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This week mum asked me to make a rather special birthday cake... No, the tractor cake is not for a 5 year old, even a 10 year old but her 41 year old (as of tomorrow) boyfriend, Richard. His hobby is to collect old, diused 'vintage' tractors and refurbish them (I think... that's the gist I got anyway! He's more normal than he sounds, honest!)

So this weekend I got a Wilton Tractor Shape pan (found on amazon.co.uk - not found that easily in the UK) and set to work.

I particulary chosen Wilton as they
a) actually had a tractor shape available making my job a lot easier and
b) are reknowned for making good quality pans that are easy to use even in the most ridiculous of shapes!
I decided on a marble cake base and as they are actually going camping for his birthday (*shudder*) I had to make it on a tray so it was easy to transport to the campsite in the car.

Safe to say that over 4 hours later, I was very happy with the results:

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I couldn't quite get the detailing right on the yellow bits (the grate, etc) so decided it was safest to just leave them plain. I used icing tip 1C for the green tractor (in hindsight, poss should have used 3B) and a flat nozzle for the wheels which I then wiggled for the effect.

I was disappointed the colours weren't more vibrant but the buttercream was turning to paint if I added any more colouring - pastel colours that taste nice seemed a better option!

Home Ec Nemesis II

A few months ago (how time flies!) I blogged about how I wasn't exactly top of the class in Home Ec  & decided it was time to right the mishaps of the culinary past.

It was time to take on the Home Ec Nemisi.

Crumble was the first of this series of posts & this weekend, I decided it was time to tackle Apple Pie.
Another of George's favourites, I figured if I could get crumble so right, how much could go wrong?
... hmm...

I grabbed our kitchen Bible - a cook book from 1979 (mum's first cook book from when she left home) thinking old fashioned may know best. There's a story about it being left on a hob before I was born, wrapped in black stripey wrapping paper in an attempt to hide the damage and again about 15 years ago in some of my sticky-back-plastic-text-book-coverings in a desperate attempt to give it a new lease of life after the spine finally snapped off. It's well loved shall we say!

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So, my shortcrust pastry actually went really well. I seemed to have made enough for the choice of dish (George didn't have a pie dish so I ended up just using an average heat proof dish but this meant I couldn't do the little rim of pastry to seal it all up... oh dear...)

The fruit filling (apple & blackberries - George's favourite apparently) also went well, I even was sure to remember extra sugar after apparently my crumble was a little tart.

Into the oven it went, 220C for 20mins, then 30mins at 180C........ fan assisted ovens didn't exist in 1979.... major woops.

George luckily thought of this & saved the day after the 20mins so we simply didn't put it back in for another 30mins.

In my opinion, the pastry wasn't really sweet enough and it wasn't really soft enough and it looked more like a meat pie that a fruit pie. But George was adiment it tasted good. I remain unconvinced. But maybe I'm just fussy.

Apple Pie - I'll be back.

click here for this Apple Pie recipe (temperatures and timings altered for fan assisted oven!)