Baking- the rundown.

The cakes are made. Yes two. A variety of cakes, suitable for multiple tastes and taking into account any 'difficult' people with banana intolerances...you know who you are!

Baking with Sam was much like being in a year 7 home economics lesson. I had the same sense of fear and respect being in a situation where I was in effect, totally out of control and hung off her every word...kind of (it was very distracting...music, other traumas going on, fingers to lick).

Lindsey at one point took a break from her 'mixing' and came into the kitchen to comment that I looked like a 5 year old. At the time I had my jeans rolled up, (I'm not sure why). My sleeves rolled up and my hands in a big mixing bowl full of gooey chocolatey mess with Sam standing over me saying things like "Didn't they teach you how to knead at school?", and quoting cookery facts such as "Whilst whipping you are effectively making butter" as if I would be au fait with them. Of course I nodded and smiled and licked my fingers as much as possible when as she wasn't looking.

After much mixing, needing, seiving and cracking, the 3 cake bases were in the oven rising like a dream. Lindsey was licking the choc mix happily from the bowl and I was prodding the cakes with a knife every 30 seconds.

This pattern continued nicely until I got abit bored and engrossed in Graham Norton, and then went for a shower forgetting them totally. Thank god I had Sam there keeping a watchful eye on proceedings.

So out they came, with that nice brown, homemade 'tinge' and sat on some 'cooling' racks. The cooling phase came as a bit of a shock to me as I like to get a job done, wham bam, so hanging around, waiting for them to cool was quite frankly a bit of a bore. Something to do with melting and instability.

Then the icing. Sam demonstrated with an expert flick of the wrist and coated a side of the cake with a thick creamy evenly spread icing and then handed the 'spatula' to me to complete the task under her watchful eye. Unfortunately, being a cack hander, I prodded the cake, dislodged lots of cream which mixed with the dark brown icing and made it look mouldy and messy. That was the end of my icing attempts. THAT never happened in home economics classes, you were left to struggle and then chastised at the end for your pathetic and frankly inedible attempts .

By the end of the evening, and after a few glasses of wine, I felt quite inspired and it's fair to say, got a bit out of my depth, making observations like ' I think the icing should be applied in a swirling motion' and 'Perhaps the spatula ought to be angled as such...'. Lindsey made the point that I ought to shut up when I then asked whether or not the cream cake had to be kept in the fridge. Ok. I get the point. Don't run before you can walk, or criticise before you can bake.

So we all went to bed happy. All except poor Gavin who had come in from work starving to find he'd got no dinner as we'd all been too busy feeding our own faces with pizza, AND, to add insult to injury, the gorgeous scrummy cake smells wafting down the stairs and tantilising his olfactory senses were only that as he wasn't allowed to sample our delights. Ouch.

So, heartfelt thanks to the Gowers and 'the China' for their efforts in 'assisting' me with my cakes. I couldn't have done it without you all. I'll send you a link to the blog posting on my work website when it appears and you can feel all warm and glowy. If they say something awful, I really didn't have that much to do with it. If they say something great, you were very much the sous chefs....ok?! Deal.

Love you guysxx