ThePhoenixBaker: Ooo there is a little man out there I really don't like! If I could erase u from my past u would be gone! U know who u r!

lAlcohol in bakery

1 A new baking movement called 'Blokes who bake' emerges in New Zealand, "so blokes can get recipes, share recipes and bake their arses off, safe in the knowledge that other blokes are baking too" (we didn't know New Zealand men were so insecure about their sexuality)...www.blokeswhobake.co.nz/gidday

2010 was shaping up to be a golden year for baking on TV, as commissioners finally cottoned on to baking's rise in popularity. Alas, following the disastrous showing for bakers in Mary Queen of Shops, The Great British Bake-Off, currently showing on BBC2, looks like another damp squib. "There was a moment three-quarters of the way through, when you expected the picture to topple forward and hit the floor as the cameraman finally gave up the will to live," wrote The Telegraph's underwhelmed Iain Hollingshead.

With all the talk of food prices rising, we need to bulk up while we can to sustain us through the tough times. We thought the deep-fried Eccles cake couldn't be topped until the US strutted back on court and casually slam-dunked the winner in the sat fat wars. Last year Stop the Week reported on the aptly-named Heart Attack Café The Harlem Globe Trotters of sat-fatuousness which was peddling deep-fried Coke balls. It has upped the ante with the closest food equivalent to cyanide yet to be developed: deep-fried butter balls (see bit.ly/9lbXZU).

lChristmas lines

"Peter sets to work and introduces me to the 'Bitch'. The Bitch is the starter, the natural, yeasty leaven that makes the good bread really good bread. The Bitch smells strong and vinegary and she makes popping, breathing sounds that tell us she is alive and well"

Now that the Food Standards Agency's virility has been snipped and its knackers stitched on to two new hosts the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and the Department for Health it's pleasing to see environment secretary Caroline Spelman already getting a firm grip of her new funbag.

Emergency services were recently called to a Tesco store in Ryde after reports of a suspicious white powder emanating from a bag, wrote the Isle of Wight County Press. The police, hazardous material firefighters and ambulance crews leapt into action, only for it to transpire that this anthrax-alike substance was actually a sack of bread additive. (The Real Bread Campaign get about a bit, don't they?)

lHalloween

Bakery warehouse supervisor Dave Barnes was told by his wife he'd have to retake his wedding vows after losing his wedding ring at work and that 'threat' triggered a UK-wide hunt by his bosses and workmates.

Who said students learn nothing at university any more? Tesco's Laura Fagan appears to be carving out a niche for herself developing morning-after-leftovers sarnies. Her latest contribution to Britain's biggest retailer's shelves is the lasagne sandwich inevitably dubbed the Lasarnie by the News of the World. Last year, Fagan was behind Tesco's cold fish finger sandwich. Attempts to taste-test this delight were thwarted after it sold out in our local store.

1. The latest trend is ice cream-themed cupcakes: bit.ly/cva37p

One book we're unlikely to be reviewing is Knitted Cakes by Devon-based textiles author-cum-time-waster Susan Penny, which features a "mouth-watering" selection of mohair muffins and furry fairy cakes.

lCakes, Traybakes & Slices

A week is a long time in cupcakes. Two weeks, an age. Here are our top cupcake trends spotted in the build-up to National Cupcake Week and our UK Cupcake-off competition (deadline 16 July).

"I have been for three years baking cakes. And now I'm going to bake a cake that has a bitter jelly. The message of the new music is now more bitter than it was before. Because the sweeter the cake, the more bitter the jelly can be"

We've stolen enough from America in recent year muffins, giant cookies, glazed doughnuts, cupcakes, whoopie pies. Why not nick the latest bakery retail concept that is quite literally a steal? A few months ago, Stop the Week picked up on a 'Pay what you like' experiment carried out by the US' largest bakery chain Panera Bread. The idea was a bakery-café social enterprise, whereby the well-off coughed up the asking price or more, while the poorer got a cheap or free deal.

The farl is a brown loaf, aerated chemically, shaped similarly to scones, only four times the size. Volume is not attained by adding excess baking powder, but by thoroughly mellowing the gluten. Try out this recipe it should give the finest brown loaf you have ever made:

Cake of the week goes to Gardners Bakery in Kingsthorpe, who baked this cheeky number for ITV's Loose Women in celebration of National Craft Bakers' Week. And no, the miserable sods didn't mention it on air. Gardners had more success with BBC Radio Northampton's Bernie Keith, who raved about his specially made cake within five minutes of receiving it. We're presuming it didn't depict the radio presenter exposing himself too.

