The concept of Bake in Black was birthed in a kitchen in East London – Eve (a food journalist) and Dave (a musician) began a blog which intertwined the concept of baking with heavy metal; they took a song or an album title which then inspired them to create a recipe. This idea has since snowballed into a book that contains more than 60 recipes of varying difficulty and cost to make.
Given that most heavy metal enthusiasts are barely capable of making beans on toast, it’s good to see that there are plenty of easy to make recipes in here, most of which don’t require costly ingredients (as we all know, you’ve probably already pissed most of your money up the wall on warm lager and records). However, for those that do have the baking know-how there are also plenty of sweet treats to try out that require specialist equipment and slightly more niche ingredients (where in the fuck am I supposed to get a passion fruit from?! I live in North London!)
The book is beautifully put together with stunning photographs of each individual recipe, best of all each one has a music themed titled (an Iron Maiden inspired waffles called ‘Flour Slave’ are a particular favourite).
After laying my hands on a copy of the book while attending the launch at Carousel in Marylebone, and seeing some of the creations in the flesh, I was inspired to create some of the recipes for myself. So here I am, on a sunny May Day bank holiday, slaving away in my kitchen to prepare three of the cakes from this book, so that I can write a review that goes beyond a quick flick through; what I’m about to write comes from genuine blood, sweat, tears and burns from the oven. This is a first person account of Bake in Black; I came, I baked, I didn’t fuck it up entirely.
Reign in Red Velvet
I didn’t choose this recipe because I particularly like Slayer, I confess, I chose it because it looked really easy; something I later came to regret while grating creamed coconut, along with my fingernails, into a pot of what looked more like cottage cheese than icing and trying not to sob.
I chucked all of the basic ingredients into a bowl (I don’t own a mixing bowl, I’m poor, so it was more like a sort of casserole dish) – I was blind baking, because I don’t own scales (did I mention how poor I am?) and as a result ended up with cake that was actually more chocolate than it was red velvet. I’ll put that down to using too much cocoa powder and not enough food colouring. Oh well. It tasted alright.
Now for the icing; this was something I spent a while scratching my head over, thinking “what the hell is vegetable shortening?!” – a quick search on Google confirmed for me that it’s lard. Yummy. The recipe said to use an electric whisk to mix it together with butter which, for me, means squash it all together with your hands, as wooden spoons are about as fancy as I go, and those simply don’t do the job. Aside from starting out looking gross and lumpy, I think it turned out okay.
The end result was definitely chocolate cake instead of red velvet, but I’m not going to be too hard on myself, as it’s at least edible. I’d recommend this recipe to most first-time bakers; it’s easy – just don’t be put off by the idea of grating creamed coconut (you can find it in the world foods aisle) and vegetable shortening is lard!
Fairy Cakes Wear Bootlaces
Oh god. I made so many mistakes and weird alterations with this recipe, simply because I didn’t read the ingredients list carefully enough, but we’ll get to that later. I chose this because I love Black Sabbath, and because the ingredients were easy enough to come by in Asda.
The actual fairy cakes themselves were really simple to make- basic chocolate cake – perhaps too simple? So, of course, loads went wrong with the icing. First off, I misread “blackberry and sloe jelly jam” as “blackberry jelly” so just bought blackcurrant jelly powder. This horrendous misreading actually worked in my favour though, as it gave the icing a nice flavour and colour. Next up, I couldn’t find any violet food colouring, so had to make my own using blue and red. I’m pretty sure I messed this up pretty badly, but the jelly powder helped disguise it a lot. The topping required some of those jelly laces, in blackberry flavour. I couldn’t find any, so I settled for strawberry pencils and just plonked a section of one on top of each cake.
Despite not being able to read properly, and turning the entire icing section of this baking experience into an enormous clusterfuck, the fairy cakes turned out okay. I’d definitely make these again, more out of curiosity for what would happen if I followed the recipe properly, instead of stumbling as far off the set path as I can manage and only making something that tastes good by pure accident.
Ginger Baker Creams
What hot blooded human being doesn’t enjoy ‘Sunshine of Your Love’? Furthermore, what hot blooded human being doesn’t enjoy a good ginger biscuit? At least when they aren’t made by me, anyway. Ashamed as I am to say, until I made these, I didn’t know what the difference between treacle and golden syrup is; I’m still not convinced I know either.
The actual biscuit part of this recipe was super fun to make, apart from me using golden syrup instead of treacle, this is something where you get to stick your hands in and knead the mixture into a rough dough, before shaping them into biscuits on a baking tray. So fun. Until they spread out really far in the oven, spill over the sides, and merge together…
By this point, I’d smashed through nearly all of the butter in my kitchen and was running short of what I needed for the cream filling. I figured this would be okay, as I’d just cut what was left with the rest of the lard…ahem…I mean vegetable shortening! They’re sort of the same thing, aren’t they? Well, I quickly learned that “sort of the same thing” is not any sort of substitute “exactly the same thing” and the despondent mashed potato-like substance I ended up sadly pasting between the slightly burned squares of biscuit I’d had to hacksaw apart looked fucking vile.
The picture in the book shows delicate looking little golden biscuits with a light and fluffy cream filling. What I created looked like something thrown up from the bowels of hell. My housemates said they tasted okay though, so it’s not all bad, right?
If this book proved anything, it’s what a terrible baker I am, but on reflection I did have a lot of fun making it all and I enjoyed watching other people chow down on what I’d baked. This is a great book if you wanna gather a group of friends together, throw on a Judas Priest record and make a mess, with slightly less disastrous results than what I made!
(Review and kitchen mayhem Angela Davey)
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