Author Topic: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?  (Read 18140 times)

Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« on: 05 December, 2010, 11:26:21 pm »
No way am I going to search this forum for "cake".

Anyway, made Nigel Slater's (yes, yes, I can't stand him either) Beetroot Seed Cake and it was truly nom^nom

His seed mix  sounded a bit boring so I included hemp seed for crunch (and sesame and etc)

Linky: BBC - Food - Recipes : Beetroot seed cake

Pasty:
Ingredients


225g/8oz self-raising flour
half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
a level teaspoon baking powder
half a teaspoon ground cinnamon
180ml/6¼fl oz sunflower oil
225g/8oz light muscovado sugar
3 free-range eggs, separated
150g/5oz raw beetroot, peeled
juice of half a lemon
75g/3oz sultanas or raisins
75g/3oz mixed seeds (such as sunflower, pumpkin and linseed)

For the icing
8 tablespoons icing sugar
a little lemon juice or orange blossom water
poppy seeds, to garnish

Preparation method

Preheat the oven at 180C/350F/Gas 4. Lightly grease a rectangular loaf tin (20cm x 9cm x 7cm/8in x 4in x 3in), then line the base with baking parchment.

Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and cinnamon.

Beat the oil and sugar in a food mixer until well combined, then introduce the egg yolks one by one, mixing after you add each egg yolk. Grate the beetroot coarsely and fold it into the egg mixture, then add the lemon juice, sultanas (or raisins) and the assorted seeds. Pulse until combined.

Fold the flour and raising agents into the egg mixture whilst the machine is on a slow setting.

Beat the egg whites until light and almost stiff. Fold gently but thoroughly into the cake mixture, using a large metal spoon (a wooden one will knock the air out). Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 50-55 minutes, covering the top with a piece of foil after thirty minutes. Test with a skewer for doneness. The cake should be moist inside but not sticky. Leave the cake to settle for a good twenty minutes before turning out of its tin onto a wire cooling rack.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in enough lemon juice or orange blossom water to achieve a consistency where the icing will run over the top of the cake and drizzle slowly down the sides (about three teaspoonfuls), stirring to remove any lumps. Drizzle it over the cake and scatter with the poppy seeds. Leave to set before eating.

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #1 on: 05 December, 2010, 11:57:45 pm »
Yeah I know there are recipes, but there is food, and there is CAKE.

Eccentrica Gallumbits

  • Rock 'n' roll and brew, rock 'n' roll and brew...
Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #2 on: 11 December, 2010, 02:36:57 pm »
Tomorrow I will be making the Nigella Clementine Cake out of my Green & Black's book. I haven't made it before. It needs ground almonds instead of flour, and the shops are sold out, so I've bought blanched almonds and will be attempting to food processor them to my requirements.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #3 on: 21 January, 2017, 08:53:22 pm »
I think we need a proper cake thread for recipes, and pictures !  This one looks as good as any. :)

I'm just about to try and make some Prajitura cu Miere de Albine, which broadly translates as Honey Cake.



I doubt my version will look quite as elegant as that!
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #4 on: 21 January, 2017, 08:57:58 pm »
Thanks for that, not only a v interesting looking recipe, but you've reminded me of the beetroot one,and now I haz my home grown beetroots.

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #5 on: 23 January, 2017, 05:50:15 pm »
It took me a lot longer to cook than the recipe suggested, and they're a bit larger than the original ones, but the recipe worked quite well. :)

   

The only problem I really had, was rolling the dough out.  Because there's quite a bit of honey in it, it's inevitably quite sticky, so you have to use a lot of flour.  It's also quite a challenge to roll out the right area, and the right thickness.  Even though I used a smaller cake tin (actually a roasting tin!) than the website, I should have been able to make 5 layers instead of 4.  I actually had difficulty handling the slightly thicker layers.  Using the rolling pin to transfer them from the worktop to the baking tray is more difficult than it appears, and if you tear it in the process, you basically have to roll it out again.

When it does work, the results are good.  My colleagues have made fairly short work of eating the cakes that I brought in!  Surprisingly, it tastes a bit like Ginger Cake, even though there are no spices in it, the only flavour is from the honey.
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #6 on: 15 February, 2017, 05:39:01 pm »
I made this cake yesterday and it was truly scrummy - did not last very long:

Flour-free Chocolate & Beetroot Cake
http://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/recipes/desserts-cakes/flour-free-chocolate-beetroot-cake

I used a packet of pre-cooked beetroot (which handily comes in 300g size, so perfect for the recipe) and the chocolate was 85% rather than 70%.

There's always a worry with recipes that substitute wheat flour for almond flour that it will be heavy and stodgy but I made a point of whisking up the eggs well and it came out very light and moist. The beetroot flavour is quite subtle - you probably wouldn't be able to taste it if you didn't know it was there. What I really liked about it was that it's not too sweet, but in any case you could adjust that to taste by altering the quantity of honey.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #7 on: 09 April, 2017, 03:25:39 pm »


Yesterday evening, I cooked Paska / Pască.  The Wikipedia entry says bread, but this Romanian version is far more cake-like.

I should have brushed the 'dough' with egg, to make it shinier after cooking, but it still tastes very good.  Mostly the recipe is under the category of "chuck everything into a bowl and mix", which is my sort of cookery. :D
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #8 on: 10 April, 2017, 01:34:11 pm »
Weren't you a week early?  :D
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #9 on: 10 April, 2017, 02:16:12 pm »
Weren't you a week early?  :D

I'm eating roast chicken and stuffing too, and based on that principle I'm either several months late, or even more months early!