"Herbert entrusts me with the 'secret' recipe. In truth, it's simple, containing just three ingredients: smelt flour, which gives the bread a lovely nutty flavour; Cornish sea salt and water"

Your Olivers, Blumenthals and Ramsays have hogged the TV schedules for long enough. The bakery trade has been crying out for its own superstar. Now she's arrived. All hail Angela Maher for her jaw-dropping appearance on Mary Queen of Shops last week.

lNational Cupcake Week

Let us consider that type of cake which has a layer of almond paste in the centre. It may be simnel cake or a rich slab cake. Which is the best way to insert that layer of cake? The usual procedure is to mix the almond paste, weigh off and chaff each piece round, then pin it out to the required size, finally placing this 'heavy' layer of almond paste on a much lighter cake batter. Does this almond paste layer not try its best to sag during baking? And it is successful too often! Instead of preparing a paste, sprinkle the dry ingredients, about half an inch thick, on the batter forming the bottom half of the cake. During baking, moisture, which is usually driven off, actually doughs up the paste for you. Thus you do not require any eggs for the paste and save time in mixing.

For the first time, bread sold in Orford is featuring health labels on the packaging, warning of the dangers of lung cancer, heart disease and impotence. Oh no, yet more health scares about bread, you cry! Well, actually no. Neither is it the latest instalment of The Real Bread Campaign. In fact it's to do with a scam operating around the Grasmere Avenue area of the town where criminals are selling Golden Virginia tobacco for £6 on the street.

"He said he was taking into consideration my honesty and the length of time I had been working there and I thought he was going to give me a warning. I could not believe it when he said he was sacking me"

Unusual bread-related cultural event of the week is a forthcoming stage production whereby bread is kneaded, risen and baked on stage. Intriguing enough, but what's more, Not by Bread Alone by Israeli Nalaga'at theatre company is set to be staged in London next month by an entirely deaf and blind cast. It's described as "The moving and life-affirming stories of eleven actors played out through music, humour, mime, magic and bread-making, mixing reality with fantasy, grandeur with ridicule." What's more, the venue will feature the BlackOut Bar, where you can order drinks and food in pitch black surroundings, served by blind waiters. We recommend you leave your table manners in the cloakroom.

Move over girly flowery cupcakes, your time is up. As unlikely a proposition as it might seem, vermin-themed cupcakes have arrived. Yes, and just when you were thinking there was nowhere left to take the category after zombie cupcakes (see 7 May BB), 'What's New, Cupcake?' by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson arrives with recipes for cockroach and rat cupcakes: bit.ly/d2abTV

Now in America they have a machine for slicing dough before it is baked, and this idea is rather novel. The 'Do Slicer' passes the moulded dough piece to a cutting frame where 25 sickle-shaped knives revolve through slots in the frame. Melted fat is smeared automatically on the knife blades and this, coating the dough slices, prevents them sticking together again after baking. Thus the baked loaf holds together alright, but the individual slices can be taken from it one at a time. Whether the bread is likely to find much favour either in America or over here remains to be seen...

"I am the Nigella Lawson of breast milk cookery. Why would you prefer to drink milk from a dirty cow over a clean, healthy woman? Breast milk is sweeter and slightly oily it actually tastes of goodness, whereas cow's milk just tastes of chemicals"

Bakery-themed video games are rare, so we welcome 'Pile up! Bakery' a two-player puzzle game in which players compete to stack the highest pile of pastries, cakes and slices of fruit falling off an assembly line, and balance it to prevent it from crashing down. Despite costing just a couple of quid to download, one review says it's set to join the list of poorest-rated games ever released on the Sony PSP... So we suggest you turn your production line up to 11 and play real-life pile-up then post a video of it on Youtube.

In these hectic times, snacking on the go has come into its own. But as our lifestyles gather speed, driven by the need to tweet every time we boil the kettle, the need for fast food solutions that keep pace grows ever more acute. Sometimes one yearns for a 120psi cannon to fire food straight into one's face.

"I don't deny myself anything. Right now, my weakness is for cupcakes. I was sent 12 of them when I got to No.1 all different flavours"

There has been a good deal of dissatisfaction consequent upon the rationing of tea, especially for those workers who normally drink tea while at work. The Ministry of Food stated this week that a special allocation of tea is to be made and drunk at work. All local food officers have been instructed to allow the extra supplies to any factory or business where tea is normally made during the day. Bakery workers can now, therefore, be sure of their cups of tea while at work.

The craze for record-breaking baked goods shows no signs of dying out this time it's the world's biggest piano cake. An effort from Confection Bakery in Michigan, USA, measured 4ft wide by 6ft long and 5ft high. Weighing 300lb, it was supported by wooden legs and sculpted Styrofoam.

