Get down and dirty with cake

2012-04-07, 11:22 p.m.
A quick update on all the fabulous stuff Ive been doing since last time�

I went to see the surgeon. He was much nicer than the last one I saw but it was still an horrifically traumatising experience and Im not ready to write about it yet. Sorry. I have stopped crying now but that did take me through the whole of Wednesday and pretty much all of Thursday as well, apart from the bit where I forced L to drive me to Lidls where I stared at the produce for a bit and came home without mayonnaise or lemonade or washing up liquid or pretty much anything that I�d gone in for.

Friday I had family coming over at tea time. L took a load of photos of us all having fun and stuff like that but, despite me asking, they are still on his computer in the studio and definitely NOT emailed to me in any format that might be useable around these parts. Generally speaking he likes to email photos to me at such high resolution that the file size is MASSIVE and impossible to do anything with if you should happen to be a mere mortal. Or a user of Photobucket. Sometimes the files are so massive that my email programme wont even let me see them. Sometimes L is a complete knob. Sometimes he will remember a few days later that I asked him for the photos and then he will send them to me. If that should happen, you�ll be the first to know.

I took some pictures on my regular normal person�s camera during the morning because
I
Made
Dirt
Caaaaaaaaaaake!

We don�t have Dirt Cake here, boys and girls, so when I found that it existed as a thing I kind of made it a mission to eat some. Unfortunately, most of the recipes I found for it, also included the use of �instant pudding mix� and Cool Whip. Now, instant pudding mix is just silly � pudding exists as a thing all by itself, I don�t need a kit to make it. BTW, English people, instant pudding isn�t like Angel Delight. Its more like Ambrosia custard in consistency. You can make it yourself relatively easily and then it doesn�t contain a whole load of shite which would more naturally feel at home in a chemistry lab.

But I digress. And I almost steered myself away from the vitriol I had reserved for the Devil�s own pie garnish that is Cool Whip. Seriously, nobody should EVER put that crap in their mouth. English people � think �the bastard son of Dream Topping and the stuff you used to get in cheap cakes from the cake shop� � you know, the stuff you used to think was fresh cream but turned out t o be some kind of brilliant white foamy margarine mock-cream concoction. I don�t think cake shops use that stuff any more but if you are in your 40s and of lower middle class stock, youll know the stuff I mean.

Anyway. I wasn�t going to be prevented from making Dirt Cake by chemical concoctions, so I started a two pronged attack by a) googling �Dirt Cake from scratch� and b) by emailing my friends over at Milk and Honey Acres who are just Da Shizzle at helping me out when a recipe starts �take a pack of blahblah mix�. A) turned out to be no use at all, as it appears that making dirt cake from scratch and having access to the internet are not mutually compatible lifestyle choices, but luckily Mandy came up trumps with plan B) and gave me some tips. We also had quite a convoluted back-and-forth about cr�me patissiere but I don�t think it marred the experience too much.

As I have never seen Dirt Cake on offer in UKshire, I now present to you MY recipe for Dirt Cake which shall henceforth be know as theeeee definitive English recipe for Dirt Cake. You may tinker with it as you choose, dear friends, and then scoff its chocalickety dirtiness. Ommy Nom Nom. (PS I made 12 of the little ones you can see in the pic from this quantity)

Get three packets of Oreos and hoy them into the food processor, a packet at a time

break up oreos

Whizz them up (oh, and it makes a RIGHT noise!) until they look like John Innes No. 1 compost. Or dirt

whizz to dirt

Make a quantity of chocolate cr�me patissiere from 350ml milk, 4 egg yolks, 65g sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 tablespoons plain flour, 140g dark chocolate (send me a note if you need the method). Leave to cool

make creme patissiere

Get yourself a tub of mascarpone, half a tub of cream cheese and half a carton of double cream. In deference to dinner guests who have high cholesterol/had a stroke/cant tolerate whole milk/could do with losing a pound or two I used light cream cheese and Elmlea but you can go for the full fat versions of both if you care not one jot for the state of your arteries!

other ingredients

Beat together the cheeses and cooled cr�me patissiere and fold in the cream, which you will have whipped to floppy-peaked perfection

mix together

Layer up the chocolatey goo and the Oreo dirt in layers in anything you have hanging around which might look like a plant pot. Or in a plant pot. My pictures show �start with a layer of crumbs�. This is INCORRECT. Start with a layer of goo, fersure.

start with crumbs

then goo

Make sure you finish with a layer of crumbs and maybe add a few �rocks� of chocolate coated cinder toffee, if you have any. Which we did.

garnish with rocks

Snip some green drinking straws to an appropriate length and jab a real flower in a lurid shade into the end of the straw that isn�t stuck in the pot.

add flowers

Aww, all finished!

all done

Leave them in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight if you can) and the crumbs in the layers will go kind of soft and cakeish and yummy. You could leave the final layer of crumbs until youre ready to serve, if you wanted, then those crumbs would stay crispy and cookie-ish while the ones further down the strata would be of the aforementioned cakeyishness. Whatever you like.

My whole family (12-73 years, male, female, fat, thin, rich and poor) loved these. They will deffo be made again at The Palace of Many Sins.

Oh, and just in case you�re a Family Guy fan, here�s the Cool Whip clip that you�ve had in your head since I mentioned it earlier. If you don�t normally watch Family Guy, don�t bother starting with this bit, its kinda gross and not really very funny. Until the next time you hear someone say �Cool Whip� and then you�ll instantly think of this and nothing else.

later
s
x




back - forth