Winter term 2007
Almond cake (Owen Jones)
"Need I say more than it's a recipe belonging to Clarissa Hyman, from the Jewish kitchen" - Owen Jones (Recipe)
Pedophile sponge (David Stewart)
"It was disgusting" - Stuart Hall
Rich dark fruit cake (Will Donovan)
A boiled fruit cake, with mixed dried fruit including pineapple and apricot. Cake was fed with brandy and blueberry smoothie. Decorated with cherries and almonds formed into the shapes of hyperbolic polygons in the Poincare disk model, with the top of the cake representing the disk. This decoration was disappointingly difficult to make out due to a slight over-browning of the top. (Recipe)
Crocodile cake (Sarah Zerbes)
My mother used to make the cake quite often when I was little, and I always sat on the kitchen table next to the bowl with the dough when she was making it. Since I always tried to steal pieces of the dough and slices of apples, my mother warned me that there was a crocodile hidden in the cake which would bite my finger if I did not stop. (Recipe)
Summer term 2007
A cake of measure zero (Stuart Hall)
I had hoped to present the group with an extension of the work I conducted with Jones last term but owing to a mix of incompetence and the Fulham and Hammersmith “give an incredibly hungry dog a home for a week” scheme, there is no cake as such this week. However all is not entirely lost – I resolve to amend the situation by proceeding in the manner of Kevin Buzzard and borrowing/buying a constructed cake from the group at Waitrose. I hope the organiser will permit me to offer a more complete work at a later date.
No cake (Will Donovan)
I can't do the cake for this week. I've been summoned home for an audience with my ageing grandma on the occasion of my birthday.... I'm not man enough to make a cake.
Yogurt cake (Owen Jones)
An old classic (Recipe)
The Boston cream pie (Will Dison)
This cake was invented in 1850 by the pastry chef at Boston's Parker House Hotel. It consists of a layer of crème patissiere sandwiched between two victoria sponges and topped with a layer of chocolate ganache. Depending on my mood I may increase the chocolate content by adding some chocolate chips to the sponge and substituting chocolate crème pattissiere for the filling. And some flake on the top wouldn't go amiss.
Coffee cheesecake (David Stewart)
The cheesecake goes back to the time of Pythagoras when it was discovered that a compound of curds, eggs and sugar left out in the sun could be mixed with wood-shavings to form a daub for insulating hypocausts. However, it was when the Egyptian slave Loquax (AD 32) using toasted oats as a substitute for the wood shavings, discovered that these ingredients could generate a delicious foodstuff, that the cheesecake was born. Recent developments in the field of Cheesecake using new techniques, have meant that previously unimaginable results could be proved. My cake will address the recent interest in the 'coffee'-cheesecake, a deformation of the original definition.