Cinnabourbodons

So I've been talking about making something along these lines for a year now, and I finally found myself bored outta my skull enough to finally do it.

I haven't baked a cake since I was about 13 years old, so I didn't go into this filled with confidence at how it would turn out. Especially not since my ingredients were... a little unusual.

Yeah, the name is basically a drunkenly assembled portmanteau combining three things I fucking LOVE: cinnamon, bourbon, and Mastodon. Since I couldn't get a hold of any of Brent Hinds' every-drug-under-the-sun-infused blood (I suck at being a stalker), the first two alone will have to suffice.

So first up, seperate out your various measures of ingredients:
• 5oz self-raising flour
• 4oz caster sugar
• Stork margarine
• 2 eggs
• 2 large tbsps of cocoa powder
• Cinnamon (add to taste)
• A very, VERY generous splash of bourbon. I went for Southern Comfort, the wimpiest, but sweetest, brand I know.

So firstly, grab a pyrex bowl, pour in all your dry powder ingredients first, then add your margarine, then your eggs. Grab a whisk (I'd recommend electric, because I'm a lazy motherfucker, and you're guaranteed a better consistency with a little high-powered assistance), and bury it right deep in there, and start mixing!

Once it's mixed together pretty well, you can start splashing in some bourbon 'til you get the correct texture. I don't really know what that is, not being a cake/bake expert, so I just kinda played it by ear. Or sight. Or taste. Whateverthefuck sense is applicable here.

Add some extra sugar, bourbon, and a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon, all to taste.

[Insert photo of finished, whisked product here. Or don't, if you're an idiot who forgot to take one.]

Divide your mixture up between several cake... things. What are they called? The wee paper... skirts.
Cake skirts.
Fuckit, that'll have to do.
Anyway, divide it up between a lot of 'em, or just a couple, depending on how big you want the finished product to be. I went for big-ass-motherfuckers, as I believe is the correct industry term.

Once thats done, pop them into a pre-heated oven (gas mark 3) for between 15 - 20 minutes.
If you're feeling particularly limber, try and air-drum to anything from Blood Mountain. I pulled every single muscle in my arms doing so.



Once the time has passed, take 'em out of the oven and poke one with your finger. If it raises pretty quick, they're done. If it stays poked, then they're either not quite baked, or you've added FAR too much bourbon.
Guess which I fell victim to?

So now that your cakes are ruined, it's time to make the icing.

I didn't realise how fucking annoying it was to whip up some simple chocolate icing! Goddamn!
Dump your butter into the dry ingredients, and basically just... fuck around with a fork trying in vain to integrate the ingredients. Eventually lose the rag with it and say "fuck this!", storm off in a huff for 15 minutes, then grudgingly return and have another shot.

If you're still completely inept, boil up a tiny amount of water, and splash that in there, to help break up the chunks of sugary butter, and continue whisking it into something resembling dog shit.

It tastes marginally better than it looks.

Spread it out over your terrible cakes, and attempt to make it at least halfway presentable by swirling the icing around to little points. God they look awful, don't they? Sprinkle a little cinnamon over the finished products, and try to muster up some faux-enthusiasm at the prospect of eating all of them by yourself...

South Of No North Pancakes

For once I couldn't come up with even a bad music pun for a post title, but then I got to thinking about what the actual ingredients were for this little bit of alchoholic alchemy and came up with a suitably pretentious literary-inspired title instead.

Basically, all I did was make standard pancakes (or 'dropped scones' as my weird Northern 1950's bakery book calls 'em), with a couple of little twists. The main attraction for me was the syrup, but we'll get to that in a bit. First, here's the obligatory ingredients shot:

Firstly I'd like to point out that YES, Southern Comfort is ENTIRELY necessary when making pancakes, or at least when I make 'em anyway. Also, I was ill and tired as fuck when I put that shot together, so yeah, I'm missing... well a lot of the ingredients I actually used. Bite me.

The first thing you wanna do is measure out around 5 ozs (I know, ounces, what the fuck right? blame the ancient recipe book) of plain flour, and also around half an ounce of butter. If you're as fucking weird as me and you can't touch flour because for some reason it creeps you the fuck out, get someone else to knead the butter and flour together, so it all breaks up into disgusting flour-y disgustingness.
Then you want to crack a couple of eggs into a pyrex bowl, and get stirrin'! Add in the occasional splash of milk as you stir, just to thin out the consistency, unless (again) you're like me and like a reeeally thick goopy mixture.

This is the point where you can deviate from most standard recipes and get a little bit creative with ingredients. Not that I did anything batshit crazy like add crack cocaine or centipede legs, I stuck to pretty safe choices like demerara sugar, ground ginger and cinnamon. Mix your flour mixture together with your egg/milk mixture, and chuck in all your sugar or whatever. Whisk the hell outta all of that, and leave it to sit in a bowl in the fridge for about 20 minutes. I don't know why you gotta do that, but the recipe told me to.

While that's pointlessly chilling, you can get to the REAL reason this dessert is so damn fun.
First get yourself a mini-cauldron, and add in COPIOUS amounts of Southern Comfort, then pour in about the same amount of real Canadian maple syrup. Seriously, you want to make this about half and half, for maximum boozey goodness.

It might not look like a lot in the photo above, but when you're only serving one, trust me, it's more than enough! Remove your pancake mix from the fridge, and for the sheer hell of it, splash in a little more Southern Comfort, because clearly your throat doesn't hurt enough.

Fire up your frying pan on a pretty high heat, and slooowly pour in a good helping of your mixture. It should only take a minute before you start too see bubbles form, so if you're skilled enough, try and flip your pancake when you see the first bubbles. If you time it right, you'll get pancakes that are a fucking beautiful golden colour. Basically just repeat this as many times as it takes until you've used all your pancake batter, I managed to get 4 decent sized pancakes, but if you wanna make 'em even bigger, you could settle for 2 HUGE pancakes. Anyway, enough horseshit, top your stack off with a chunk of butter, and then drown em in Southern Syrup.

Et voila, the ideal drunken breakfast!