I had no idea Thomas was so old. Hollie went and got herself involved in a Milkshake TV baking challenge recently and I had to stop her when she was making it because I wasn’t accepting that Thomas the Tank Engine is 75. Just how? It was in my internal general knowledge bank that the original TV series came out in 1984. Case closed.
I’m one of those people that constantly gets lost of Wikipedia, and I’ll always stray towards pages about things I cared about when I was little, like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, ZZZap! and Dr. Zitbag’s Transylvania Pet Shop, because that’s the kind of thing I do with my free time. I must have done my Thomas lookup recently and was absolutely certain that it was a mid-‘80s creation.
Little did I know that Thomas’ history went faaaar deeper than I ever thought, having existed in book format back in the ‘40s. I mean, when you consider that he’s a steam engine, it sort of makes sense that he would be older. Thomas & Friends on Milkshake is part of the current daily breakfast routine for the ladsdem, and I obviously approve because it was the same for me when I was smaller. (Plus – the original series is the reason my Cheshire-approved Liverpudlian accent is so accurate). I was intrigued when Hollie said that she was going to take Milkshake up on the challenge.
Hollie really isn’t much of a baker at all. She’s very capable of following a recipe, but you’re not going to randomly decide that Wednesday’s going to be the day that she does a batch of cakes. When she told me that she was going to bake this Thomas cake – and that some elements were improvised – I really didn’t have high hopes.
Here’s are the ingredients for the sponge:
- 300g self-raising flour
- 300g unsalted butter
- 300g caster sugar
- 5 eggs
- 100ml milk
- Teaspoon vanilla extract
As you can see, it came out really, really well.
Unfortunately, I didn’t actually get to sample the cake, because the smallest people in my home weren’t in a sharing mood at the time. However, it got great reviews from both sides.