Remember 12 March's Stop the Week news of the US exhibition Dairy-Deli-Bake, featuring an unlikely guest speaker, former president George W Bush? Well, it continues to throw up gems. In the latest show literature, we are treated to a preview of one intriguing innovation to be showcased: salads in pastry bags. Elsewhere, we are told, visitors will be slavering over a new crossover between haute cuisine and hot dogs called, predictably enough, haute dogs. Or how about "naked 'wiches"? "Think topless and bottomless and you'll see the latest trend in sandwich presentations," it says. Oh, we often think along those lines lines perhaps a little too much.

You wait around ages for a zombie-themed cupcake recipe book to be launched and two come along at once. Isn't it always the way?

If you've ever wondered 'is there life after bakery?' then the answer on last week's evidence is 'yes' if you're BB's favourite bakery-boss-turned-sports-impresario and a 'no' if you're the uppety fox who's stepped into his crosshairs.

"In the four weeks of the World Cup, blokes tend to get a bit obsessed with football to the extent that they don't look after their partners. The idea is that in the week before the World Cup, we're saying 'ladies, make sure you get your oats'. What we mean innocently by that is you get to eat oat bread during the course of that week..."

Probably few more preposterous excuses have ever been given than that which was raised at the Birkenhead Police Court this week, where a baker was charged with having stolen a large Genoa cake, the property of his employers.

The moment the starter gun was fired on the general election, Stop the Week dusted off its binoculars to commentate on an eagerly anticipated political race of the campaign: the first politician to claim a bakery-related gaffe.

lBakers' Review

Bakery-based April Fool of the week goes to Sayers The Bakers for its mock left-handed sandwich, with "the ingredients rotated 180 degrees, redistributing the weight of the sandwich, so that the bulk of them skew to the left". On the packaging, "the door opens to the left". Hats off to them, but Burger King got there first in 1998, when it took out full page ads in the US for a left-handed Whopper...

One of the features of the Baking Exhibition is the fact that bakers from all over the world congregate there. The British Baker stand seems to be the meeting place of all the interesting folk in the bakery world, and it is well for those of us who have to do a bit of writing that it has its secluded portion, where we can work undistracted by the interest we cannot but feel in all the bakers from far and near who are to be found around it. On the stand of the Millers' Mutual Association was an outsized bag filled with flour. Everyone making a donation of three pence for trade benevolence was invited to guess the weight of flour contained in this tremendous sack. Whoever guesses correctly gets the flour as a gift. One tough old baker held it lovingly within his grasp and, with florid face, gave it a hearty wrench to see if he could move it. As it must have weighed about a ton, he did not move it very far. Whoever wins, we hope they will not have to carry it out of the hall themselves!

Launched on 1 April but apparently not an April Fool's gag is the strictly for adults only website Rude Cakes. A spin-off from The Cake Store (www.thecakestore.co.uk), Rude Cakes is following the economy's descent into the gutter by establishing an X-rated emporium.

It has been a long time coming. As part of its tireless efforts to tell us what fashions are going up and what are going down, The Sunday Times' Style magazine last weekend belatedly? led the anti-cupcake backlash.

"There are a lot of things that differentiate us from the other guys out there, and number one is definitely the marketing hook we're provocative. We're speaking to a certain audience or to a certain generation of people. But really, it's an American concept. We're talking about our First Amendment rights here"

lBaking Industry Exhibition

It will be an offence, after 5 August, 1940, to place sugar on the exterior of any cake, biscuit, bun, pastry, scone, bread, roll or similar article, after baking. It will not be permitted to sell or to buy any confectionery of this kind. In an instruction to trade associations, the ministry has made it clear that the prohibition does not extend to the use on cakes of jam, jelly or lemon and other fruit curd. However, buttercream, marshmallow, chocolate, fondant and marzipan will not be permitted. This new order is not a good example of official administration. It will not be permissible to put a half-ounce of marshmallow on a cake, but it will be permissible to put as much lemon curd on a cake as its surface will take, because jam, lemon and other fruit curds are not affected by the order. All these goods make for messiness rather than neatness in decoration.

The apocalypse is not the be-all-and-end-all of what you can predict with a cake oh no. Sigmund Freud would be kicking himself for failing to realise that a cake is also a device to gauge whether a relationship will work or not.

If you thought the Cake Wrecks blog was the final word in disaster cakes, behold a revelation: a blog that catalogues cataclysms through the medium of cake.

