How to adjust a cake recipe for different sized tins

Picture from the awesome web comic xkcd.com

Picture this - you've got a recipe for a gorgeous sounding cake, you've got the ingrediants to make it, the time to give it your full attention, the burning desire for something sweet.... the one thing you don't have is the correct sized tin.  So what do you do?  Do you give up on the idea or do you have a go at reducing the recipes quantities?  But how much by?  Do you use an educated guess or do you go for something a bit more precise?  It may seem a bit of a daunting task but by using Science! (or at least maths) it's one that's surprisingly easy to accomplish.  All it needs is a tape measure, a calculator and a piece of paper.

For this example I'm going to use a simple Victoria Sponge recipe.  This recipe calls for the use of two round 20cm sandwich tins.  However seeing as it's just going to be myself, my husband and our son who'll be eating it I don't want to make that much cake.  I could use the recipe to make cupcakes I suppose but it's just not the same.  Instead I'm going to use a couple of very dinky little cake tins that I picked up in our local pound shop.  The recipe calls for

225g caster sugar
225g butter
4 eggs
225g self raising flour

but obviously that's going to be way too much mix for the little tins I have.  So how do I go about reducing the recipe?

The first thing to realise is that it's all about volume.  If that recipe is meant for two 20 cm tins then the first thing to do is work out the volume of the tins.

1 Measure the inside of your cake tin.  This is the diameter.  Half it and you'll have the radius (r) of the tin

2 Measure the depth (d) of the tin.

3 Now comes the maths.  First you need to work out the area of the tin.  To do this you need to use the basic formula of 3.14 x (r x r) which in the case of a 20 cm cake tin is 3.14 x (10 x 10) which gives us an answer of  314.

4 You then need to multiply this by the depth of the tin to work out the volume of the cake tin needed.  So it'd be 314 x 4 which is 1256.  Because the recipe calls for 2 cake tins the total volume of the cake is 2512

5 I repeat this process with the smaller cake tins I will be using.  These are 12 cm in diameter, 4 cm deep.  So the maths is

Area of the circle - 3.14 x (6 x 6) = 113

Volume of the cake tin - 113 x 4 = 452

Volume of 2 cake tins - 452 x 2 = 904

6 Since 904 is approximately 1/3 rd of 2512  I will need to use 1/3 of the amount of mixture (in this case I'd have a bit of mixture left over which I'd probably turn into a couple of cupcakes)  The new recipe is thus

75 g caster sugar
75g butter
2 eggs (it'd be nearly impossible to get 1/3 of 4 eggs so I'll use two)
75g self raising flour

This method can not only be used to scale down recipes but also scale up.

Now that's all very well and good for round cakes but what if you only have a square tin?  Well that can be worked out fairly easily as well.

1 Measure the height (h) depth (d) and width (w) of your tin.  Now all you have to do is h x d x w.  Which in the case of my 18 cm square tin is 7.5 x 18 x 18 = 2430

Hope that wasn't too scary and if you have any questions about the maths please ask!

The 5 2 diet 4 weeks on

Today marks my fourth week of following the 5 2 diet and I thought I'd put up a little update.  After four weeks I've lost a grand total of 10 lbs and I'm really happy about it.  While I haven't lost that much since my last diet related post I know the reasons why (Wetherspoons rack of ribs I'm looking at you)  My clothes feel baggier, I can tell that I've lost weight and most importantly I don't feel like I'm on a diet!  I've found that I'm eating healthier, probably because I'm eating a lot more vegetables than I used to do, in fact on my fasting days I find the easiest thing to do to keep the calories down is simply to go vegetarian.

One of the nicest dinner recipes I've come up with is roasted veggie cous cous - it's packed full of good things and uses spices to keep the flavours interesting.  It's not a tricky recipe but because it uses oven roasted tomatoes it takes a while to prepare.  If you don't have time then you could simply use de-hydrated sun dried tomatoes, Merchant Gourmet do some really nice ones.  The beauty of doing it at home though is that you can take a cheap punnet of not very interesting tomatoes and turn them into something wonderfully flavourful.

Roasted Vegetable Cous Cous (serves 2)  138 calories per serving according to www.myfitnesspal.com

200g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red pepper, chopped into bite size pieces
1 courgette, chopped into bite size pieces
1 onion, chopped into bite size pieces
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
chili to taste
pinch of salt
100g cous cous

1 Pre-heat the oven to 150C.  Put the halved cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet cut side down.  Roast in the oven for 3 hours.

