Jamie Rhodes - Professional Triathlete

Cooking with Kepa

Kepa probably not the best cook I’ve ever met. Probably not the worst either…..but not far off. Which is why I was shocked when I returned from my ride the other day to find Kepa attempting to bake a cake. I had no real idea why it was that Kepa felt inclined to perform such a task, but that was not the point.

I thought that maybe it was that he wanted to expand his number of signature dishes. At the moment, Kepa’s signature dish count stands at three.

Kepa likes to cook by the KISS theory, and although the three dishes are different in their own little way, there is an underlying similarity.

Dish 1 – Pizza. It must be noted however that Kepa also makes the pizza dough from scratch and then adds the ingredients on top (funny that). Those ingredients are tomato sauce, ham and cheese.

Dish 2 – Spanish omelette. This is definitely one that I have taken a liking to. After frying off some diced potatoes in a vat, I mean pan of olive oil, you take them out and then add them to a number of beaten eggs. Once mixed you add the potatoes and eggs back into the frying pan and then add the ingredients you would like to put into your omelette prior to turning to cook the other side. Kepa finds that the best ingredients are ham and cheese.

Dish 3 – San Jacobo. This dish involves grabbing a few ingredients, covering them in some bread crumbs and then whacking them into the frying pan with some olive oil. We had these the other night and the ingredients that we used were ham and cheese.

Can you see the similarity?

Anyways, back to the story. I was surprised to see Kepa making his cake and when I asked him as to why it was that he was making a cake he simply told me that he had never done it before and wanted to try. Fair enough.

It did soon become obvious to me that Kepa was not telling a lie. He had never made a cake before…. The thing that surprised me the most however was that he was also making the cake from scratch and not using a packet job. The cake was a chocolate sponge cake with strawberries and white chocolate icing on top. I thought maybe a little ambitious for a first try but you never know, so it was full steam ahead. You go Kepa!!

The first part of the recipe was pretty simple. Just get all of the dry ingredients and mix them into a mixing bowl and then add the eggs. IF by chance you don’t happen to have a mixing bowl then a ceramic salad bowl will do just fine. Also, if you have nothing to measure the 125g of flour required for the cake mix, then just grab a spoon and scoop as many spoonfuls of flour into the bowl as you think makes 125g. This is probably about 5 or 6, or 7 or maybe 8. It all depends on the size of the spoon and the height of the heap on the spoon of each spoonful. Easy.

Once you’ve cleaned up the mess off the bench from the overflow of the salad bowl, simply add the remainder of the wet ingredients (melted dark chocolate, milk etc) and beat manually. If you can’t be fagged beating the mix by hand then just grab the handheld mixer and use that instead. Easy

After the mixture is complete, all that needs to be done is to put it into your baking tin and place into the oven at the required temperature for the required time. The preferable baking tin would be a round one, but if you haven’t got one of those then a square tin will do. If you don’t have a square tin, actually if you don’t have any baking tin at all, then just grab the ceramic baking dish that Rhodesy used for last night’s lasagne. Then just line the dish with baking paper and put the mixture inside. By the off chance that the cupboard doesn’t actually have any baking paper in it, just line the inside of the dish with some margarine… using your finger.

The baking time provides the perfect opportunity to prepare the remainder of the ingredients to finish off the cake. In this case, the cream with strawberries and the white chocolate icing.  

The first step would be to whip the cream until it is nice and fluffy so that it will provide a good centre layer for the cake. So all you have to do here is beat the using the handheld mixer. If it is believed that the cream is not sweet tasting enough, then just add some sugar to the cream whilst beating. It’s not like the cake is going to be sweet enough with all that chocolate in it anyway. Or the strawberry jam that your about to put in for that matter.

What? I hear you say, strawberry jam!!

That’s right kiddies, no strawberries in the fridge means that this chocolate sponge cake with strawberries and cream ain’t gonna have any strawberries in it all. But that’s OK, because our fridge has two different types of strawberry jam to choose from. Wow, what a decision.

After a while I  came to the realisation that the jam would actually make a good alternative and that not having any strawberries is not the end of the world. All you have to do it spread the jam onto the underside of the top piece of cake, then add the cream and put some more jam onto the topside of the bottom piece of cake. But we’re not quite at that stage yet. First we have to cut the sponge in half.

After removing the cake from the oven and allowing to cool, you have to remove the cake from the tin, I mean dish and cut in half horizontally to create to even halves.

If for some reason, the cake doesn’t come out of the dish as easily as it may have had you used baking paper rather than butter then just scrape it out as best you can and try to keep it in one piece.

Once the cake, or what you could salvage of it is out of the dish then simply cut it horizontally in half. If one is not experienced, then one should not try to attempt this difficult manoeuvre and rather cut the cake in half vertically. It may not provide you with two even halves but this can be covered up later with some icing.

Now you have your two halves, then you can fill the centre with the whipped cream and jam. But as mentioned before if you have no strawberries then just substitute them for strawberry jam. And as the recipe states that the strawberries should be diced up and mixed into the cream, then surely the jam should be mixed into the too…. Along with the sugar that you added earlier?

Now that you’ve put your somewhat taller than usual cake together, then it is time to add the icing on top. To make you the icing, you need to first melt the white chocolate. After this is done, you just add the other ingredients and mix, and then leave to cool. If you run out of cream for the icing mix, then just add milk….?

If once the milk is added in substitute for the cream, you may find that the icing mix has become a little runny. But luckily the icing mix has some cream in it, so all you have to do is beat the mix with the mixer and that will make the cream thick, which will make the icing perfect, right?

Wrong!!!

When the icing resembles the consistency of  spring water, it is probably time to scrap it and start again, or top the cake with Nutella instead. When you are told that Nutella is probably isn’t the best idea. Just wait until tomorrow to buy some more white chocolate and start again.

After last night’s attempt at the icing. If you can’t be fagged doing it all again just melt the chocolate in the microwave and then spread on top of the cake. Note: 1 minute on full power in the microwave is probably a bit too much. After scraping around the burnt and crystallised bit of chocolate, salvage what you can and spread over the top of the cake. Once this is done, leave in the fridge for a while so that the chocolate becomes as hard as a rock and makes cutting the cake into pieces near on impossible.

You’re cake is now complete.  

Untitled Comment

1:03 AM, 19/6/2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

Finally, how was the cake mate?

The Cake

11:16 PM, 20/6/2008 .. Posted by Jamie

The cake was actually not bad. I wouldn´t say it was terribly pleasing to the eye, but it tasted quite alright. It can be improved on though...

How to bake a cake...

7:32 PM, 22/6/2008 .. Posted by Beck

You seemed to go wrong at Step 1: Find a woman to bake you a cake. Then you can continue straight to Step 2: Eat said cake. Simple.