Citizen cake

FOOD FILE:Dust off your weighing scales and pull on a pinny. Home baking is more popular than ever before, writes MARIE-CLAIRE DIGBY

IT’S OFFICIAL, baking is cool. We’re sifting, creaming and whisking like never before. Sales of baking equipment are soaring. Cake decorating is becoming as competitive as an Olympic sport. Baking groups, inspired by the

Great British Bake Off

on TV, are the new book clubs. And where once a posh cake in a box was something to get excited about, now it’s old-fashioned fairy cakes, wedges of dense fruit cake and buttery scones, all bearing the hallmarks of having been lovingly created in a home kitchen, that are setting pulses racing.

Lakeland, the UK kitchenware chain, has reported a 30 per cent increase in sales of baking-related products. The company has sold 30,000 silicone piping bags in the past eight months. Matthew Canwell, buying director, says: “If you made just one cake in each loose-based tin we sold last year, stacked on top of each other, they would be the height of Kilimanjaro.”

The resurgence of interest in baking was one of the factors that spurred 17-year-old Aaron Joyce from Westport to set up his online kitchen-equipment shop, kitchencookware.ie. Since launching his business last year, Joyce has built up a business base of 2,000 customers.

Ann McNamee of Kitchen Complements, the kitchenware shop in Chatham Street in Dublin 2, says she is seeing more young people getting interested in baking and cake decorating. “There are lots of beginners coming in.”

This is backed up by Paula McCoy, homewares buyer at Arnotts. “Younger customers are requesting advice on bake ware products and equipment. We attribute this to the increase in cooking programmes on TV, as well as the fact that home-baked items have become a popular gift item among family and friends.”

The orange cake linked right is a rich sponge, sandwiched with orange buttercream and glazed with orange icing.

It’s a modern take on a classic, very easy to make, and would be a stunning centrepiece for a stylish afternoon tea table.

DESERT ISLAND CAKES

TRISH DESEINE Cook-book author and TV presenter:My desert island cake would be an old-fashioned chocolate buttercream sandwich, made with salted butter, with a thick layer of buttercream in the middle and on top. This is an enduring Irish childhood memory and my go-to, no need for a recipe, whipped up in an hour, perfect comfort cake.

ROSS STAUNTON Foodgame, South Lotts Road, Dublin 4:My desert island cake would be a Victoria Sponge. It brings back fond memories of Ballymaloe Cookery School, and it was the first cake we made at Foodgame. It is so good with a strong coffee.

MICHELLE DARMODY Cake Café, Dublin 8:Gingerbread, with its softness, its richness and its faint hint of spices, is my desert island cake. It may not be the prettiest of cakes, but it never fails to cheer me up. The first bite brings with it memories of arriving home from school with ice-cold hands and shoulders aching from a heavy bag, and a warm wedge of dark and sticky ginger bread with a layer of crisp icing on top waiting to cheer me up. Now, I love a slice with a strong, sweet, black coffee.

EMER MURRAY Goya's bakery and cafe, Galway:My desert island cake would be Goya's layered chocolate gateau, a dark chocolate sponge soaked with Cointreau and orange juice, filled with a white and milk chocolate mousse and painted with melted dark chocolate.

ROBERT DITTY BIA Baker of the Year, Ditty's bakery, Castledawson, Co Derry:Shanemullagh Twice-Baked Cake. This is one of my own creations combining a number of traditional recipes that I make at this time of year. I make it by holding back some of the unfruited Christmas cake batter, to which I add golden syrup, brazil and hazel nuts, flaked and whole almonds and some lovely French alpine cherries, to make a sticky Florentine mixture. This is added to the top of the cake after a first bake and it is put back in the oven to finish off. I think it would be life sustaining and would include it in my survival rations.

BOOKS TO BAKE BY

Cooking with Chocolate: Essential Recipes and Techniques, edited by Frédéric Bau, École du Grand Chocolat Valrhona (Flammarion, £29.95/€35)

This is probably the only book about cooking with chocolate that you will ever need. Written by the teachers at the school for chocolate geeks – the master chocolatiers and patissiers at the Valrhona École du Chocolat – the hefty volume at first appears daunting. But when you look closer, you’ll see that the techniques are painstakingly explained, the recipes are easy to follow and often accompanied by step-by-step photographs, and you’ll begin to believe that you too could produce that glistening Gateau Opéra, and gold leaf-adorned Sachertorte.

There are three École du Chocolat academies run by the Valrhona chocolate company – the original in Tain l’Hermitage in southwest France, another in Versailles, and one in Tokyo, with five “training laboratories” spread between the three venues. This is where professional pastry chefs go to hone their craft. But there are classes for amateurs too, and editor Frédéric Bau, creative director at the school, says he relied on Julie Haubourdin, who runs these classes, to translate the professional chef’s jargon into language accessible to the amateur. She’s done a fantastic job, and the recipes, more than 100 of them, are glorious. In addition, 14 of them are demonstrated on the 90-minute DVD that comes with the book.

Tea with Bea, by Bea Vo (Ryland, Peters Small, £16.99)

Bea Vo, the American-born owner of Bea’s of Bloomsbury, a small chain of cake shops and cafes in London, studied science and technology at Cornell before training as a classical French pâtissier. She worked the pastry station at both Asia de Cuba and Nobu before opening her first shop, but her luscious cakes and pastries are traditional – some with American influences – rather than oriental. This slim volume is packed with cakes that you’ll actually make, rather than just drool over, and gorgeous photographs by Kate Whitaker will have you pulling out the butter, sugar, flour and eggs and getting stuck in in no time.

Cake Days: Recipes to Make Every Day Special, by Tarek Malouf and the Hummingbird Bakers (HarperCollins, £20)

When we were compiling the shortlist for the 10 Great Cakes slide show at irishtimes.com, this Hummingbird Bakery production had Post-Its fluttering from every second page as we struggled to narrow down our selection. This is a cookery book that you’ll pull down from the shelf again and again for inspiration. Lemon and thyme loaf cake, blood orange cheesecake, Earl Grey cupcakes, sweet and salty chocolate cake and spiced apple cake with brown sugar frosting were among the recipes that jumped off the pages. Special-occasion baking for Easter, Halloween and Christmas are part of the package, and there’s a useful directory of suppliers for those often hard-to-get cake-decorating necessities.

Make, Bake, Love,by Lilly Higgins (Gill MacMillan, €19.99)

Lilly Higgins has earned a loyal following for her food blog, Stuff I Make, Bake and Love (at lillyhiggins.blogspot.com), and her first book contains many of the most popular recipes from the blog, as well as lots of new material. The peanut butter chocolate cake, which she describes as the “cake of cakes”, is worth the cover price alone, but you’ll also find bread recipes, biscuits, small cakes, pies, tarts and a “thrify cakes” chapter. There are charming images of many of the cakes, making good use of Higgins’s vintage china collection.

Italian Home Baking, by Gino D’Acampo (Kyle Books, £18.99)

As you’d expect, bread dough recipes are the backbone of this book, but there are some interesting and unusual cakes too, including a variation on a classic upside down sponge using caramelised oranges, and a hot chocolate pudding cake with Amaretto. Panettone, amaretti biscuits, cantuccini and biscotti keep the Italian theme to the fore, and these classics are easier to execute than you might imagine.