"Hey, I've been having better sex and longer with this here http://xxx/xxx"

In the tradition of bakery-related images that leave us speechless, words have failed us once again to explain away this ill-advised tattoo of a smiling cupcake sat on a toilet. Over to you, our squadron of trusted caption writers. Send your captions to: bb@william-reed.co.uk

In January, Stop the Week wrote about New York's www.butchbakery.com offering up manly, camouflaged cupcakes with macho flavours, in protest at the dominance of girly pink varieties. The gender war appears to be rumbling in Canada too, with Toronto's For the Love of Cake seeing a doubling of demand for cakes such as the one above. Demand is reportedly being driven by women buying for men.

The Ministry of Food has made an order that will make it an offence, punishable by fine or imprisonment, to waste food. Among the conditions imposed by the order is that where anyone having the disposal of food unreasonably retains it until it becomes unfit for human consumption, he may be punished.

Congratulations to John Gordon of coffee accessory supplier Gorilla Tampers in London, who was judged the UK's best barista at the recent UK Barista Championship, after impressing with his drink-making dexterity. But without wishing to put a damper on this tamper, Stop the Week has seen a glimpse of the future, and it's one in which this latte artist could be out of a job. Ukranian Oleksiy Pikalo has invented a printer that 'prints' logos or designs on to frothy coffee using a thin layer of caramel spray. He is reported as saying, "If you've got a picture of it, it's a safe bet we can print it". This cumbersome-looking gizmo is yet to make it into production, but it's only a matter of time before the machines take over. We've all seen the Terminator films. If further evidence were needed, someone has taught a desktop PC to automatically make a coffee.

Thanks to our readers once more for their response to our caption competition last week. Kudos to Luke Bray of Finsbury Park in London for unmasking the systematic outrage perpetrated on gingerbread folk, with this entry: "The US administration admitted that the CIA's coffee breaks had gone a little too far."

lCelebration cakes

Some other unexpected things found hidden in cakes... http://bit.ly/9jtfae Forget your mixers and ovens, you can now bake a cake using Photoshop... http://bit.ly/a8LM6b Rhubarb crumble kills cancer... http://bit.ly/d0avk1 The world's cake-eating champion ate 14 cakes totalling 1,120g of fat in just 8 minutes... http://bit.ly/9Jsqn4 100 cakes based on computer

"It could only happen in a place like Fowey. I think it's a lovely idea and I hope he never gets discovered"

Stop the Week often dreams of a world entirely composed of cake. So we are overjoyed to hear of an artistic project based in Oakland in California, called Cakeland, which transforms a walkthrough retail space into a haven that's good enough to eat. Actually, it's mostly made of foam. The website describes the vision thus: "Cakeland can serve as an analogue for the search for temporal love; the experience can be incredibly sweet and indulgent, punctuated by moments of insecurity and terror."

This evil gingerbread man was born out of the disturbed imagination of a "new media research lab" called Kitchen Budapest. In classic Have I Got News for You fashion, we're inviting readers to come up with a humorous caption. The best one will be printed in the next issue of BB. Send your suggestions to: bb@william-reed.co.uk

It's a showdown of epic proportions two heavyweight bowel-shifters shaping up for the ultimate contest. In the red corner, rye bread. And in the blue corner, laxatives. Let's get ready to rumble!

20 January, 1933:

Can a humble sausage roll conceivably have more Facebook fans than Cheryl Cole? Join the campaign and make it happen... http://bit.ly/aRtAzH Thought you could only make coffee out of coffee beans? How about using grapes instead? http://bit.ly/6xIzQu Ever wondered what happens to all those thin wooden coffee stirrers when you're not looking? Well, one artist is making a livelihood out of them... http://bit.ly/ctcozR Baking tins to make giant cupcakes go on sale in America but not everybody's happy about it... http://bit.ly/8F5z61 Taking a cake into work and office-based cake-offs are the new team-building alternatives to paintballing... http://bit.ly/aYYkaz Police crack down on 'sexpresso' stalls in the US... http://bit.ly/cVrTWV

"The girl told me, 'You don't look over 21. I need to see some proof of age'. I told her I was certain the proof of age laws did not apply to quiche but she said, 'We have to be really strict now and this applies to quiche bought over the counter.' She was deadly serious"

Through reasons only known to themselves, aspirational coffee chain Costa recently chose durable tabloid magnet Peter Andre to front its publicity drive around the launch of its 'flat white' coffee, featured in these very pages (see Masterclass, pages 34-35).

lMachinery
With some categories of pastry in stronggrowth, what laminating and sheeting equipment can you buy to take advantage?
lDistribution and wholesale
We find out what distributors want fromsuppliers. And we look at the optionsfor sourcing products
lBakers' Review
The monthly pages of the National Association of Master Bakers return for 2010

