When I first joined my current workee company I quickly learnt that my new team of colleagues were very receptive to goods of the baked variety. Before I knew what was happening I had been crowned team baker and the cake orders were staking up! So in no particular order here are some of the things I’ve been cooking recently, with recipe’s or links to the relevant book/site where necessary.
The recipe is my auntie Adrienne’s Lemon drizzle cake, a version of which can be found here. I managed to find the awesome disco spots in the cake decorating aisle of our local supermarket, I was actually after lemon and orange jellies but had to settle for jelly diamonds instead. The second was a version of the classic cake from childrens literature, Bruce bogtrotters chocolate cake (complete with calorific icing and white chocolate writing). DO NOT do what I did with this cake, I couldn’t get the egg whites into stiff peaks so as an insurance policy I added baking powder forgetting the rule do not add to chocolate cake as it will make it taste salty. Fortunately I only added a bit so just about got away with it & the expectant mum to be seemed to like it, the unfortunate side effect is that Jam keeps on making jokes about salty cake, grrrr.
The next cake was for my lovely boss who has left to renovate a barn on her mum’s farm. That is a whole other level of project management! This was a classic Victoria Sponge, with homemade bramble jam courtesy of my friend Jen.
I didn’t realise how much space heather took up till I spelt it out in jelly tot halves! There are a few sugar daisies on there also just for good measure! Next was another leaving cake for another boss, Nicki was also leaving to build up her yurt business Nichi is a very keen gardener and keeps a veg allotment. I decided to use the Bruce cake as a base again, but just in one pan, the tin was a bit on the big side I think but it kept the cake nice and moist. On the top was smashed up flake and then my sugar paste ‘vegetables’. Next time I might go for white and green and see if I can dye the white. 
Here is Nicki with her cake 
I also tested out a few new recipes. Apparently this recipe is a favourite of my brothers, it’s a rhubarb and custard cake and just the thing for using the rhubarb from our garden and the spare packet of custard in the larder. I put in slightly more custard than was called for, that seemed to work very well so I would definitely recommend it. 
The second experiment didn’t go quite as well, it was a salted caramel tarte tatin from Rachel Khoo’s book which I got for christmas. I followed the recipe exactly but my team declared the salted caramel too salty (it didn’t set that well as a result) so one to have a another crack at one day. 
Not your fault Rachel, look at your lovely tiles.
