DESSICATED COCONUT

(Dairy Free)

LUMOS

 If your workspace is dark and needs illumination, try a LEMON flavoured spell with LEMON BUTTERCREAM ICING

REPARO

If you're feeling broken down, fix yourself a PEPPERMINT SPELL with PEPPERMINT BUTTERCREAM ICING and PEPPERMINT SUGAR SHARDS

INCENDIO

If you're a little under the weather, heat up with a spicy CARROT AND CINNAMON CAKE with a hint of CHILI, coated with NON-DAIRY CINNAMON ICING

(Dairy Free)

STUPEFY

Dare to be stupid? Plunge headfirst into a VANILLA SPONGE and LIME JELLY spell. 

(Not suitable for vegetarians!)

CRUCIATUS COOKIES

Post-mortem: ***** TEN POINTS TO RED VALKYRIE HOUSE.

Jamaican me some jambalaya.

Mode: 2-3 Player
Hardware: Big wok.
Accessories: Glass of water.

When I say Creole Cuisine, you might think of eating wax crayons. Shame on you. Lime green doesn't taste of anything. I learned that waaaay back. In art college.

100% pure near-expirey re-frozen sea creatures.

I'm making SEAFOOD Jambalaya, using a pre-cooked seafood mix, the leftover halves of that sweet pepper, courgette, and a carrot I found in the bottom of the fridge. Fridge-scrapings you say? Nutritious!

My stylist told me ginger wasn't in season 'till next fall.

Here's our lineup of good old fashioned auntie jambalaya's home stored traditional flavour noise. Carribean everyday seasoning, cayenne pepper, cajun, black pepper, paprika and ginger.

Pro tips on adding spices: uuuuuuuuuhhhhh... remove lid. Use.

I put vegetable and toasted sesame oil in my wok, and tossed in all the vegetables and a heavy sprinkling of each of these spices.

Oxo. Poor man's cup-a-soup.

I boiled some water and dissolved a big teaspoon of chicken stock and added some torn up basil leaves.

Yes, you may use this for your death metal album cover.

I also added in some chopped up sun dried tomatoes and garlic, and a big squirt of ketchup.

I.C.I.C.C. Food

When the vegetables were fried enough, I added the rice and stock to boil the rice in, and the frozen seafood. Look at that big block of frozen crud. Hehehe. This now has to cook for like an hour and constantly come back and stir it and add more water until the rice is all absorbed and hopefully not burned.

Just splat it on there, nobody has any expectations of you.

Post-mortem: ***** SO GOOD. Would have been awesomer with risotto rice probably, but still great. Just a hot spicey pile of goodness.

Swedish Meatballs

 Mode: 2-3 Player
Hardware: Pans
Accessories: Kopparberg pear cider would be a perfect choice but I don't have any.

I grabbed some pre-made Swedish meatballs from Sainsbury's, because they've been taunting me for a while now. Swedish meatballs are made out of a mixture of beef and pork, or as I like to call it....

BÖRK!!!! HAHAHAHA I'M BRILLIANT

So in spite of the Swedish traditionally eating their meatballs just as meatballs, like with potatoes or something, I'm going to go ahead and make them ITALIAN STYLE with some spaghetti. In your face, cultural segregation!

Tidy.

To put my own smartass spin on the recipe I read off Ikea online, I'm making a sauce with milk (cause I didn't have any cream, and yes my flatmate is outta the house hence the dairy being accepted back into my life), a beef stock cube, a dash of soy sauce, and some chopped up sweet pepper and courgette. I also added some plain flour while stirring, to add thickness to it.

Captions: Y/N?

I Stirred it often to make sure the milk didn't get all gross or something, and once the pasta was starting to look cooked on the other side of the hob, I added the meatballs. They are pre-cooked, so they only needed to be heated basically.

Stir carefully, I don't want to bork this all up.

HMNNNNNGH yeah that's it. Super duper fast and easy because it's (well, was) the weekend.

If cooking is an art, I'm kind of a Jackson Pollock.

