Updated: Mary Berry's Lemon Yogurt Cake

A couple of weeks ago, this cake was cake of the week for the Weekly Bake Off.  Sadly, I missed out because being that it was Miss A's epic five-day birthday celebration, there just wasn't enough time to make any more cake.  Well not when you have a full time job and a toddler to look after too.

My work colleagues barely spoke to me that week.  For a few hours, every question seemed to be answered with just a grunt or a shrug.  It took me a while to work it out, but finally I realised that they'd gone from enjoying cake as a treat to expecting it.  So based on the reviews this cake got from the bake off, I decided that this will be my redeeming bake to regain some of the friendliness.*

Work in progress

On any given day, my favourite flavour cake varies.  Lemon or a decent coffee cake are definitely way up there.  Lemon cake is the very first cake I actually remember eating.  We were on holiday in Wales when I was about four and stopped in a little tea room run by a lady called Dulcie in a place called Solva.  The cake was beautifully moist and had snow white, lemon-sharp icing which crackled as you put your fork through it before softly yielding to the cake.  And being it was the very early eighties, it was adorned with lemon jelly slices.  I don't think I've ever eaten such a memorable piece of cake since.  Maybe I never will.

If I'm making lemon cake myself, I normally use a four egg sponge, laced with lemon zest and the juice of a lemon.  Once baked and cooled, I then slice and fill it with lemon curd (it will always be home made curd since I tried Nigel Slater's recipe) and top with a thick royal icing made with lemon juice rather than water.  And of course, lemon jelly slices on the top.  It's retro-chic.

My other top lemon cake recipe is the Hummingbird Bakery's Lemon Loaf from the original Hummingbird Bakery book.  I've made this countless times and it always turns out really well.  I think once it didn't rise quite as much as normal but the bake was still fine.  Although I've given my mum this recipe and after three attempts, she's never managed to get it to work for her.  They all went in the bin (and she's a trained chef!)

And then, of course, there's now Maria's Lemon Celebration cake to add to this list.  It formed the base of Miss A's birthday cake and I really enjoyed this.  To the point that I may make it my regular large lemon bake instead of my four-egg mix.

Hummingbird Lemon Loaf

For once, I made this cake entirely by hand rather than with my Kenwood.  Mostly because I had to bake after tea and this is the husband's telly-watching time when all other noise is banned.  So no chance of getting away with the noise of the Kenwood.  It was actually really satisfying to bake in this way.  I've always had a hand mixer even before the Kenwood but it was really nice to cream the sugar and eggs and whip the egg whites with only the most basic of utensils.  The old fashioned way.  In fact, that's one thing I like about Berry's recipes.  Unlike the current fashion for insisting that one must mix their cakes in a stand mixer or not use the recipe, Berry simply tells you to beat or mix or whisk without insisting you have expensive gadgets (okay so this is my own interpretation of certain books, but there does seem to be a bit of snobbyness in some books if you don't have the exact right equipment).

So this cake has a lot to live up to.  I could smell it baking away even though I'm two floors up from the kitchen.  And it's smelling pretty good.  Just as I was about to click publish, the hour of baking was up and I have a perfectly risen, nicely browned cake although the crust feels a little firm and I'm so tempted to put a drizzle over it.  But I'm having faith in the Berry that it doesn't need it.

Fresh from the oven

Of course, because I had to bake so late I won't be able to ice it before bed time as I doubt it will cool down before I go to sleep.  So final pics will have to come in the morning.  But if you want to get an idea of how it does look, hop over to the Weekly Bake Off and look at all the stunning entries there.  Mine will never look as stunning as those because I'll have to decorate it at 5am and it's for a bunch of guys who won't care that it doesn't look fancy so long as it fills their bellies.

If you want great advice on baking this yourself, you should also take a look at Jaim's Kitchen where she has written about her experience with this bake.  She tested it for breakfast which I think is an amazing idea and I may just do myself.  Just for research purposes of course.

Will update tomorrow with a finished pic and the verdict from the hungry hoardes.

Update: 29th March 2012

Well that's the last time I'm taking cake into work.  I couldn't give it away!  Okay so I got stuck in a meeting and by the time I was liberated, the office was pretty much desserted so half of the cake came home with me again.  I've still not had a bit but those that did said it was really good.  It looks to have quite a dense texture but was much moister than I was expecting as it felt quite crusty when I took it out of the oven.

