Curry and Cake

(this week's musical accompaniment: Sa-Ra Creative Partners: Nuclear Evolution/The Age of Love)

The 'and' is important here. This is NOT a cake made of curry. That will be next week.

This week's treats were firstly a curry and secondly a cake. But they were two separate things. Seriously, next week - curry cake.

So the curry - aubergine, tomato and cashew nuts, served with a mixture of brown and wild rices and some pupupupuppodum. Recipe can be found here.

Pictorial evidence:

Cake-wise, this week's offering was a world exclusive, the Orange Death Cake:
So-called because it is so orangey there is a 66% chance your first bite will cause you to experience extreme orange trauma and drop down dead, leaving a Tommy Sheridan-esque corpse.


The recipe (adapted from the Orange Victoria Sponge in Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book):

• 225g margarine
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 225g self-raising flour
• 2 tsp baking power
• 5 oranges
• some more margarine
• some icing sugar
• 150g more icing sugar
• 3 orange Fruit Pastilles
• 2 orange Opal Fruits
• 2 orange Chewits

The sponge:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C, grease 2 20cm sandwich tins.
2. Put the margarine, caster sugar, eggs, flour, baking power in a bowl, along with half the zest of one of the oranges.
3. Beat well until thoroughly blended.
4. Divide among the tins, and bake in the oven for about 25 mins.

The butter icing:

1. Cream the some margarine.
2. Add icing sugar until the butter taste stops being overpowering.
3. Add the rest of the zest of the orange.

The orange water icing:

1. Juice the oranges, strain to remove the pulp.
2. Put the 150g icing sugar in a bowl, and add the orange juice until you get the right consistency (fairly thick, not too runny).

Putting it all together:

1. Sandwich the butter icing between the two cakes.
2. Add the water icing to the top.
3. Chop up the Fruit Pastilles, Opal Fruits and Chewits, sprinkle them over the icing.
4. Congratulations, you have created orange death in cake form!

Conclusions/reflections/digestions/stomach aches:

The curry was tasty indeed, but very very mild - lacked a punch. Perhaps more chilli or spice? While we survived the cake (only mild Oompaloompaness occurred) it was perhaps just a little overpowering. We blame the Opal Fruits (mainly cause they're now called Star Burst - why!!!!!!! 15 years and we still can't come to terms with it. Opal Fruits was by far the better name. Star Burst?!?!? What the hell does that even mean? How does a star burst? Does it go 'pop'? It is more explosive? And how does that relate to a tasty fruit flavoured chewy sweetie? Opal Fruits - now that was a name you could hang your hat on. You knew where you stood with Opal Fruits. "Packet of Opal Fruits my good man" you'd say, and you knew what you were getting. Blah.).

Next week, music too!