Being a freelancer is pretty tough going at times. There can be long periods with very little to do, with very little money, or with no-one to talk to. There are extremes – from incredibly busy and not knowing how to cope to intense lonliness, and everything in between. The biggest of these problems I’ve found to be the lack of money and trying to get a decent work/life balance: it’s all too easy to spend the weekend pottering with work and not properly relaxing.
Well, I’ve found a solution to this: baking cakes. I’ve developed something of an expertise with the classic lemon drizzle cake, and today decided to do a bit of experimenting.
Baking is something interesting to do and, when money is tight, it’s pretty cost effective, too. The basic cake recipe calls for the following ingredients:
- 6oz (175g) castor sugar
- 6oz (175g) self-raising flour
- 6oz (175g) margarine or softened butter
- 3 large eggs
- 1tsp baking powder
When you look at the costs, you can get the following:
- Castor sugar, 1kg: £0.77
- Own label self raising flour, 1.5kg: £0.41
- Own label butter/margarine, 500g: £0.90
- Organic large eggs, 12: £3.69
- Baking powder, 170g: £0.17
Which means you can make about three cakes for £6.00 – £2.00 a cake – and still have loads of eggs and flour left over. 1.5kg of flour is enough for about 8 cakes. Plus you get the fun of baking, a break from work, and an ideal present for someone if you’re too broke to buy them something from the shops. While I’ll happily buy own-label flour and marge – while money is tight, at least – I’ll never compromise on eggs and always buy organic, free range. If you’ve got a few pence to spare then fair-trade sugar and organic flour is better – and if you can get flour direct from a local mill, so much the better.
Today I made up my own variation on the basic recipe, and I’ve had one slice and it seems to have worked. Here’s my recipe for Adam’s lovely apple and cinnamon cake:
Ingredients:
- 6oz (175g) castor sugar
- 6oz (175g) self-raising flour
- 6oz (175g) margarine or softened butter
- 3 large eggs
- 1tsp baking powder
- 1.5tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 medium cooking apple.
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F, gas mark 4). Reduce this slightly for fan-assisted ovens.
2. Lightly (very lightly if it’s non-stick, which most are) grease a 9″ x 5″ x 3″ (23cm x 13cm x 7cm) loaf tin and line the bottom only with greaseproof paper. Be careful of getting too much marge into the corners of the tin – it may burn.
3. Put the castor sugar, flour, eggs, cinnamon, baking powder and margarine into a large mixing bowl. Use an electric hand-whisk (Tesco do a value one – with a year’s warranty – for less than a fiver, which is incredible value) to beat everything together for about a minute. Be careful: to avoid spraying egg and marge everywhere, you might want to start things off by folding everything together with a spoon first and start mixing at a low speed.
4. Peel your half cooking apple and cut that in half again. Grate one part in to the mixture and dice (fairly finely – 50mm square) the rest. Fold it in carefully with a wooden spoon, taking care not to squash it too much – you’ll put too much juice in the mixture. In my cake, the apple chunks sank to the bottom of the mixture while cooking – you might want to try rinsing and drying the apple before you add it, or perhaps dust them lightly with flour before you put them in. Unless you’re happy with the apple being at the bottom, which is fine.
5. Pour the mixture in to the tin and smooth the top a little with the wooden spoon. Don’t push it down too much – if you can keep the air in, it’ll rise better.
6. Bake for 45-50 minutes in the middle of the oven. Don’t open the door before about 40 minutes or it’ll sink. This recipe may take a little longer than other cakes using this basic sponge recipe – you’ve introduced quite a bit more liquid with the apple juice.
7. It’s cooked when the centre of the cake springs back up after pushing gently down and a skewer pushed into the cake comes out clean. Take it out, cool for five minutes, then turn out on to a wire cooling rack (a clean grill-pan wire rack works well if you don’t have a proper cooler). Allow to cool.
And there you go – enjoy! Store it in an air-tight cake tin, but make sure it’s cool before you do. Let me know how you get on. And how does this relate to writing? Well, it probably doesn’t. Except I’ve not written instructions like that since I was a technical writer in the pharmaceutical industry, and it’s nice to keep my hand in.