Stop, thief!

It's a bad day for retail when you visit your local High Street for the first time in weeks with high hopes and flexible plastic - but all you come away with is a packet of fake/joke flies (cost £1). So to cheer myself up I thought I'd indulge in a bit of theft. Not old-fashioned pilfering from Tesco like Anthony Worrall Thompson, but new-fangled internet plagiarism from another blogger: Blackberry and Almond Traybake from English Kitchen Baking. When these popped into my inbox I knew I had to make them straight away. I hope you feel the same.

Fruity, cakey, almondy, squidgy... gorgeous

Blackberry and almond traybake

250g butter

250g caster sugar

2 eggs, beaten

120g plain flour

225g ground almonds

300g blackberries (frozen)

a few drops of almond essence

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Line a baking tin measuring about 30x20cm. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the eggs a little at a time, fold in the flour, ground almonds and essence. Tip into the tin and scatter the blackberries on top. Bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown. Dust with icing sugar when cool, or eat warm with cream.

Cannibalistic kitchen capers

Tell your children you found an intruder in the house, cut off his fingers, gouged out his eyeballs... and that's what they're going to eat.

Dead man's hand

Dead Man's Fingers

Frankfurter sausages
Finger rolls (ha ha ha)
A radish or 2
Ketchup
Heat the frankfurters (microwave, or in a pan of boiling water), cut each roll in half and poke a hole in the non-cut end with the handle of a wooden spoon. Squirt in some ketchup and insert half a frankfurter. Cut a little bit off the end of the sausage to make a bed for the nail which you will have fashioned from a slice of radish.

Eyeball cakes

Eyeball cakes

I took 2 eggs and weighed them - 130g. I creamed together 130g sugar and 130g margarine, added the eggs, and folded in 130g self raising flour and a bit of vanilla extract. I baked them in bun tins for about 30 minutes at 180/gas until perfectly cake shaped and smelling delicious. Allow them to cool. Meanwhile, mix together some icing sugar and a little bit of hot water until you have a paste. Spread it on the cakes, draw veins with red writing icing and put a chocolate button in the middle.

Antidote to overpriced & underwhelming restaurant food

It's half term! Cooking has taken second place to entertaining the children, and we have been eating on the hoof: Rubbish food, mean portions, and dirty, shabby premises yesterday; clean with a great view today but a big slimy slab of institutional lasagne served with naked lettuce... It all leaves a bad taste in the mouth as well as a hole in the pocket.

By contrast, I made a generous (and distinctly lo-effort) dinner for all four of us tonight for £6.75 - meatballs and pasta - comprising 250g wholemeal spaghetti (50p) and 24 meatballs (£4.00) which I cooked and drained of fat before adding one jar of Dolmio sauce £1.75). I let them simmer for about an hour, before serving with 50g grated Grana Padano (50p). Best of all, when I went to the loo afterwards there was no alien urine on the seat!

You can make it a bit healthier by adding chopped fresh tomatoes and a clove or two of crushed garlic.

In a desperate bid to use up some more apples, I also made a

Toffee Apple Ginger Pudding

Ginger sponge on a toffee-apple base

Base layer:
4 apples, peeled and sliced
A small knob of butter
A teaspoon or 2 of lemon zest (completely optional)
5 tablespoons Carnation caramel/Dulce de Leche

Sponge topping:
100g margarine or butter
100g light brown sugar
2 eggs
100g self raising flour
1 heaped teaspoon ground ginger

Pre-heat the oven to 190/gas 5. Place the apples, butter and a couple of tablespoons of water in a bowl and microwave for 2-5 minutes to soften. Add the lemon zest and caramel to them and spread in the base of an ovenproof dish. Beat sugar and margarine/butter together until light and fluffy, add the eggs one at a time, and fold in the flour and ginger. Spread over the apples and bake for about 40 minutes until the sponge is golden and well risen.

I didn't measure my apples as I already had a vat of cooked ones, but just spread them out in a generous layer on the bottom of the dish and stirred in the caramel. I usually use butter (favouring it as a more natural product), but used Stork today for speed and lightness of sponge.

Sunday afternoon tea

Lots of visitors this weekend but everyone's gone now. We've lit a fire, battened down the hatches and and are having a good old-fashioned Sunday tea, just like the ones we used to have in front of the children's drama on telly on Sunday nights. Do you remember them? - The Secret Garden and the Wolves of Willoughby Chase (which gave me a terror of wolves lasting well into adolescence).

Assemble some crumpets and muffins, toast them gently in the kitchen then finish them off on a toasting fork in the fire. Spread liberally with butter and Marmite, snarling warnings to the children about the dire consequences of getting either on the designer cushions. Add several cups of tea and some leftover

Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream Filling and Chocolate Buttercream Icing

Before decoration

After decoration by 8 year olds

Sponge:
300g caster sugar
300g softened butter
6 eggs
225g self raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
75g cocoa powder, sieved

Vanilla buttercream filling:
250g icing sugar
80g softened butter
25ml milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Chocolate buttercream icing:
125g icing sugar
60g softened butter
25g cocoa powder mixed with a little boiling water

Heat oven to 170/gas 4. Grease and line 2 x 20cm tins. Cream butter and sugar together and beat in the eggs one by one.  Fold in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder, divide between tins and bake for about 30-40 minutes until the sponge has risen and a cocktail stick comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

To make the icings, mix together the ingredients in a food mixer or using an electric whisk. Start very slowly and keep on going until light and fluffy.

I used Chocolate Buttons to decorate. The giant ones would have been better, and brown and white chocolate fingers are good to stick around the outside of the cake. Or you could go really retro and use a cake frill. Yes, you can still buy them!