One perk of being a parent blogger is sometimes I get invited to do some interesting things. The lovely Nick Coffer from Weekend Kitchen on BBC 3 Counties radio invited me into his show this weekend. Each week he has a panel of 3 experts; a chef, a wine expert and an enthusiastic home cook. I’m not really sure how I sneaked on the panel.
It was quite amusing that I was invited in as I’m not known for my cooking prowess, but I’m a slow cooker fanatic and have been called the slow cooker queen on a couple of occasions.
Between the 3 of us we had quite a feast complimented by some very tasty wines. The theme was Guy Fawkes Night. We had Welsh rarebit (I panicked slightly as I thought they said rabbit), a sausage casserole, a bean casserole with squeaky cheese, blueberry crème brûlée and my now infamous Sticky Toffee Pudding Cake or should I say ‘stiffy’ Toffee Pudding…..yes, I did say stiffy on the radio and here’s proof!
When I was first asked to some on the show, I knew I had to make a main dish, which wasn’t a problem but when the lovely producer Emma emailed me and asked which pudding I would be doing, I panicked. As a family, we don’t really eat puddings as we don’t have sweet teeth and I’ve never made a ‘proper’ cake before. However, I rallied to the challenge, hit Google and came up with a recipe.
Too cut a long story short, it took three attempts to get a cake that was vaguely acceptable. The first one went straight into the bin, it didn’t rise and at one point there was smoke billowing out of the cooker. I thought the second one was a bit overdone and the apple slices on top had sunk like the Titanic.
As, I’m a huge fan of slow cooking someone suggested doing one in the slow cooker, so, at 10.30 pm the night before I had a go. However, as it was done in foil and once it is finished you had to turn it upside down on a plate, we had no idea until right before the show whether it worked or not and to say the least….it didn’t. The only way I can describe it is that it resembled ‘dog food that just slid out of the tin’ in both texture and colour.
Thank goodness I had decided to take cake number two in as a back up and in the end it was quite nice. It was a Spiced Toffee Apple Cake, which I found on the BBC Good Food Website. I should have quit while I was ahead.
Thanks to Nick and Emma for a great day and fabulous experience. One I will never forget.
oh dear but it is a little funny about the cake. Glad it all turned out ok in the end. x
It was a brilliant experience and I highly recommend it! Nick and Emma are lovely.