The Great cake relay!

My dad’s great grandfather was a baker for half a century. My mum’s father and great grandfather were also bakers and confectioners. This being the case, you would expect that I should have Royal Icing running through my veins.

Not a bit of it.

I’m not Delia Smith. I’m not Ria in ‘Butterflies’ either...somewhere betwixt the two would be a better approximation of my culinary skills. I have dabbled with the odd cake here and there but you sort of need time and kitchen space to truly create some magnificent sponge edifice, and I have neither at my disposal. This being the case I passed the mission of creating a cake for Churchy to Val Jones, a lady who works at my office and who is a rather talented amateur cake maker on the sly. The problem wasn’t whether or not Val could come up with something special, but rather how the heck I was going to transport the wretched thing down to London, along with my luggage, my camera, my bag and the food I had bought in at Waverley’s M&S...

It was slightly tricky, but Annabel helped a lot and we got a taxi to the hotel, so the cake actually made it down pretty much unscathed! I was slightly concerned, I confess, as to how I was going to get it through the turnstile at the gates. It’s not the first time I have been stuck in one of those contraptions. Many, many years ago (back when I actually went out and visited places) I got wedged in a turnstile at Murrayfield. It was January, it was utterly Baltic, and I had on an old sheepskin jacket that John Motson would have been proud of. Alas, it was so big and unwieldy that it – and by default myself – became jammed in the metal twirly things. Not very dignified, as I recall. My mother still laughs about it.

Thankfully there was no repeat of this fiasco at the Oval. I did wonder if security were going to swoop and demand to carry out a search on the unwieldy package all done up in string. I had visions of people taking it off me and detonating it as a suspicious item! All of which would have been a great pity for Val, who created the masterpiece.

The irony of the cake reaching the Oval safely and then being diverted from its original target makes me smile. Poor old Churchy! Safely delivered into his hands and then taken away for a quick photograph, the confectionary masterpiece was then passed for distribution amongst the hard working ground staff for the odd slice or several. It proved so popular that it sounds as if they demolished the whole thing!

I think some of my fellow Rampants were worried I would be upset, but not a bit of it. As long as someone liked and enjoyed it then I am perfectly happy: my way of saying thank you to those at the Oval for all their hard work. Already I’m trying to think how on earth we top it next year!

Maybe one shaped as a cricket bat...

You Keep Me Hanging On...

We’re still hanging in there!

As I type we’ve just beaten Middlesex in the T20 game at Lords. My goodness, that was tight in the end! Surrey set off at their customary gallop and this time managed not to lose any wickets, with Jason Roy and Steven Davies building an ominous platform in next to no time. It was a pity that both men got out when set, having just scored fifties, but credit to Middlesex for hauling things back the way that they did. At one point it looked as if Surrey would race to a tally over 200, but in the end they managed 182: still a decent target but certainly not insurmountable. The skipper made 18, which is 17 more than he would normally get if the cricket gods are angry, and de Bruyn (21) and Maynard (27) anchored the Surrey innings together at the end of the 20 overs.

Middlesex got off to a fairly awful start in reply, three wickets down in as many overs, and at that point it looked as if a Surrey win was a formality. That in the end they got to within 9 runs of the total is actually fairly shocking, but it was nonetheless an entertaining game, even if my stomach was churning at the end! Especially as my dad was standing over my shoulder listening to the commentary (I think in the vain hope that he would be able to laugh as Surrey threw it away)!

This means that Surrey are back in the hunt for the final qualification spot. There’s still a long way to go, and tomorrow they have to play the extremely impressive Hants side at the Oval. If by some miracle Surrey pulled off what would be a slightly unexpected win the group would be opened up like a can of sardines. If not...it’s going to go right down to the wire for that last place.

I may or may not be listening to the game tomorrow. I have the feeling things may be a tad hectic. I’m off to London for the Rampant Annual General Meeting, bearing more suitcases, cameras and bags than is good for one person. Oh, and a cake for Churchy.

Ideas on how to lug all this stuff on the train??? Anyone???

Let them eat cake

Let's be clear on this: I'm not Delia Smith. I like making cakes, although I prefer eating them if I'm honest. Possibly why the exercise bike will be suffering again in the next few weeks...

However, I mentioned a month or so ago that one of the McRampants (thanks, Maria) came up with a hundred hundreds cake with an adaptation of an existing recipe. Just so we can keep it for posterity, here it is replicated in its full glory:


Mark Ramprakash Hundred Hundreds cake -

For the cake:

Ingredients

125g dark chocolate
3 tbsp milk
150g butter
150g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g plain flour
1 tbsp good quality cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the icing

300g icing sugar
200g butter
4 tbsp double cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 and a 1/2 instant coffee powder

For the cake:

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4. Butter and flour the sides of two 20 cm sandwich tins and line the bases with greaseproof paper.

Place the chocolate and the milk in a bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water and heat until the chocolate has melted. Set aside to cool slightly.

Beat the butter until very soft then add the caster sugar and continue to beat until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then fold in the melted chocolate.

Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and the bicarbonate of soda, and fold in gently to mix. Divide the mixture between the two tins and bake in the oven for 25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of each cake comes out clean.

