Bake-off Poll

ie, this or this?

Cherry Cobblestone Cake

For a barbeque at the weekend myself and Sarah had a vintage cake bake-off. The rules – bake an individual cake (ie no cupcakes) from a vintage recipe, release both cakes simultaneously on the BBQ attendees, and the first cake to be finished wins.  Sarah has already written hers up here, and I must congratulate her as the bake-off winner as her cake was polished off fastest. I feel compelled to point out that her cake was smaller than mine, and next time we might have to think a bit harder about the rules! (nb – am not bitter).

The cake I chose to make was a Cherry Cobblestone Cake, from my current favourite recipe resource, the Alison Burt Super Saving Recipe Cards (note to self – use other recipe books).

Cherry Cobblestone Cake

175g soft margarine

175g castor sugar

3 eggs

100g sultanas

75g glacé cherries, chopped

25g angelica, chopped

225g plain flour

1/2 level tspn baking powder

Topping:

50g glacé cherries

3 tablespoons apricot jam

Grease a 2lb/ 1kg loaf tin and line it with greaseproof paper. Place the margarine, sugar, eggs, sultanas, glacé cherries and angelica in a mixing bowl. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl. Beat together with a wooden spoon for 3-4 minutes until well mixed. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin. Smooth the top. Place the halved glacé cherries in rows along the top. Bake in a moderate slow oven (325°F/ 170°C/ Mark 3) for 1.5-1.75 hours. Turn the cake out of the tin onto a wire rack to cool. Heat the apricot jam in a saucepan and when boiling sieve it. Brush the jam over the cake.

Notes

• I had a bit of a cooker mishap and heat was on 220°C for about half an hour before I rectified this. This meant the cake was a bit browner than intended and rather hard generally.
• It’s an incredibly simple method – chuck it all in the bowl and mix for a bit. I didn’t even use the food processor. Ideal for kid’s baking sessions.
• I couldn’t find any angelica, so I have cheated and  substituted mixed peel which worked fine, but didn’t look as good as some nice green chunks of angelica would have.
• I think my scales didn’t weigh the flour properly – I suspect I used a little too much, which contributed to the denseness of the finished ‘brick’.
• I was somewhat apprehensive about boiling the jam -  when I worked as a cake finisher* my weakness was putting huge vats of jam on to boil and forgetting them until reminded by the acrid smell of 5 litres of burnt jam.
• Although the recipe calls for 125g of glacé cherries overall I used up a 200g tub, and could have done with a few more to decorate the top.

The result

(photo courtesy of ledgr)

Conclusion

The cake was actually rather nice, despite the slight overcooking, which was much less noticible once the thing was cut. The sponge was a lovely pale orange, and the fruit: sponge ratio was good. The cooked cherries on the top, which I was kind of dubious about at first were really nice, and the apricot jam glaze gave it an added chewiness, in a good way. This is the first Alison Burt card I’ve done where I’ve been happy with the result, and I would cook this again, this time making sure the oven was on the right setting! Plus it’s an ideal shape, size and firmness to withstand transporting on public transport all the way across London.

*best. job. title. ever

Cobbled together by Alix

Lemon Butter Cake with Lemon Filling

Happy anniversary to Chris and Vicky! C&V hosted a super barbequeue on a wonderful sunny Saturday, and Alix and I decided that we’d shamelessly hijack it with a vintage “cake-off”. I brought the below, from the Female Cookbook 1978 FEATURING Ellice Handy Recipes. This is in fact a Singaporean cookbook sent to me by lovely Janet (@j4) which has a brilliant mix of 70s margarine based treats like “golden swans” cheek to cheek with pulot hitam, pickled blimbings, Lancashire Hotpot (hurrah) and curried beef schnitzel. Love it. What’s a blimbing? Where can I find one in London? Hilariously it calls for the blimbings to be dried in the sun for a week of good sunny days, before pickling. I don’t think this translates to a London cook Anyway. I chose to make lemon butter cake – less exotic but no less tasty by any means. I have a few more things to come from this book! The more Malay/Singaporean dishes may require more researches and trips to dusty Chinatown back rooms in lieu of the Serangoon Market….

LEMON BUTTER CAKE

185g butter
155g caster sugar
1tbsp grated lemon rind
3 egg yolks and 2 whites (beaten together)
250g self raising flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup milk
1 tbsp lemon juice

cream butter and sugar well, then add lemon rind and salt. Gradually add the beaten eggs, beating in well. Lightly fold in the flour. Alternate with the milk and lemon juice, ending with flour. Pour cake batter into 2 small sandwich cake tins which have been greased and lined on the bottom with greased paper. Bake in moderately hot oven for about half an hour or till cake is done. Allow to cool after removing cake onto cake cooling rack and sandwich together with Lemon Filling.

Lemon Filling

1.5 tsps grated lemon rind
2 tsps lemon juice
2 egg yolks well beaten
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsps cornflour
1 tbsp butter/marg
1/2 cup boiling water

In a small saucepan mix cornflour, sugar, lemon rind and lemon juice. Add boiling water, stirring onstantly. Put pan on low heat and stir til mixture thickens. Remove from heat, cool a little and then add very slowly the beaten egg yolks, stirring all the time. Put the saucepan back on low heat, cook til mixture thickens, stirring constantly. Cool slightly befre using as filling to sandwich together the two cakes.

RESULTS!

Item! everyone at the party said nom!
Item! I had a total fail in making this tbh so I’m amazed it turnd outwell. First of all. Self raising flour, I don’t DO. However… I forgot to add the raising agents until the very end so the cake, um… didn’t rise that much? Yet! The cake was still quite light despite aesthetically looking more like two huge drop scones. I added 3 tsps baking powder but should have used four AND put them in at the beginning, but that’s just absent mindedness.
Item! Unwaxed lemons are the ones you want for lemon cake (for anything involving lemons, really – but definitely so for stuff like this whch requires lots of lemon rind.
Item! When I was making the filling? I forgot to put in the SUGAR. Whacked it in at the end and it was fine. But srlsly. Forgetting the SUGAR?! WHere was my head.
Item! you’ll see the filling calls for butter. But then it never says where to put IN the butter. This book is crazy bizarre for doing this! No matter though, didn’t feel like it was lacking anything.
Item! this was baked with the aid of delicious masala tea, Justin Timberlake, Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop on a slightly unco-operative resonance.fm stream (never mind), Hikaru Yaotome and Kota Yabu’s white day skit, delicious organic lemons and IKEA hand-cream.

I RECOMMEND THIS LEMON CAKE. One of the lovely side effects of the filling not being very thick is that it oozes down the sides of the cake so there’s a lovely sticky lemony bonus glaze on the outsides which went down very well with some merry eaters. Give it a go, don’t balk at the amount of eggs it requires – eggs are good for you… ne?

Forgetfully baked by Sarah.