Bakewell Bad Boy

“One is not a true pimper until one has pimped”.

Months of sleepless nights, haunted by the cries of the ever-so-ordinary snacks amongst us, and an aching responsibility to give something back to the pimping community from which we have taken so much can only ever lead to one thing….. a pimpfest.

The August Bank Holiday Monday was put in the diary for a day of in-your-face, unadulterated pimping. And what better a challenge than to pimp the ever-so-humble Mr Kipling’s infamous Bakewell Slice.

And so it was done. We all stood down from our daily grind in the ghetto to take on this old-England tea time favourite which grannies have been serving up since the dawn of time.

What you need:

220 g plain flour
pinch of salt
25g cocoa powder
300g raspberry jam
1000g icing sugar
800g butter
700g caster sugar
12 medium eggs
4 teaspoons almond essence
700g self raising flour

We nipped out nice and early to spend a thrifty £9.96 on the required ingredients: £1.49 on cocoa, £1.11 on jam, £1.62 on eggs, 82p on self raising flour, 76p on caster sugar, £2.12 on butter, £1.16 on icing sugar, 32p on almond essence and finally, 56p on plain flour. For clarification, the almond flakes pictured were a contingency purchase, and were not used in any part of this pimp.

Step one:

Two pimpettes mixed a splash of water with 220g of plain flour, 100g butter and a pinch of salt to make a simple pimping shortcrust base.

Step two:

As in any pimp, size is an important issue. Consequently we decided to use two large roasting trays rather than just one. Both trays were covered in greaseproof paper with splodges of butter and the pastry was rolled to fill the bottom. As shown in the photo, we used some cannelini beans to keep the pastry flat whilst in the oven. Bake at 160 degrees centigrade for 25 minutes

Step three:

Take out of the oven, put the beans back in the packet from whence they came and spread 150g of jam over each pastry base. Now put both bases back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Step four:

The two halves were then laid next to each other to form the base and left to cool. We then washed the roasting trays ready for the top half.

Step five:

700g butter, 700g caster sugar, 12 medium eggs, 4 teaspoons almond essence and 700g self raising flour was whisked up to make the sponge mixture. We put half the mixture into each baking tray (coated again with greaseproof paper) and baked off at 180 degrees centigrade for 45 minutes. We then took them out, left to cool, popped on top of the bases and cut to size.

Step six:

A whopping 900g of icing was mixed with a splash of water and spread all over the top. A simple cardboard structure helped to keep the icing in.

Step seven:

The last 100g of icing was mixed with cocoa and piped through a sandwich bag with a hole in the corner to replicate the intricate Mr Kimpling design feature.

After 5 hours of pimping we were there! The ‘Bakewell Bad Boy of the original Kipling Krew’ stood proud next to his now very distant relative. Not only is the pimped version gigantic but also tasted fantastic and actually better than the original (in our humble and not bias-at-all opinion)..

The cake has lasted a week, feeding a healthy 6 people at least twice a day! Pimptastic…

Pimp size 52cm length, 12cm height and 22cm wide.