A weird form of treasure hunt, organised at a Lancashire resort, has bothererd the staff of a local café. It was found that cups of tea or coffee were ordered and, having received the usual receipt, the customers paid the money, but attempted to retain the check [receipt]. In some cases the tea or coffee was not touched. The mystery was solved when it was discovered that a local had organised a treasure hunt, one condition of which was the production of a check from the particular café. A more pointless and peculiar scheme it is difficult to imagine. On the face of it, it would seem that the café would benefit by increased turnover and a little advertisement. But any advantage of this kind would be easily outweighed by the inconvenience to the staff occasioned by the inteference with the ordinary clerical routine, as a result of which it would be impossible to analyse the takings properly. Such schemes should obviously be discouraged.

Jesus appears on a naan bread (again)... http://bit.ly/5HEwH4 Yet more geeky Star Wars cake creativity... http://bit.ly/8IS04K How do you make a cake worthy of Elvis' 75th birthday (he's still alive, you know)? http://bit.ly/8B2Qk7 Can you really sell a cupcake for $10,000? Er, no... http://bit.ly/8431Vi Why we still want to eat a high-calorie pud after a meal... http://bit.ly/8sEAuk How tall is Britain's biggest wedding cake? Is 9ft big enough for you? http://bit.ly/8NfmC9

The media is awash with trend predictions for 2010. So we're not about to break ranks, are we? Here's Stop the Week's half dozen...
1. Whoopie goldmine
"The freshest food fad to waft in from American bakeries," declared The Times on Saturday, "is the humble whoopie pie, a cake-and-cream dessert sandwich". Always ones to blow our own trumpet, BB predicted this in our appropriately named 'Trend Predictor' column back in 10 April 2009... Verdict: ****

lThe BB75
Building on our annual Top 50 league tableof bakery retailers, BB will review thewinners and losers in bakery, sandwich barsand coffee shops on the high street
lEaster lines
It's time to start planning for the first big seasonal sales boost of the year. So what canyou sell to make you stand out from the crowd?
lThe year ahead
'Tis the season for analysts' wild and wackypredictions on the trends for 2010, but whatdo they mean for bakery?

19 December, 1902: a moment of peace
Ere another issue is in the hands of our readers, the joybells that awaken so many happy memories will have rung out upon the December air, and another Christmas will be added as a pearl to the string of time. Many years ago, we first offered our Yuletide greetings in these pages, and many of our friends have accompanied us through the sunshine and darkness. We all lead busy and active lives. So each year Christmas, in its freshness, comes to afford a rest from labour, and to give an opportunity of recognising the deeper things of life. It is but momentary, the storm and the stress will break in again and work has to be renewed, and the ordinary duties, strenuous or monotonous, have to be taken up. But the great lesson of Christmas teaches us that even the struggles bring the consciousness of strength. It also gives us the privilege and opportunity of wishing all readers of British Baker a bright and joyous Christmas.

Our lingerie story should convince you that British Baker is a broad church. And so it is that we extend a hand oh why hold back, have a kiss, it's Christmas! to our new friends at Practical Caravan magazine.
Stop the Week spotted a story online about a competition that the mobile-dwelling bible ran in association with Lakeland, to find the best caravan-shaped cake. The competition was launched in September alongside a feature on "how to make the perfect caravan cake" (see pic above).
Vital business info for cake baking readers, we thought, so we got in touch. "'Perfect' may have been a bit strong for my caravan cake...," caravan-writer-cum-cake-baker Alyson Warnock at Practical Caravan told us. Nevertheless, she added, they received an astonishing 100 entries off the back of it, "most of which made my cake look very amateurish."
A harsh self-critic, I'm sure you'll agree. And if you don't, then surely the winning competition entry has attained caravan cake perfection (see pic right).

Winning by a nose in the final furlong to snatch the 'Letter of the Year' title is the following missive, received this week by email.
Open-minded types that we are, we weren't ruling anything out. "Pray tell, how do you envisage working with us?" we asked, intrigued by the possibilities opening up before us.
"Thank you for your fast reply," came the answer. "Can you offer product reviews? Another option we could consider would be to run a prize giveaway/competition with you? For your site, in particular, I thought you might be interested in working together to promote a new range of maternity lingerie we are about to take on Cake Lingerie. We thought we could try to brainstorm a fun way to promote it with you? Please let me know your thoughts."
If that tantalising prospect isn't reason enough to renew your subscription next year, we don't know what is. In the meantime, while we scratch our heads to find a way to make this kinky cake crossover work for you our valued reader your ideas and suggestions are, as ever, welcome.bb@william-reed.co.uk