Recipe Roadtest: The Proof of the Pudding. . .
If you have read Part One, you’ll know that I have been troubled recently; suffering from cake envy. After my last poor attempts to make one, every time I eat someone else’s sponge creation, I slather and chomp but with an underlying niggle that I wish I could do the same for others. Nigel Slater’s guidance failed to see me cross the finish line so I turned to Delia to add some lift in my mixture.
The result? A Victoria sponge made up of two separate halves with a layer of whipped cream and raspberries in between where the main purpose of the mixture was to level-up the tessellating wonkiness of the sponge discs. The good news was that is looked okay, and didn’t taste too bad either. It had the texture a nd appearance of an actual cake. The making of it was a different story, in fact a scene of semi-carnage, lacking the sense of control I normally enjoy in my cooking. It was a good advert for the reintroduction of a more rigorous home-economics programme in our schools.
Having turned to Delia’s How to Cook Book One, I sifted flower, holding the sieve high above the mixing bowl to bring as much air into the mixture as possible - creating a snowy beauty that your average downhill skiier would have been honoured to carve-up. All good so far. Introducing the other ingredients, things were looking all too easy. Then I ‘mixed them together with an electric hand whisk’. At this point, it started flying up the walls, over the hob, onto my apron, and generally everywhere except where I had hoped it would be. Enough remained in the bowl to make a cake. Such excellent news. It was at this point that I wanted to raise my hand. Food instruction in writing is all very well but it does rely on a certain amount of trial and error. A teacher would definitely have been useful, there to give me that sour-faced look of disapproval mixed with the same useful tip she’d just given all the other egg-covered pupils. I styled-my way through the whirling dervish of cream-coloured ooze I found myself in, using the classic wooden for an old-school rescue.
I placed the spring-form tin containing half the mixture firmly to one side of our unevenly heated fan oven. At thirty minutes, it had risen. Not prettily or as evenly as I had distributed my mixture but it had risen but this was marked improvement from Nigel’s all-butter lead-cake.
I improvised the construction phase, spreading a layer of jam on the two halves, adding whipped cream and fresh, halved raspberries. The result was a slightly uneven but moist and fluffy cake which looked solidly cake-like. Delia’s instructions had been clear, precise and even gave tips on how to improvise with the mixture’s consistencies. I forewent the passion fruit and mascarpone filling because I have a belief about making a sponge cake - hence my obsession with making one. That it should be simple and that it should not cost the earth. There is nothing more homely than cleverly making a thrifty cake for friends with your own hands, then sitting around enjoying it with some chat.
In this case, it is with a cup of Sunday morning coffee and a musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Well, each to their own.
My next ambition in this pursuit is to follow a recipe in Eliza Acton’s recipe book of 1854 entitled Modern Cookery for Private Families.The language may be slightly impenatrable and they are referred to as “sweet poisons” but if there’s one area of British cookery which hasn’t shifted much in the last century and a half, it’s a nice cake.
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