A few questions...

Luna69

Hi
I'm thinking of making some mini christmas cakes.. the first time I ever made my own Christmas cake was last year and it was lovely.. got the recipe from the Delicious magazine then.. however this time I am looking for a very simple but yummy recipe and has anyone made any cakes using bean tins? Were they succesful?

One more question, I am looking for a child's play microphone headset for my niece. I am buying her a cd and I know she is getting a cd player that has a microphone on it, but I thought one of the headset type would be good too. Anyone know where to get one, as cheap as possible?

Thanks
Yvonne

honey28

I'll watch this with interest because I was going to ask the same question about the cakes. On another thread posted by Leni she talks about making cakes in sponge pudding tins - how exactly do you do this and how far up the tin do you need to fill the mixture. My mum works as a home help and I was going to make mini cakes for the elderly folk that she looks after. I dint know where to start with quantities either.

Argos have some microphone things for kids, not sure if they are what you are looking for.

Luna69

honey28 wrote:

I'll watch this with interest because I was going to ask the same question about the cakes. On another thread posted by Leni she talks about making cakes in sponge pudding tins - how exactly do you do this and how far up the tin do you need to fill the mixture. My mum works as a home help and I was going to make mini cakes for the elderly folk that she looks after. I dint know where to start with quantities either.

Argos have some microphone things for kids, not sure if they are what you are looking for.

Thanks.. not sure on quantities either.. hope someone can help.
and I'll look at Argos see what they have for headsets.. thanks again.

Yvonne

tru

I use bean tins. Cut the bottom off, line with greaseproof paper and fill them about halfway. The oven temp should be about 20 degrees lower than the recipes states. Can't help with the time, I just test with a skewer every now and then til they're cooked

honey28

Sorry to sound dim, but if you cut the bottom off how do you stop the mixture escaping

full-time-mum

Luna69 wrote:

Hi
I'm thinking of making some mini christmas cakes.. the first time I ever made my own Christmas cake was last year and it was lovely.. got the recipe from the Delicious magazine then.. however this time I am looking for a very simple but yummy recipe and has anyone made any cakes using bean tins? Were they succesful?

I've often thought about this but never quite got around to it.
A something thing to think about:
Xmas cakes cook long and slow so have a tendency to dry out around the edges. Make sure you wrap the tins in a double layer of brown paper and stand the tin on brown paper too.
Consider whether to bake a larger rectangular one and cut it into smaller cakes - the only slight problem with this is that you will be mazipanning/icing onto cut edges rather than cooked edges.

Luna69 wrote:

One more question, I am looking for a child's play microphone headset for my niece. I am buying her a cd and I know she is getting a cd player that has a microphone on it, but I thought one of the headset type would be good too. Anyone know where to get one, as cheap as possible?

I'm sure I've seen one somewhere but I quickly checked argos and elc but couldn't see anything. Sorry, but will get back if I come across it again.

full-time-mum

honey28 wrote:

Sorry to sound dim, but if you cut the bottom off how do you stop the mixture escaping

I've done this before with sponge cakes but I put a small circle of greaseproof (or squashed fairy cake case) on the bottom of the tin and greased the sides. I extracted the cake by turning it up-side-down and removing the bottom (after the cake was cooked).

honey28

I'll have a dummy run first then - all these bean tins sound too complicated for me :rofl:

Can anyone help with quantities? You mention that if you made a large cake and cut it you would be icing onto cut edges. Would this be a problem?
Thanks in advance

tru

honey28 wrote:

Sorry to sound dim, but if you cut the bottom off how do you stop the mixture escaping

It just doesn't Probably because it's not runny enough to escape.

Dolly_Mixture

I made mini Christmas cakes in ramekin dishes this year. I got the idea from an old Good Food magazine that I bought in a charity shop. I did not use their recipe but just used my normal one and took some of the quantity off the big cake that I made. I cooked them for 30-40 mins in the same oven as the big cake and they have turned out fine! I did cover them with greaseproof paper on the top but did not wrap paper round the outside. The illustration in the magazine suggests you cut out a disc of marzipan and then a disc of ready-to-roll icing and just tie a ribbon round the sides of the cake. They then frosted a couple of cranberries and a piece of rosemary and they looked really good. They placed the cake on a gold circle of card slightly larger than the cake and pulled cellophane round it and tied it above the cake. It looked very effective.

I bought my ramekin dishes in a charity shop too!

I hope this helps.

full-time-mum

This sounds fairly easy. I might have a go at making some for the school Xmas fair. I've some sugar snowmen and snowballs which would probably look good too.

I'm guessing that you don't need to protect the cakes with brown paper as the glass is a lot thicker than baking tins.