Tin Years On - time for cake

 I return today to my blog, after another lengthy absence, for quite a momentous occasion. Click on the "About this Blog" link at the top of the page and it takes you through to my very first post, setting out why I decided to start all this madness. The date? 22nd December 2013.

I can't quite believe it's been ten years to the day, but then time does seem to increasingly fly by the older you get, doesn't it? The ever-longer gaps between my posts are testament to that, though my laziness and ever-diminishing attention span are probably more to blame. I was quite surprised though to see that I have clocked up 141 posts in that time, working out at more than one a month. It's not at all impressive compared to those people who write their blogs every day, but it's certainly more than I can remember writing. 

10 tins...10 years

There are however a huge, frankly embarrassing number of tins I have tried, photographed but not got round to writing about, and more than I would care to admit awaiting opening in my cupboards. Barely a week goes by without me having a quick look at the shelves of the tinned food aisles in my local supermarkets, in case there is anything new, on offer or reduced to clear. And I seem to have amassed an extraordinary collection of recipe books and pamphlets all involving tinned foods in some way or another. So while my output online may seem very low, I do feel I have been properly wedded to this somewhat bizarre idea for all this time.

10 years would be quite significant for any blog, but for me it's a particularly fitting occasion to commemorate, given that for wedding anniversaries, the traditional gift is something made from tin. No doubt countless men have attempted to be amusing by buying their other halves a tin of beans as a comedy gift to celebrate the occasion. Someone I used to work with once did this, and I'm not entirely sure if he actually bought his wife a proper gift as well, but they are still married so I guess he must have done.

As to how I should celebrate, cake always seems a good place to start. Recently I spent a few days in Hamburg, where in a homewares shop I stumbled upon the perfect thing - Cake in a Can - a small, sardine-size tin with a cake inside, and even a heart-shaped sparkler to stick in the top and really make the occasion special.

There was one problem however - as I was only there for 3 days, I was travelling hand-luggage only. I have never been 100% sure of the rules surrounding taking tins in your cabin bag on flights, and as such have never risked it - some obviously contain more than 100ml of liquid, and so would not be allowed on that basis, but even those that only contain solid foods could in theory be used as a weapon with their sharp edges when you remove the lid. The sparkler that came with this tin made it a complete no-no; I'm pretty sure you can't even take those in your checked-in luggage in the hold. So I had no choice but to celebrate a few weeks early, and open the tin there and then in Hamburg.

My hotel had a small terrace for smokers, so I was able to go out there to light my sparkler, for fear of setting off the smoke alarm in my room. I managed to find a secluded spot away from others, as having to explain to other guests quite why I was sat on my own, lighting a sparkler stuck into a tinned cake, would have been difficult enough in English, let alone in German. For the same reason, I had also bought a very cheap cigarette lighter so I wouldn't have to ask someone for a light and face any questions they might have. 

It was somewhat annoying therefore to open the outer plastic box and find that alongside the sparkler, it contained a single match to light it with - the label on the back had neglected to mention this. Never mind. I opened the tin, lay the special "Happy Birthday to You" piece of cardboard on top, stuck the sparkler in, and lit it.

I didn't sing, to avoid attracting attention to myself.

Sparkler extinguished and cooled, I returned inside to the warmth and decent lighting of my room to eat the cake. I left the completely redundant cigarette lighter out on the smoking terrace for someone else to find. After the excitement of the sparkler, the cake itself didn't have a huge amount to recommend it. The packaging also contained a small wooden spoon which had suggested to me that the cake might be deliciously soft and squidgy in texture. It turned out to be a rather dense puck of sponge cake, looking not unlike a bar of soap in a soap-dish. The spoon therefore had little use other than to prise the cake out, and scrape the remains off the bottom of the tin. It was somewhat dry, but did have a hint of vanilla flavour alongside the few chocolate chips in it. I would guess that the cake had been baked in a large tray and then popped into the tin and sealed, rather than being baked in the tin itself, but it was hard to tell. 

I couldn't help but feel it would have benefitted from being soaked in some alcohol, but then again, wouldn't most things? Anyway, I've eaten worse in the name of this blog over the last decade. It was a birthday cake in a tin - it did the job. Happy 10th Birthday to (and from) The Tin Cannoisseur. 

Looking back over the last decade, there have actually been a good few cakes over the years. You may remember the Rainbow Cakes, baked in empty tins, that I made back in 2014. Or the surprisingly good Chocolate Cake made with tinned sauerkraut from 2020. That same year, only a few weeks into the very first lockdown and facing a birthday on my own (the best kind, frankly), I treated myself to a cake made with a common tinned item folded into the batter. Any guesses what it was?

Those little white flecks are the giveaway. It was a tin of baked beans, sauce and all. I can't remember where I found the recipe now, but I'm not sure I would repeat this one. It made for a good moist, sweet crumb, but there was a definite beany whiff to it, and the time in the oven had hardened the whole beans, so they had a slight crunch to them, almost a bit like they were nuggets of white chocolate. Except they weren't. They were beans.

Mashing up or pureeing tins of beans can however produce really good cakes, and can be used as a substitute for flour and/or butter - I had some success a long time ago with a tinned apple and chickpea cake (it didn't look great, but it tasted good) and a chocolate black bean cake, which was wonderfully dark and fudgy. 

More recently, these wonderfully light, airy little cakes were cooked in used, cleaned out tins, slightly adapting a recipe that used double cream in place of butter, opting instead for a tin of Nestle Extra Thick Cream instead of the fresh stuff. 

In a similar vein, the tin of condensed milk in this coconut loaf cake worked very well as a replacement for both butter and sugar. I made it for a charity bake sale at work where it all got sold, which I was quite pleased with.

I also had an attempt at a classic Mexican Tres Leches cake earlier this year, which traditionally is a light sponge cake soaked in a mixture of condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream, giving a wonderfully squidgy, gooey pudding-like result that definitely requires a spoon to serve and eat. My take on this used the different flavoured milks that I had in my stash of tins - condensed coconut milk, cardamom-flavoured evaporated milk, and honey-flavoured 'cream'. The latter was actually "a sterilised blend of skimmed milk and vegetable oil", which sounds horrible but, like the other two milks, was delicious enough to eat from the tin with a spoon.

The sponge cake recipe itself also called for a small amount of milk itself (does that technically make it a cuatro leches cake?), and so I continued the flavoured milk theme there, by draining a small amount of tinned rice pudding, and using the vanilla-scented milk in the cake batter. 

Oh, and naturally I baked the whole thing in an old Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie tin.

Topped with more of the honey-flavoured cream after its soaking with the milk mix, this was genuinely one of the best cake/desserts I have made, with the hints of cardamom, coconut and honey all still noticeable in the final result. I half wish now that I had waited until the 10th birthday to do this recipe, as it really was a banger.

Back to the blog - will there be another 10 years? I did contemplate whether or not this milestone might be a good time to knock the whole idea on the head. I certainly haven't achieved anywhere near as much with it as I would have liked, but there are still an awful lot of stories to write up, and tins to try, both in my cupboard and beyond. While the writing does sometimes feel like a chore - not least as the Blogger platform I have been using is truly dreadful and completely user-unfriendly - I have enjoyed the creative process, which is partly the reason why I started it all. While I can't promise my output will increase, I think I will be carrying on with it for a while yet. I might try to cut down on the number of new tins I buy though, and work through what I've already got - otherwise it could end up being several more decades and anniversaries before I get through them all. But if that means lots more cakes, then it's all good.