British Madeira Loaf Cake...on your marks, get set, BAKE!

My husband is British (a Geordie) so we watch a lot of British TV, mostly comedies and crime dramas or murder mystery-type shows (stay away from Midsomer...deadliest place in all of fictional Britain!). His Geordie accent has faded through the years, but you can hear some awesome Geordie accents here, here, and here. I love the accent, wye aye, of course, but it's canny impossible to imitate! When he first moved to America, people had no idea he was from England and usually guessed Australia, which is funny to me because the Geordie accent sounds nothing like an Australian accent. But, I digress...

One of our favorite food-related shows (British or not) is The Great British Bake Off...on your marks, get set, BAKE! No Geordie accents there, but lots of fun bakes and kitchen mayhem in the tent. I decided that I might try to bake some of the recipes from the show as we watch each week (although I'm already a week behind in posting this!). In the first episode, one of the bakes was a Madeira loaf cake. I love anything with almonds and lemons, so I decided to try it.

I was planning to follow the Madeira loaf cake recipe from this BBC Good Food recipe, but I had to make some small changes because I had no all-purpose flour (how on earth did that happen?!) or self-rising flour that the recipe called for...so I had to create my own regular flour using cake flour and bread flour; then I had to make self-rising flour by adding baking powder, and salt. A poster in the comment section on this site recommended converting bread flour and cake flour to all-purpose by using 6.25% of the total weight bread flour to the rest cake flour, so that's what I did, and then had to add leavening ingredients to create self-rising flour. Way more complicated than if I had the correct flour, but a fun experiment in substitutions and the awesomeness of the internet.

In addition to the issues with the flour, I also doubled the recipe, so I could slice and freeze one loaf, used more zest, a bit more egg, and added a bit of muscovado brown sugar, so I am including my slightly altered recipe here. Go here for the original.

gorgeous loaf - light and tender

The recipe is interesting because it doesn't call for any liquid! Most cake recipes call for milk or sour cream to offset the dry ingredients. This one didn't though, so it was a very easy cake to make...no 'starting and ending with the dry ingredients' business. Sadly, neither of my loaves rose properly in the center and I didn't get the required open crackle dome top. I think this could be because of the changes I made to the recipe, all of the issues with making my own flour, or because I baked two loaves side by side and perhaps there wasn't enough airflow in the oven. However, even though it was lacking the signature crackle, the cake was delicious - a hint of the ground almonds and a hint of lemon. It reminded me of a light pound cake with a dense but really tender crumb. It would be a perfect addition for a tea party, or even to just make ahead, freeze and then thaw a slice or two for company. Twenty seconds in the microwave brings a slice back to life, warm and fresh.

Ingredients
375g cake flour

25g bread flour
3 3/4 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
(alternately, use 400g of self-rising flour instead of the 4 ingredients above)

100g ground almonds


350g butter, softened
350g (minus 1 T) caster sugar or superfine sugar
1 T muscovado brown sugar
6.5 eggs
zest from 3 small lemons
2t vanilla extract
a splash or two of milk, if needed

Method
Preheat the oven to 325º and prepare two loaf pans by greasing with softened butter. I also used a strip of parchment paper on the bottom of the pans. Set the pans aside.

mise en place - so simple!

Combine the first four dry ingredients (cake flour, bread flour, baking powder, salt) in a large bowl and mix thoroughly; add the ground almonds, mix well, and set aside.

Using the paddle attachment on your stand mixer, cream together the softened butter, caster sugar, and muscovado brown sugar. Beat for about 5 minutes until very pale in color and increased in volume (see picture).

but butter and sugars, pale and fluffy

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. This will add the volume to your cake.

adding the eggs and more mixing

look how pretty! Light, fluffy...

Next, add the lemon zest and the vanilla. I'm using my own homemade vanilla :)  When I've made vanilla more recently, I've added more pods to the bottles than in my original post that I linked to. It "cooks up" into vanilla much faster and has a more aromatic essence to it - I definitely recommend going in strong with the beans.

adding the vanilla and lemon zest

Next, mix the ground almonds and flour mixture together, then add slowly to the butter/sugar/egg mixture.

mixing the flours and ground almonds together

beating in the dry ingredients

The batter will be thick, but should be loose enough to drop off a spoon. If it's too thick, put the mixer on low speed and mix in a few splashes of whole milk until it thins out slightly.

Spoon half the batter (I weighed mine to try to get the loaves as equal as possible) into each of your loaf pans; smooth the top of the batter.

Bake at 325º for 25 minutes, rotate pans, bake for additional 30 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the center comes out clean. Rotating the pans (i.e. taking them out of the oven briefly) may also be a reason for the non-crackling tops...you could try to not rotate them and see if that improves the crackling situation.

Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then gently remove the loaves from the pans to a wire rack and cool completely. Slice and enjoy with a cuppa!

almost, nearly wanted to crack...so close, but nope!

a close-up of my non-cracked tops :(

the crust is a gorgeous golden brown color

and the inside has a light and tender crumb

yummy!

Bye for now...