... and I'm not Bulgarian, Russia, Slovakian, Ukrainian, Romanian or even Assyrian Iranian, so I think I can do whatever I like for Easter. :D
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #10 on: 14 April, 2017, 01:00:11 pm »


Basically a sort of Brownie Cheesecake.  I didn't have any berries, so used a mix of glace cherries, sultanas and raisins instead.  The Sainsburys Basics cream cheese also seemed to make the "cheesecake icing" a bit too runny, so I mixed in some Basics greek cheese (aka Feta) to thicken it up, and that seemed to work.

The recipe, via Google Translation
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #11 on: 01 May, 2017, 12:59:28 pm »
Yesterday I made a carrot cake, because I was curious to see how easy it was, and how well it would work.

 

I used this recipe from Inspired Taste, and it is easily one of the best cakes I've ever made !

I made a cake about 75% of the size of the one described, because my cake tins were smaller than the ones used in the original recipe, and I had to use an integral number of eggs.  If I had adjusted it exactly to my tin size, I would have needed one third of an egg. :)  It's a really easy recipe to cook, and works very well.  Definitely recommended.

I made few changes to the described recipe.  I didn't include the raisins, I assumed that Baking Soda was the same as Baking Powder, I just used bog standard Sainsburys vegetable oil, and used Double Cream for Heavy Whipping Cream (translating USA cream into more normal creams is a bit challenging, because they process their creams rather differently to us).
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #12 on: 01 May, 2017, 04:00:19 pm »
Impressive - that looks delicious! Baking soda is bicarbonate of soda rather than baking powder, but depending on the recipe they can be more-or-less substituted; bicarb requires some acidity in the mix to work, whereas baking powder generally contains bicarb and something acidic that will dissolve in a mix (as well as usually some other stuff that produces gas when heated; anything sold as 'double-acting' baking powder will definitely have it.) As a rule of thumb it's safer to substitute baking powder for baking soda than the other way round.

Mrs Pingu

  • Who ate all the pies? Me
    • Twitter
Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #13 on: 01 May, 2017, 07:03:57 pm »
Looks similar to our carrot cake recipe (it contains a huge slick of oil), except the icing is just cream cheese, icing sugar and a little vanilla essence.
Word to the unwise - never try making cream cheese icing with low fat or 'light' cream cheese, it just doesnae work.
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #14 on: 25 May, 2017, 06:01:37 pm »
Word to the unwise - never try making cream cheese icing with low fat or 'light' cream cheese, it just doesnae work.

In related advice, if you require full fat cream cheese, don't send your husband and numpty brother in law out with a  shoppinglist inscribed thusly: FF Cream Cheese. It's a racing certainty that said brother in law will opine wisely that FF means Fat Free.

In my defence, I didn't know it was for icing.

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #15 on: 28 May, 2017, 10:05:36 pm »
The OP might be directed to the OT Gallery, in which he has himself posted...https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=57170.0

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #16 on: 29 May, 2017, 06:36:40 am »
I'm sorry, this a little difficult to understand. Are you suggesting you can have too much cake?

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #17 on: 29 May, 2017, 11:30:45 am »
You can make that carrot cake as muffins, too.



The icing still works, but for maximum robustness, I think I need to replace it with something more closely related to butter cream.
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #18 on: 22 June, 2017, 02:38:47 pm »
I'm on the hook for baking a cake for resale at a quilting exhibition, might well go for the beetroot cake I started the thread with but open to suggestions, although I'm tempted to battenburg for the sake of the patchwork.

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #19 on: 20 July, 2017, 01:41:26 pm »
Using up the overripe banana mountain made banananana bread - this recipe is lovely and moist, and keeps well.

115g butter
115g sugar (I use a mix of light and dark soft brown)
500g (4-5) overripe bananas
2 eggs
250g plain flour
1 tsp bicarb
Pinch salt
Dark chocolate chunks (optional)

Cream butter/sugar; add mashed bananas and beaten eggs. Fold in dry ingredients and chocolate if using. Pour into lined loaf tin and bake for an hour or so at 180°/160°C fan. Let cool for 10 minutes in tin before turning out onto a rack.

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #20 on: 20 July, 2017, 01:52:38 pm »
The OP might be directed to the OT Gallery, in which he has himself posted...https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=57170.0

...and in the grand tradition of delayed responses, you may notice this thread predated the linked one by over a year ;)

(and I did a beetroot & seed one and a carrot cake)

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #21 on: 30 July, 2017, 02:40:32 pm »
A friend of Miss Ham made this for me for the BBQ party yesterday (actual day is not for a couple of weeks)




Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #22 on: 10 September, 2017, 01:01:19 pm »
Today, amandine (aka Romanian chocolate cake).



I cooked it, according to this recipe, but it may take a little effort to translate the details from that video!

I only made half the mixture, and only really had problems with the ganache.  That needed to be a little thinner, and maybe more was necessary.  You can see mine didn't really spread over the slices as other photos tend to show.  That aside, it worked fairly well.
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #23 on: 10 September, 2017, 02:25:36 pm »
Wouldn't it be easier to find the ingredients from the linked page http://www.gatesteusor.ro/amandine/
I understand the written word rather more easily!

Looks delicious!

Re: Where's the Ultimate Cake Thread?
« Reply #24 on: 10 September, 2017, 06:52:55 pm »
Wouldn't it be easier to find the ingredients from the linked page http://www.gatesteusor.ro/amandine/
I understand the written word rather more easily! ...

Damn, I missed that, and I looked for it ! <doh>
Actually, it is rocket science.