2 Take the tomatoes out of the oven and turn the heat up to 200C.  In a small bowl mix together the spices and salt - how much chilli you put in is entire down to personal taste.  Put the rest of the veggies on a large baking sheet and add the spice mix.  Use your hands to mix everything together so that the veggies are covered with the spices and them pop in the oven for 20 minutes.

3 After the veggies have been in the oven for 10 minutes prepare the cous cous following the instructions on the packet - I find that 100g of cous cous needs about 100ml of boiled water.  After the cous cous has been allowed to soak for 10 minutes the veggies should be down.  Take them out of the oven and stir into the cous cous along with the roasted tomatoes.

This cous cous is lovely on its own but is also good served as a side dish to chicken.  If you're not dieting then it could be made more substantial by adding chunks of feta cheese.

Amazing Disney World Inspired Cinnamon Rolls

My husband and I are currently planning a family trip to Walt Disney World in a couple of years time (we're hoping to go in February 2015 but it all depends on whether or not BabyBear's school will let us take him out for a week during school time)  Naturally as a food obsessive a lot of the research I've been doing into the trip have focused on what noms we can get.  One of the things that immediately leapt out to me is warm cinnamon rolls from Main Street Bakery.

The recipe used the basic en-riched dough that I used for the hot cross buns back in March.  As I don't want to repeat myself I'll just put a link up.  I used half the dough that recipe made so while the pictures show 7 buns if you use the whole mix it'll make 14.  Once the dough has proven for the the first time rather than turning it into buns it needs to be rolled out and the cinnamon/sugar mix spread on top.

In addition to the dough you'll need -

30g of softened butter
100g brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

50g icing sugar

Mix the three ingredients together.  Spread over the rolled out dough.

Now it's time to roll up the dough; working from the shorter side roll it up like you would a swiss roll.  Once rolled cut it into slices about 3 cm thick and put on a baking sheet.  Allow to rise for 1 hour and then bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 25 minutes.  Word of warning here - the dough rises a lot and will need to be put on fairly large baking sheets for its second prove.   Alternatively they can be left to rise over night in the fridge and baked fresh in the morning for an amazing breakfast treat.

While the rolls are baking mix together the ingredients for the icing.  Mix the icing sugar with enough enough water to make a thin icing.  Once the rolls are baked pour the icing over the top and allow to cool slightly before eating.

Unicorn Poop Cookies!

As you probably know this weekend is a bank holiday and that can mean only one thing; the Bear family is off LARPing!  LARP for the uninitiated is short for Live Action Role Play - think historical re-enactment meets amateur dramatics meets Dungeons and Dragons.  It basically means that we get to spend the weekend camping in Wales with friends (nerd alert - the site is next to sand dunes that were used in Torchwood for the planet of Boe) while dressed up in costume, pretending to use magic and getting hit with foam swords.

I asked BabyBear what if he thought that I should bake some of my famous brownies to take with us but he said no he wanted me to bake unicorn poop!  Now before you leave in disgust I should mention that unicorn poop are simply biscuits that have been dyed with food colouring.  They're known as unicorn poop cookies because if the Internet has taught us one thing it's that unicorns poop rainbows.  Oh and you can never have enough cat pictures.

I used the same basic biscuit recipe that I used to make the Dr Who biscuits a couple of weeks ago recipe.  There were however a few extra ingredients, namely the food colouring.  You can use as many different colours as you like but I like to stick with four.

Once you've made the dough separate it out into four balls.  Using a tooth prick put a tiny amount of food colouring on one of the balls and kneed it in.  Once the right colour has been achieved wrap the ball in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least half an hour.  Repeat with the other three balls.

Once they're chilled take the balls out of the freezer and split each ball four again.  This will make the shaping process a lot easier.  The balls will probably look a lot like Play Doh now and it's time to get in touch with your inner child and treat it like it!  Roll one of the the dough balls out on a lightly floured surface just like you would if you were back at school and making plasticine snakes.  Repeat with the other three colours until you have something that looks like this

Now cut your snakes into quarters and begin curling them round so that they look like snail shells.  It doesn't matter if they're not perfect or if the dough breaks while you're bending them, they're meant to
look irregular.  Squish them slightly so that the colours all mingle together.

Repeat this process with the rest of the dough balls and eventually you'll have beautifully colourful poop!  Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 10 minutes.