As for the icing, well I'm back on my rant that Miss Berry is tight on the icing front.  I went for 25% more icing and this still wasn't enough in my opinion to get a thick even coating to the cake.  If you look at the picture, you'll see that the poor artificial lighting in my kitchen exposes the lack of icing coverage in place.  I would definitely use a bit more in the future to get a perfect white coating.  Definitely a bake again one.

* Okay, I fibbed.  I revealed the lack of cake during the lunchtime bakery run so the sulk lasted the five seconds it took to choose something else from the vast array in the bakery :)

Weekly Bake Off: Apricot Swiss Cakes

I've wanted to give these a go ever since I first got my floury mitts on a copy of Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes ready for the Weekly Bake Off.  The cakes are actually more biscuit-like and reminiscent of a Viennese whirl; the slight difference being that you pipe them into a cake case rather than onto baking sheets before sandwiching with jam and cream.

Trying to capitalise on the good weather and the clock change keeping Miss A asleep 'longer' than normal, I started my cakes at 7.30am.  I finally got them baked at about 3pm.  Why?  Well the recipe calls for soft butter.  The lovely @EversNanaJules tweeted me last night and said to make sure my butter was very soft.  I thought that in this weather, how could it be anything else?  I obviously didn't fully comprehend just how soft the butter needed to be.

With a lot of arm flexing, I finally got the ingredients into some semblance of a paste.  I then discovered I was down to my last disposable piping bag.  At this point, I should have sensed impending disaster.  Maybe I crossed a lone magpie on my run this morning and didn't salute him or something.  The mixture went into the bag but wouldn't come out again.  Well not until the side of the bag slowly bulged and split.

Now I've been using Lakeland Disposable Piping Bags for a couple of years.  And up until recently they've been great.  But when icing Miss A's birthday cakes, I went through six or seven of them just to do two colours.  Maybe a dodgy batch or something - the rest of the roll had seemed okay.  But because of this, I didn't have a back up bag.  Well I did - the Lakeland Silicone Piping Bag which I bought off the back of it being the easiest ever piping bag to clean.  They lie.  Try scraping anything that is more than 5% butter off of it and seriously, you'll understand me.  It's been in the cupboard since the first time I used it which was shortly before I switched to 'sposies.

Afternoon tea, al fresco

In desperation, I thought I'd try it again, but all that happened was that it went all bulgy, then the nozzle blew out whilst the cake mixture stayed put.  Great.  I lost nearly half my mixture in the two piping bags, because it was just to sticky to scrape off.  The silicone bag is now off to a landfill somewhere.

Finally, I braved Sainsburys - only because Miss A's new 2-3yr swimsuit was too short in the body for her and I had to swap it.  I managed to pick up some 'sposies from there and the texture of the bag is great.  Nice and thick and I couldn't imagine it splitting, but they're so tiny.  Which in some ways is good because I used to get frustrated about wasting the big bags for a small amount of mixture, but it meant I had to attempt to refill the bag half way through piping.

To get things moving, I added about 25ml of milk to slacken the mix off a little.  It was still hard to pipe into perfect circles as the mixture is quite thick and if you touch the case, you then end up with the case spinning round in the tin whilst you try to pipe around.  I guess that practice would make perfect, however, nice as the cakes are, I think I'll stick to Viennese whirls as I love the jam and buttercream combo.  Plus after all of the stress of trying to pipe the darn things, in all but four of them, most of the piping just melted back in on itself and although you could see the swirl, it wasn't as defined as I would've expected.

The other issue I had was that it said to use fairy cake cases and a bun tin.  I have a bun tin, but do you think I could get fairy cake cases for love or money?  Nope.  Cupcake cases, muffin cases, mini muffin cases, petit fours cases, mini cupcake cases but no traditional fairy cake cases.  Or maybe everyone in my locality is participating in the Weekly Bake Off and so consequently there's been a run on fairy cake cases?  Who knows. Anyway, it meant that I needed double circles in my smallest muffin cases to get them to rise to the top and the ones I did in cupcake cases just looked a bit lost.

Starting to wonder if I'm just jinxed at Mary Berry cake recipes or something...??

