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.
Recipe Roadtest: My First Cake, Nigel vs Delia
We all love a bit of cake, don’t we? And it’s pretty cheap to buy: even a posh, moist, rich chocolate cake from a stall or bakery would set you back less than a tenner. So why would we want to make one? Well if you enjoy your cooking, the feeling that you couldn’t make a Victoria sponge if you want to can be somewhat frustrating. It’s like being a good tennis player with the backhand of an old man swatting a fly.
I don’t mind sharing that I already have some notches in the wooden spoon of failure. Trusting Nigel Slater, as have done for so long, to help teach me in all ways culinary, I thought he’d be the man to help locate my very own baker within. I was a little disappointed however, when a year ago I selected from his book Appetite, a recipe for ‘a simple cake to be served with summer berries’. I invested in the requisite equipment - springform tin, greaseproof paper, spatula - and of course the basic ingredients. I followed the recipe word-for-word, pre-heated the oven and slammed it in, bristling with pride and anticipation following my (by this stage, many hours of) planning, toil and well-floured sleeves. It came out smelling great and looking like someone had run it over. I simply couldn’t understand.
The answer was simple - I had estimated my quantities, which as any baker will tell you is pure suicide. Neither did I own an electric mixer at the time so resorted to the old-fashioned bowl and spoon approach. (There was just something about all those arty pictures in his books of wooden-handled vegetable knives handed down through the family and chopping blocks which have been in use since the Crimean War that lulled me into thinking this would be a charming, yet still workable option.)
So then - a year, a set of electronic scales and a Kenwood mixer later, and it was time for my second attempt. Miraculously, the cake came out exactly the same. Heavy a lead, it was a fat disc of rather buttery, sweet dough. It tasted ok but as I’d baked it for some visiting friends, i felt slightly embarrassed but worse than that - I was mystified.
Taking a moment to reflect and regroup as I ate a wedge of the dense cake with my tea, I considered my options (incidentally - what it lacked in texture, it more than made up for in terms of buttery-goodness!). I would crack this baking malarky, and being relatively self-sufficient in these matters, I wanted to find guidance in the printed page. So who could help me in the endevour? Scanning my cook-book shelf, I spotted the almost unreadably pale spines of Delia’s How to Cook Book One. My mother had bought this for me around the time I went to University. It struck a chord as I mooched this time around because I remember the effectiveness with which she had taght me to make a decent omelette. Could the woman with such an excellent grasp of simplicity, mastering the basics and of explaining things to her readers in plain language be the one to help my mixture rise?
Well as I was guided through the process by the section of the book entitled Cakes and Biscuits for Beginners (sounded promising!) and roadtested her Classic Sponge Cake (with passion fruit filling), I certainly hoped so.
Click back soon to check out the thrilling conclusion. There will be icing sugar up the walls, there will be emotions - but above all there will be pictures. . .