Post-mortem: **** Brilliant! Meatylicious. Maybe a little room for improvement. It's not like HOLY SHIT AMAZING, but nothing really went wrong and it makes a good unusual recipe as you don't tend to find many Scandinavian restaurants in the UK. Maybe it's because of all the shrimp flavoured cheese paste and salty licorice. Gross, you guys.

Fruity Chicken Curry

Mode: 2-4 Player
Hardware: Steamer, Pan.
Accessories: Cool glass of lemonade.

Ok, this time, no pre-made curry sauce. I can do this stuff if I wanted to, see? And I'm going to make an exotic and fruity flavoursome curry, even! So there T-square.

I started by steaming the white rice and some peeled potatoes, I put in a bayleef and some cardamom with the rice.

Now, I need a big ol' army of spices for this. A generous helping (about a tablespoon?) of mild curry and mango spice blend, and a small pinch of ginger, coriander, cumin, nutmeg and black pepper.

I diced some red onions as finely as I could (while wearing my 3d glasses) as well as some old raisins from my baking cupboard, and fried them all up with the spices and a beef stock cube in plenty of vegetable oil. That's right, beef stock in a chicken dish CALL THE COPS I DON'T GIVE A FUCK.

On goes some chopped up chicken and red pepper. Fry them thoroughly in the spices cause they be raw dogg.

I added a bit of water and also some ketchup, to make it more... saucy. When the potatoes were done I chopped them up and put them in, too.

Post-mortem: *** I think the sauce tasted really nice, but it wasn't nearly strong and saucy enough. I think there was too much potato and somewhat overcooked rice that it blanded out my delicious fruity paste. I'm not even sure why I decided it needed potatoes. Kinda blanking on that decision. Diced raisins and dried mango in curry though, are infact a good idea.

Hamster Cupcakes

Mode: Party Game!
Hardware: Mini Cupcake Oven.
Accessories: Maroon Amazon's birthday movie and dinner party.

Our favourite Yorkshire heroine is having a birth-anniversary, and in the single hour between work and going to her house, I decided to see if I could sneak in some surprise cupcakes!

I started with your basic fairy cake batter: (1/3 cup each of self-raising flour, butter, sugar, 1 egg) and used a tablespoon of rose flavoured syrup for the flavouring. This also would turn it a delightful pink colour... infact... its actually the EXACT COLOUR AND CONSISTANCY OF THAT SLIME FROM GHOSTBUSTERS 2.

'Why am I drippings with goo?'

Now, I don't have time to let these things cool and add a proper layer of icing. But hamsters being fluffy and unpredictable, this will work out ok. I used some candy citrus wedges for the ears, some chocolate writing-icing and some little sugar hearts for the nose. Awwwwwww.

Post-mortem: AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Turkey and Chive Burgers

Mode: 2-4 player
Hardware: Pan
Accessories: Mango Juice.

I don't have a bucket list, because those are soooo lame. But if you do, you should add 'INVENT MY OWN BURGER'. I'm going to invent mine own burger. Riiiight....


...


...

ok, now.

I was on an exciting odyssey to pick up a 3DS (woo!) the other day, and I had to make dinner when I got home even though it was really late. I picked up some turkey mince and some wholemeal baps (lol baps) on my way home. Here I mixed the turkey mince with a raw egg, some shredded parsley and a big handful of chopped up chives. I like to mix it up straight in the packaging, because its conveniently the right size and waterproof. Also don't forget to wash your hands extra thoroughly, because it's raw poultry. Also I put some corn on the cob in the steamer for about 15-20 minutes while doing the burgers.

Haha, look how gross it looks! It looks like krang from TMNT

Ooh, now it looks less gross. Not done yet though, I cook it really slowly on a medium heat to make sure its cooked through. make a cut in the middle of the fattest one to make sure there's absolutely no pink-ness. These are actually surprisingly big, I could have probably made 6 burgers with this much mince. Lotta meat.

I garnish the burgers with sun dried tomato, lettuce and chilli relish.

Post-mortem: ***** OH MY GOD THESE ARE SO GOOD YOU GUYS. Sooooo goood.