Updated: Weekly Bake Off Apple and Almond Dessert Cake

After saying I wasn't playing earlier this week, I decided to make a last minute entry into the Weekly Bake Off.  The main reason being that because I was a complete and utter numpty on Friday night when I was making marmalade and used up an entire bag of caster sugar, and then didn't replace it when I went to Sainslebob's this morning, I couldn't make the rhubarb and almond loaf I'd planned for today.  My work colleagues will be disappointed tomorrow!

So how did I manage to make a cake without sugar?  Well mes amis, I made today's entry with Xylitol.  And very nice it was too.  What's Xylitol, I hear you cry?  Well it sounds like some nasty chemical sweetner, but in fact it's a natural sugar substitute, extracted from the skins of fruit and vegetables.  It is used in many 'sugar free' products and is a marketed as a good alternative 'sweetener for those with diabetes and hyperglycemia'.

It has a lower Glycemic Index (GI) than regular sugar, coming at 13 for Xylitol vs 60-65 for standard sugar meaning the familiar cake sugar rush is more subdued.  It also has roughly one-third less calories than normal sugar, making it a good option for dieters.

I'd been aware of its use in things like sugar-free gum and mints, but never realised that it was a totally natural product until I read about it being used in cakes on the BBC Good Food website the other day.

The husband is diabetic and has the world's sweetest tooth.  Sweet stuff causes him all manner of problems which is why my work colleagues are treated to my baked goodies so often.  So I decided to buy some Xylitol and give it a go.

It's not cheap at £2.79 for 225g - enough for one large cake because you literally substitute it gram for gram with sugar.  I've tried baking with fruit sugar before with mixed results so I was naturally a little sceptical for this cake, but in the spirit of trying new things, I went ahead.

Low GI cake :)

And I was really pleased with the final cake.  It rose just like it should - it was helpful to see the other bake off entries to confirm I had a comparable rise.  As for taste, I found the cake a little sweet but that could just be the way everyone else's cakes are anyway.  I would've liked my apples a little tarter - but you can't control that in a cake.

All in all, a pretty good cake.  Not sure how it would be cold, but it's great slightly warm with creme fraiche or ice cream.  Just the thing to have after a big fat Sunday roast dinner - but in our house, it came after the usual chicken tikka.

Not had the husband's verdict yet.  He announced earlier, in total seriousness, that the rice krispie cakes that I'd made with Miss A this afternoon were far nicer than any other cakes I've ever made.  Miss A wasn't even round at the time so it wasn't like he was paying her a compliment.  Whilst I have a soft spot for krispie cakes, there really is no accounting for some people's tastes.  Another reason why my work colleagues often get cake - they're so complimentary.

Another good bake - but then it's from Dame Mary Berry so why wouldn't it be??

Updated - 13th Feb 2012 - Just a side note on the xylitol thing.  Apparently (I now have proof of this) it can cause a bit of belly-aching if consumed in large-ish quantities.  This only happens in a small percentage of people and apparently disappears over time after the body becomes used to it.  The husband was absolutely fine on that score so it's obviously just me.

It's also not good for dogs and can cause hypoglycemia in them so make sure you don't leave your cake where your four-legged friends can partake of a slice or several.

Weekly Bake Off - Farmhouse Victoria Sponge

Yesterday was a bit of a sucky day so to cheer myself up, I decided to participate in the Weekly Bake Off which I discovered by Twitter.  In a nutshell, the lovely @WeeklyBakeoff decided to bake her way through Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes and has invited her fellow tweeps to participate.  Every Monday, she selects a recipe.  People bake it and submit their pictures by the following Sunday for a bit of fun judging.

It sounds a little bit odd as the judge only gets to see the cakes and not actually taste them.  In fact, I was a guest judge for the Black Forest Gateau and it was really hard.  Firstly because they all looked great, but secondly because you have to look beyond the skill of the photographer and judge things like the balance of cake to filling and factor in any unusual twists in decoration.  There were only four entries the week I judged as it was the week before Christmas and it took me ages to make up my mind.  I pity whoever is judging now everyone's back to normal baking.

So on to the actual bake.  It was an interesting recipe.  When I first read it I decided not to try it as I'm not really a fan of orange or Victoria sponge, but I needed some baking therapy and a second perusal showed it to be a really really simple operation that I could perform whilst Miss A ate her tea.

