Rectangular Sponge Cake 35cm x 24cm

For my celebration cake baking this week it wasn't about creating a great piece of artwork but working on a recipe that would work in my new cake tin and rise beautifully. The cake tin is 35cm x 24cm and is rectangular. This is the tin I use for most of my shaped cake designs so it is important to get the recipe right. 

I originally made a 6 egg recipe for the tin, however, I found that the cake was very dense and hadn't risen properly so I did a bit of research on the internet. I found out that using butter in cakes is important. I have previously used cheap soft spread and found that my mixtures where very soft, apparently this results in dense cakes. So I used proper butter for this recipe. I also looked up recipes and decided to up my egg content a little and used 8. Finally I added baking powder to my recipe to help it lift a little. 

Ingredients:

400g Butter

400g Self Raising Flour

400g Caster Sugar
1tbsp Cocoa

8 Eggs

2 tsp baking powder

Method:

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the flour, cocoa and baking powder (I know this breaks from the convential order but I've always done this to prevent splitting) and mix together. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing them in carefully. Pour the mixture into an already lined tin and place in the oven. I cooked this at 180oC (fan oven) for around 30 minutes and then 20minutes at 150oC. I checked the cake with a knife and it came out clean so I left it to cool on a rack. 

Cake just turned out of tin, upside down!! 

I decided to decorate the cake with orange buttercream. This was made with 300g Butter, 600g Icing sugar, 2 tsp of orange essence and 2 tbsp of milk. I cut the cake in half, yes it was risen enough to do that this time, and place it in the middle and over the top. I then decorated it with various bits I had in the cupboard including chocolate chunks, honeycomb pieces, marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles.

Finished cake

The verdict: The cake looked like the correct quantity for the tin when raw, it was around 3/4 full so room for rising. When I got it out of the oven it looked like it had risen really nicely and felt very light and fluffy when I pressed on the top. Thanks to my bake-O-glide the cake has come out of the tin beautifully and has a great height to it.

Sliced cake

The cake tasted really good, I would add a little more cocoa next time but I'm really happy with the overall recipe. This will be perfect for the Eeyore cake I'm creating next week. 

Classic Financiers

This week I decided to make 2 recipes from Annie Bell's Baking Bible, the first was flapjack and the second is these classic financiers. These come from "the french quarter" chapter. Since I'd never even heard of these before, let alone made them, I decided to just stick with the recipe this time and see what happened. From the picture these looked like little sponge cakes. 

The first step was to mix together the icing sugar and ground almonds. To these I added egg whites and whisked. I then put in the honey, melted butter and vanilla and whisked until it was all combined. This was covered and then placed in the fridge for several hours. 

Once ready fill some cupcake cases, place some chocolate chips on top and cook in the oven for around 20 minutes. 

Ready to go in the oven.

Once they are starting to brown then take them out and leave them to cool on a rack. Once cooled remove from the cases and eat! 

Cake you guess which were which batch? 

At the baking stage I got a little distracted and forgot about my first batch :-\.. so they're a little darker than they should be. But fortunately my second batch were watched more carefully so I do have some decent ones too! 

How they should look, again please comment on my photography skills! 

The verdict: I'm going to base this on the decent ones rather than the.. erm.. crunchy ones!! Which actually didn't taste too bad to be fair. Anyway, I thought they tasted quite nice but they were nothing special. Even though there was an interesting mix of ingredients I didn't think they were really worth the extra effort. They were also tiny and despite the recipe saying I should get 24 I only got 18, so mine were bigger than they should be!! I give these 6/10, not something I would consider making again I don't think. 

Next section in the book is Muffins, Cupcakes and Fairy Cakes...mmm.. I've just seen the title of what I'll be making next week but not telling!! 

Battenburg Cake p. 167

I wasn't able to do any baking last week due to a difficult week with M&M. She is having problems with her feed and it looks likely that she is allergic or intolerant to cows milk. She is much better now we've got some special milk for her but this will be discussed further in the coming week with the doctors. She's been much better over the weekend so I am now at the stage where I can start thinking about baking again. I've decided the best way to fit this in is to have a day each week where I make my creations. This is Mondays. 

So this week I've been through the books and decided to try out some new recipes. This week I'm making battenburg cake and almond macaroons. I found the recipe for battenburg cake in Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook P. 467. I have never attempted a battenburg cake before but it seems like a basic idea and something I should try. 

The first step is line the square tin with greaseproof paper. 

Cake lined with greaseproof paper.

The cake mixture is just a standard sponge cake, one half is flavoured with vanilla essence whilst the other is chocolate. These are added to the tin half and half.

Sponge in the tin ready to be baked.

This was then baked in the oven for around 30mins. Once cooked it was placed on a cooling rack and left to cool.

Cooked and cooling.

Once cooled the cake is cut into 4 equal strips, 2 in each colour. Heat the apricot jam to melt it and then use this as the glue to stick together the 4 pieces of sponge in a chequed pattern. Roll out the marzipan so it'll cover the cake and then, using the jam, wrap it around the cake. Cut off the ends to neaten it up. 

Finished cake. 

The cake is now ready to be sliced and eaten. 

The verdict: The cake tasted very nice and the recipe was straightforward and easy to follow. I'm pleased I managed to achieve this but it wasn't as neat as I would have hoped. The marzipan was very sticky and even time in the fridge didn't cure this and make it more solid. I'm not sure if this is a fault with the marzipan or me, maybe I should have rolled it on icing sugar to dry it up rather than in cling film. The only other thing was the recipe stated I should use ground rice but I didn't manage to find this in the supermarket so I used extra flour instead. The cake went down well with Gary's work collegues and apparently disappeared very quickly. Probably not a recipe I would make again but a decent cake. 7/10.