Baking Week is alive and kicking, and will be running until 24th of October! Baking Week provides a good excuse to swathe friends, family and co-workers in baked goodness. The Internet decrees it and so it must be celebrated with gusto.
I warm easily to the idea of foisting cake on people, despite its possibly under-par qualities, shouting "It's baking week!" as a handy offhand excuse. It's not really skill that's required but love, this week. As the site says: use it as a week to test and experiment.
Here's a sexy little round-up of top cakes which are all easy-to-make (some take more time than others) and nommish as hell. You can't really go wrong. Obviously baking week's not just about cake, but I'm pretty bias. (All the below have been tried and tested.)
Post-feminism was in full swing yesterday as I could be spotted yesterday surrounded by eight coloured bowls of cake mix creating some sort of mighty rainbow cake with food dye all over my hands. I've been dying to make this awesome rainbow cake from OmNomNom for ages.
N.b. If you, like me, get excited by bright colours and cooking, you might find yourself making small ridiculous shrieking noises of glee as you mix it all together.
I made a bit of a twist to it involving removing nothing healthy, using a victoria sponge recipe, and marbling the colours together. A tad different but the colourful nonsense element remained.
Which ever way you do it, if you ice the cake it's brilliant to cut into and have a little explosion of colours. It's also guaranteed to give you a good half-hour sugar high once you've doused it in butter icing and all-over icing. Suspiciously, the OmNomNom version comes in low-fat variety. I threw caution out of the window. Baking week is not for the low of fat (I'm being obtuse. Of course it can be, but don't let that get in the way of making nice things).
Lastly, a speedy return to a Bannoffee cake we've featured before. If you like toffee, bananas and cake you're bound to like it, and it comes with a strange novelty of making toffee sauce by boiling condensed milk which is suspiciously like having a kid's science club in your kitchen.
I was skeptical about the idea of a Chocolate Brownie Cake. I was wrong in every way. More-fool me for doubting it. It tastes better than the shop-bought kind and is really simple to make, with a small amount of attention. It's the right amount of soft in the centre, with a bite on the outside and you'll likely have most of the ingredients already. This might be my favourite one of the lot.
Now, go forth to wow everyone with some awesome baking. If you have any brilliant recipes, let us know! We're always on a keen on the hunt for the next best cake.
Find Baking Week on Twitter as @bakingweek on over at its official website: www.nationalbakingweek.co.uk