You literally chuck everything into a bowl and mix it for two minutes on high before putting into prepared tins, baking it, making the buttercream filling whilst it's cooking, then it's just a case of cooling, filling and dredging with icing sugar.

Mine took more than the five minutes the instructions implied.  The recipe uses light muscovado and I'd let mine get damp so I spent ages trying to beat and grate it back into some semblance of sugar grains.  I then chose to beat it with the butter first to make sure that it was a smooth as possible.  I also increased the quantities because Berry uses a smaller tin for this cake, but helpfully, her standard Vicky is in a 20cm tin so I stole the ratios from there instead.

It made a lovely soft cake mixture and the muscovado meant it was less sweet than a regular white sponge.  It baked really well - especially given my trouble on Friday and the general issues I've been having with my new cooker.  One rather stupid schoolgirl error was that I forgot to butter the tins so the edges are a bit raggedy - but I think it adds to the farmhouse charm of the cake.

If you don't have hardened sugar, it really is simplicity in itself to make, bake and fill.

Vicky sponge with an orange marmalade and butter cream middle

I've yet to do a taste test of an actual piece as I'm taking it in to work tomorrow.  Having tried the components though, it's looking good for a non-orange cake, non-Vicky eater such as myself.   The bitterness of the marmalade works really well against the sticky-sweet buttercream.

For the record, I used Waitrose Essentials Seville Orange Marmalade which I love.  It's so cheap compared to other Seville marmalades which is great when you have to watch the pennies.  Was hoping to get some Sevilles to try my hand at marmalade making, but I fear I've missed the boat this year.  Although I understand you can buy pre-prepared oranges from Lakeland.  But that's just a bit cheaty isn't it?

In the spirit of the Bake Off, I am following the lead and not publishing the recipe.  The book is only £4 or so on Amazon and is definitely worth a buy, even if you don't want to join the competition.

However, as I'm in a sharing mood, I will share with you my mum's Vicky Sponge recipe which she drilled in to me as a child.  I can't remember exactly how old I was when I learned this recipe but it's one of those things I'll never forget.  The chocolate version characterises my childhood and always reminds me of the Michael Rosen poem 'Chocolate Cake'.  Rosen is probably best known as the illustrator of Roald Dahl books in the Eighties but wrote and illustrated many books and poems of his own.  If you love cake and have never heard this poem, go read it now!

For every lovely new cake recipe I bake, there is still nothing like my mum's chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream (made with margerine, not real butter - just doesn't taste right otherwise).  If she ever ever gets round to reading my blog and this post in particular, I hope she takes the hint that she should make one next time I visit.  It's one of those comforting things to cling to like my Grandma's roast chicken dinner or her sausage and potato bake.  No matter how bad things are, the chocolate cake can always raise a smile.  Hint....hint...

Recipe - fills two 8" (20cm) sandwich tins

For the cake

• 9oz (250g) self raising flour
• 6oz (175g) soft margerine
• 6oz (175g) caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/180c/160 fan/Gas 4
2. Grease the two tins with butter or lard and base-line with baking parchment
3. Beat the margerine, sugar and vanilla essence until light and fluffy.
4. Beat in the eggs one by one.  If it looks like it's starting to split, add in a tablespoon of flour (this is my tip!)
5. Sift the flour into the bowl and mix gently until well combined.
6. Divide between the two sandwich tin.  Wet your hand and use it to smooth the batter evenly around the tin.  Make a well in the middle of each tin, exposing the tin base.  This will ensure you don't get a bump in the middle of your cake.
7. Bake for 25 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool.

To make this a chocolate cake, replace 1oz (25g) of the flour with the same amount of sifted cocoa powder.


For the filling

• 4oz (125g) icing sugar
• 1.5oz (40g) margarine or slightly salted butter
• 1tsp vanilla essence
• splash of milk (optional)
• 4tbsp jam (raspberry or strawberry for a vanilla sponge; optional cherry for a chocolate sponge)
• icing sugar for dusting.

1. Beat together the icing sugar, margarine or butter and vanilla essence until smooth and creamy.  You may need to add a splash of milk if it's too dry.
2. Use the jam (if using) and buttercream to sandwich the cooled cake. 
3. Dust with icing sugar.

PS Mum, if you've read this, I hope you noticed I did the measurements in imperial first and then metric :)x