The trial run of the celebration chocolate cake - the one that was well risen!! - was sampled by the parents and grandmother of the bride at the weekend and the decision taken to repeat the recipe as my entrant to the bakeathon. The recipe is from this June's Good Housekeeping magazine and, as it is described as capable of serving 40, the extravagance of the ingredients does not seem so great. This morning I had ordered a grocery delivery to contain the necessary blocks of dark chocolate, extra sugar and a new round baking tin. The earlier trial cake had been made in a square tin which had not been the recommeded size - but it was simply delicious anyway. Whilst awaiting the delivery I started my day of baking with a gingerbread cake which I have been making for years and which is a firm favourtie of the children. Inevitably, I discovered that I did not have golden syrup only black treacle so I played around with the ingredients and substituted the syrup from a jar of stem ginger for part of the golden syrup and doubled the amount of black treacle. It looks wonderful but I will have to wait a while for it to mature to fully appreciate the deep ginger taste of this cake.
My second cake was my - it never fails - lemon drizzle cake. It failed. I have never known this to happen before. The recipe is simple - 8oz of butter, sugar and flour and 4 eggs with the rind of one lemon to be drizzled with the juice of said lemon with additional sugar. It is usually predictably good but today, I really don't know what happened, it just sank in the middle and left a huge hole. The edible parts have now been cut up into squares to be used in trifles and a second attempt has just come out of the oven - perfect.
The third cake was the celebration chocolate cake in its round tin. It rose again! However, the rise has now subsided and it is cooling in its tin. It is looking good.
The fourth - lemon drizzle mark 2 was followed by another Good Housekeeping recipe - an orange and apricot and walnut load. This is currently in the oven and due out in about 50 minutes.
The tempting aroma throughout the house today makes me want to eat cake but these have to be frozen in readiness for the wedding. Decoration can be done the day before and there will be no worries about disasters. What on earth could have happened to that first lemon drizzle? At least there is one saving grace, the bits around the edges seemed fine so I do have some cake to eat with the cup of tea just waiting for me in the - still quite messy, ktichen.
Trust you have recovered from the mammoth baking session. Regarding the lemon cake so called disaster do you think when we are under pressure for a special occasion that something is more likely to go wrong?
ReplyDeleteHowever, it seemed that it was edible, presumably the rest could be cut into small cakes and sampled!
I have my mother's Good Housekeeping book of cakes, it was a birthday gift from my father just before we moved so my mum wasn't too pleased to have such a domestic present at that time. The book is used by me, I like the fact it's in imperial measures although some of the reciipes are a bit dated.
I agree about the working under pressure - one reason I baked early and froze rather than baking at the last minute. The disaster of a lemon cake HAS been cut into small pieces and frozen to make trifle sponges - waste not want not as someone may have said!
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