Rose's Alpha Bakers: Lemon Posset Shortcakes

Another blizzard this week in Boston, and another bake with the Rose's Alpha Bakers. Up this week is Lemon Posset Shortcakes. Similar to how I felt about last week's recipe, the Chocolate Pavarotti cake with Wicked Good Ganache, I had mixed feeling about this recipe. On the plus side, it gave me the chance to try making my own candied lemon peel for the garnish - and that was fun - but I probably won't make the lemon posset shortcakes again.

my finished shortcake

time for a bite

The posset cream was pretty interesting - the texture was sort of like a science experiment (as is a lot of baking!). When you scooped up the posset it became liquidy but after a few minutes of sitting on the shortcake, it became thick and creamy, with a texture almost like yogurt. It was kind of fascinating! It actually reminded me of oobleck...did you ever make that when you were little? 

my chilled lemon posset

I was less impressed with the cake which felt like an awful lot of work for the end result. I usually love a recipe with so many steps and different parts, but this one just didn't add up in the end, in my opinion.

To start, I didn't have the correct kind of flour (wondra flour), so I followed the recipe's note to combine my cake flour with cornstarch. However, the note said to combine equal amounts of both, which seemed utterly disgusting to me to bake a cake with so much cornstarch(!) so I only used a little cornstarch.

I also thought that, with even just a portion of the called-for cornstarch, the taste seemed off (which I attributed to using the cornstarch in the first place) and the cakes were dry. So, perhaps not using wondra flour (or half cornstarch/half cake flour) really altered my end cake or maybe I over-baked them? They were a bit more moist after adding the lemon syrup...but the syrup made them much more delicate so then I had problems trying to spread my makeshift glaze (which was the next problem).

I didn't have any apple jelly for the glaze so used some of my leftover apricot lekvar instead (which I made a few weeks back for some amazing rugelach...post coming soon). This was a big mistake. Even though I thinned out the apricot lekvar, it was too thick and the flavor was much too strong for these cakes. So, overall, this week was a big miss for me.

Here are my photos...

ingredients for the shortcakes

more problems...this time with making brown butter...
my milk solids never browned

my sifted flour and cornstarch

beating more and more air into the eggs and sugar mixture

nearly there

Before adding the butter to the airy egg and sugar mixture, you need to "lighten" it by mixing some of the egg and sugar mixture into the butter. Otherwise it will deflate all the work you've just done.

"lightening" the butter

Then the flour mixture is carefully folded in, then the cakes are baked.

folding in...very gently

folding, folding...

done!

ready to bake...

...and done!

the finished shortcakes

The recipe made so much batter that I was able to fill a pan of mini rose cakes as well.

mini rose-shaped cakes

the detail on the rose cakes looks so much better in the photos!
It was kind of hard to see in person.

a look at the crumb, before the lemon syrup is added

my (still) too thick apricot lekvar

some posset on the plate and then a rose cake

a shortcake with lemon posset

Bye for now...

Homemade Candied Lemon Peel

I've been wanting to make candied citrus peel for a while now and I thought making them to decorate my Lemon Posset Shortcakes would be the perfect time.

There are tons of recipes available, but I used this recipe from Use Real Butter because they left the pith on (but I used lemons instead of oranges). The process is very easy...use organic fruit since you're eating the peel, then just wash the peel, separate the peel from the flesh of the fruit, slice the peels into whatever size you like, boil the peels a few times to soften them and get rid of some the bitterness, then boil the peels in a sugar syrup until translucent and let them dry. That is basically it! You can leave them as they are or finish them by rolling them in granulated sugar and/or dipping one end in chocolate.

I think I'll make them for Christmas gifts next year (or maybe candied fruit slices instead) since they are so easy and yummy.

juicing the lemons

now I'll just need to clean these rinds

I poured the extra lemon juice into baggies and froze it for future use

the peels are placed in a pot of cold water and boiled

 this process is repeated three times

making the sugar syrup

all done! My cooking chopsticks worked well for lifting them
out of the sugar water.

letting the finished peels dry

sweet and chewy candied peels

Bye for now...

Heavenly Cake Baker: Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake

The Heavenly Cake Baker club is over now, but I still frequently bake from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes cookbook. Her recipes are very straightforward and always delicious. She also has a great method (read: easy) for making cakes. You combine the dry ingredients, add the butter and part of the sour cream, beat for a couple of minutes to create air in the batter, then add the eggs and remainder of sour cream and then beat. So much easier than the old alternating the dry and wet ingredients, starting/ending with the dry.

So, back to this cake...although I am not a huge fan of poppyseeds, I've been wanting to try to make a poppyseed cake for a while, so who better to turn to than Rose? I have memories of my mother making some sort of lemon poppyseed pound cake when I was younger so maybe that is why I wanted to try this recipe? Well, regardless of the reason I felt compelled to bake it, this Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake was fantastic.

Even though it had a lovely light lemony flavor (and I even added lemon oil, not called for in the recipe), I would probably add some freshly squeezed lemon juice next time to punch up the lemon flavor a bit. I would also cut back on the poppyseeds slightly. The recipe also called for lemon syrup to be brushed on after baking...which I skipped. So I would definitely make the syrup next time and this might also help with the lemon flavor.

mise en place

oops, I accidentally started by beating the butter...no worries, I'll just mix
the dry ingredients in another bowl and then add to my mixer bowl

here we go, the dry ingredients mixed and added back to the mixer bowl

in goes 1/2 c of the sour cream

the butter and most of the sour cream are mixed in and beaten for 90 seconds
and then the remaining wet ingredients are added

and done...into the pan!

so pretty and smells great

a slice for the chef

delicious!

Bye for now...