Remove the cakes from the tins and allow to sit for 5 minutes before taking them out of the tins, leave them on a wire rack to cool.

For the icing:

Sift the icing sugar. Beat the butter, cream and vanilla extract until very soft. Then gradually add the icing sugar and add the coffee powder. Beat until well mixed, empty into a bowl and leave to chill in the fridge for 10/15 minutes.

Once the cakes have cooled, sandwich them with some of the icing and ice the top and sides. Decorate using an icing pen and with hundreds and thousands.

*You can hold the coffee flavouring if you're not a fan.

Superstition

Firstly, a re-cap.

Rampants are deeply superstitious. Back in the early 2007 season it was discovered that if any one of us left the vicinity of their computer when Surrey were batting, a wicket would fall. This happened with frightening regularity. It had absolutely zero to do with dodgy batting or exceptional bowling: the entire Surrey innings was held together by the collective will of the Rampants, and whether or not any of us needed to retreat for a comfort break. It got rather ridiculous (not to mention uncomfortable) at various points in proceedings. If a wicket fell and we all protested our innocence we knew that Liz had got up to make a cup of tea.

To this day, whenever a Surrey batsman gets out when set for a big score, an electronic cry of “who moved” is screeched out via the magic of the internet. Working on this theory, mea culpa, I managed to get Ramps out at least three times in 2007. God knows what his average would have been like if none of us had left their computers all day. Although I think there would have been a lot of hungry husbands and children left scratching their heads, wondering where dinner was...

The Rampants also like to bestow nicknames on those who they feel have earned it. By that I mean those who have wormed their way into their collective affections, for better or worse. James Benning became the ‘Six Beast’ on account of his love of great, big booming sixes into the OCS stand. Jon Batty (much missed, I have to say) was the ‘Hedgepig’ on account of his rather wonderful hairstyle. And Scott Newman, ex of Surrey and now of Middlesex, was known as Pandora. Although it’s probably better not to enquire why...

This year’s squad additions haven’t yet inspired us to bestow them with any nicknames, but we’re hoping they will do something spectacular to make them stand out (and to give them a unique moniker to boot). We’ve noted many on the BBC message boards have started referring to Rory Hamilton-Brown as ‘Hyphen’. Wish we’d come up with that one. RHB was the best we could do in terms of speed-typing, but we reckoned that made him look like a medium-soft pencil. We toyed with ‘skipper’ but, in the words of Red Dwarf’s Arnold Rimmer, that brought to mind “a boy and his bush kangaroo.” If he’d been from New South Wales rather than deepest Surrey it may have had possibilities.

Rampants also tend to bring their cameras along to the Oval when the chance arises. I should point out that this is a non-stalkerish thing. We don’t spend the entire four days trying to take pictures of Ramps, because we learned very quickly it was pointless to do so. Generally, if we are sat in the Wedlake Bell family enclosure, the great man is fielding as close to the Gasometer as is humanly possible. In fact I think virtually on the Gasometer. No, our cameras are usually snapping happily away in random fashion at all the team members. And the upshot of it is, no matter what we do, we always end up with extremely dodgy photos of Chris Schofield. Even when we are trying to take pictures of Andre Nel.

Devotion knows no bounds amongst us. Not all of us are Surrey supporters: we have a smattering of Somerset, Worcestershire/Warwickshire, Lancashire, Kent, Hampshire and Middlesex supporters in our midst. To the extent where, during the championship-deciding Surrey/Lancs game in 2007, she who we fondly consider our founding member threatened to tend her resignation on account of Mr Ramprakash taking a very neat catch to dismiss Laxman for 100! Those of us who do support Surrey proved their metal in the final game of 2009 when, desperate to hear the fabulous Mark Church and Johnny Barran via the radio, they were reduced to sharing one single blue earpiece amongst five!

Rampants also like cakes. Cricket and cakes just go so well together: it’s almost ritualistic, as if harking back to the last vestiges of a civilised age. I bet W.G.Grace was fond of a slice of Battenberg. And I’ve seen one or two players down the years that look as if they’re not scared of a jam roly-poly. You’ll note I’m not mentioning names here: this is because I’m not looking to be unkind or controversial on this blog. But mostly because I’m a coward and don’t wish to be sued for defamation of character.

Anyhow, back to cakes. It seems that the greatest honour a cricketer can have bestowed, other than a knighthood for walking the length of the British Isles raising cash for good causes and doing their bit for blister awareness, is to have a cake named after them. So, in time honoured tradition, we have come up with a ‘hundred hundreds’ cake for Mr Ramprakash, as created by one of the ‘McRampants’ (Scottish Branch). It’s a sort of coffee based creation with lots of icing and, fittingly, covered in hundreds and thousands. Probably best decorated with a huge ‘77’ on it. We’re currently working on a ‘commentators’ cake for Messers Church & Barran. I won’t be attempting to make this one as it strikes me that live commentary and listeria do not make for a good combination.

Finally, a return to the small matter of superstition. Before watching a game of cricket, the Rampants believe it is very good to drink gin. However, it should either be taken neat (in the Scottish tradition) or alternatively poured straight down your front which, I believe, is an old, quaint custom from Saint Ives...