Nigella Experiment – Day 12 – Autumnal Birthday Cake

Day 12 – Autumnal Birthday Cake (page 24)

According to Nigella this isn’t strictly speaking a birthday cake, or it doesn’t have to be! As we don’t have any birthday’s just around the corner it was a ‘Wednesday-night-treat-cake’ instead. It looks pretty fancy in the book:

Apologies for the grainy pic. The recipe has two parts; the cake and then the icing. Unusually the icing has just as many ingredients as the actual cake mix. It’s a maple syrup flavoured cake with a meringue icing. Now, maple syrup is one of my favourite things in the world…but over the past couple of years it has become very expensive, ridiculously expensive. In the local supermarket 330g is £5.49 for their own brand – eeek. This recipe asks for 350ml in the cake and 125ml in the icing – which equates to 475g. Flip! too much money for me right now, especially as I’m in the process of setting up my business (ha! knew I’d shoehorn it in somewhere) – http://www.theflyingcaketin.co.uk. So, I did really want to make the cake, but knew there would have to be a compromise. This came in the form of Clarks maple syrup blended with carob fruit syrup which is a lot cheaper. Probably not what Nigella would have had in mind, but certainly what my purse could stretch to at the moment.

Anyway on with the baking, fake-ish maple syrup in hand. The cake batter mix was straightforward – into the mixer, whizz up, into the sandwich tins and into the oven. Bish Bash Bosh. Took 40 mins to cook and came out a deep, golden, brown colour. So far so good.

The icing is created on a double boiler (where you boil water in a saucepan and suspend the mixture in a bowl over it). This has to be done whilst mixing it with a hand-held electric whisk. Complicated and involved a wire trailing over a pan of boiling potatoes (it was dinner time too!) and me having to shout Paul to hand me a tea-towel to hold the burning bowl as meringue slopped around as I couldn’t stop mixing. You get the picture, it was a little bit hectic! I think this is becoming a bit of a theme now, but I don’t think I whisked to quite the correct stiffness – when icing the cake it was a little bit too runny…my mistake also in the last 2 cakes.

Oh well, it looked quite pretty sprinkled with the chopped pecans, please ignore drippy meringue:

The taste testers declared it a success! Maddie would like this to be her next birthday cake 🙂 I ate two slices, after all tomorrow is a fast day.

Corrina sent the following text ‘OMG!!! Cake F*ing Delicious! So moist and sweet and creamy and……sigh……!‘ Waiting on the results from the Allcock/Woodhead contingency bit will update when the verdict is in.

Marks out of 10: 8-9

Baker comment: good flavour, I think the meringue was quite a faff and means it has to be eaten on the day it is baked. Might have an experiment with some maple flavoured straightforward icing and buttercream instead.

Nigella Experiment – Day 5 – Damp Lemon and Almond Cake & Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake

Day 5 – Damp Lemon and Almond Cake (page 12) AND Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake (page 13)

Today I’m doing the double! A few reasons – firstly, the damp lemony cake says ‘wrap well in tin foil and leave for a couple of days’ after baking. Now, we love lemon cake in our home so much there is no way Paul and the kids will let me bake it and then leave it unless they have another sweet treat to distract them. Secondly we are going on an impromptu camping trip so will be forced to leave it alone. Thirdly, it gets the last two cakes in this section DONE!

#1 – Damp Lemon and Almond Cake:

No pics in the book of this, so nothing to compare it against from the outset. The recipe sounded good..ground almonds (yum), lemon (double yum) so I began with high hopes. Another easy to follow recipe..the supermarket only sold ground almonds in packs of 200g not 225g and I was blowed if I was going to spend another £1.50 on 100g only to see the remaining 75g go mouldy in the cupboard….so, my measurements were slightly under the recommended amount. Consistency still looked good though and it smelled lemony and almondy as you’d hope.

Cooked the cake for the hour as Nigella suggests.

I didn’t take her advice however about placing a piece of foil on the top of the cake 30 mins into the cooking time. Think that was a mistake, as the cake is looking pretty dark brown (don’t say burnt, don’t say burnt) around some of the edges. Hmmmmmm.

Tasting will have to wait until we’re back from camping so I’ll update this in a few days!

*Tried this cake this morning. Initial impressions good, but the taste/pleasure sensation was not long lasting! Very dense centre and Paul commented the after taste was a ‘bit like emulsion paint’ not something you really want associated with a piece of deliciousness. Marks out of 10: 3*

#2 – Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake

Ooooh, oooh high excitement Nigella says this isn’t ‘strictly speaking a plain cake since it has a form of icing‘ yey! some detail, some extra taste. Store cupboard ingredients, easy mixing and a mention of the first item I’ve not heard of before – ‘Bake-O-Glide‘..what is this? Is it American? Is it a wonder spray? A quick Google tells me it is a baking liner sheet, not something thrilling. Think my Lakeland loaf liner will be sufficient.

Into the oven for 45 mins:

Poured the syrup topping on and mmmmmmmmm, looks good. Going to take this one to share with my fellow campers, so will also update how it tastes in a couple of days.

*Scratch a couple of days here, we managed 24 hours camping – deflating airbed + sleep deprived husband = bad combination. We had a heavenly 24 hours though lots of sunshine and beach. Cake got mixed reaction – ranging from 8/10 from Tam and the kids through to 6 from Todd & Laura seasoned Marry Berry Lemon Drizzle fans. Interesting*

On another note, I watched ‘Julie & Julia’ the film last night on lots of people’s recommendations. Thoroughly enjoyed it – although don’t think my life and Nigella’s life coincide at all – I’d like her money but none of her problems 😉

Bakers comment: I’m going to re-try making the Lemon Syrup cake at a later date, adapting it to have both the syrup drizzled over and adding crunchy sugar topping of Mary Berry.