Cakes and bakes

For cake club this month the theme was to use an unusual ingedient or a recipe you have not used before, bringing the 1st attempt.  This part was the challenge for me as I usually have at least one test run.
So the recipe I chose was a Battenburg Cake as it is something I've always wanted to try, using a Mary Berry recipe, and it also included ground rice, which I hadn't used before.  And to add a twist on it I decided to make it red, white and blue.
Making the sponge was straight forward, although I did get distracted part way through weighing out the flour and the scales reset themselves, but I'm pretty sure I added the correct amount.  And the mixture was then split and coloured.  At this point I started to doubt the red, white and blue theme as the blue food colouring wasn't really vivid enough (it have since been suggested that colour paste works better than the liquid food colouring - next time).

There was also a slight sinkage issue with the plain sponge.  Although the sponge was springy to the touch when it came out of the oven it was slightly undercooked inside.  But it went together in the checker board quite nicely.

The best bit, and probably the main reason I chose to make a batternburg - homemade marzipan.  Not as pliable as the shop bought stuff but it tastes so much better and is really easy to make.  And becasue it is homemade you can get away with it being that little bit thicker - I think equal quantities of cake and marzipan is a perfect proportion ;-)

Once made it was dutifully taken to the Woking Clandestine Cake Club http://clandestinecakeclub.co.uk/category/woking/ for sharing and tasting.  We had 10 cakes this time ranging from courgette and melon cakes to Pimms and chilli.  A lovely selection to try and keep us all one a sugar high for the rest of the evening.

By day I am a scientist, and often my sciencey interests make it into my craftwork.  This week my biscuit making has taken on a bacteria theme, after spending the last couple of weeks in the lab looking down a microscope and borrowing some inspiration from a friend.
The biscuits are a Mary Berry shortbread recipe.

Salmonella, with flagella and the view down a microscope of Salmonella during a slide aggultination test

Agar plates of Salmonella (Salmonella grows pink colonies on Rambach agar) and protozoa - purely because they have crazy hair and lend themselves to arty creations

And finally, when it was all just getting a bit too silly - the post mortem of chickens depicting the liver, ovaries and intestines