Prinsesstarta (swedish princess cake) - GBBO Week 6

It's been ages since I posted, but I've been busy doing lots of baking, and wanted to share my latest bake. My husband has set me the challenge of baking the technical challenge on each week's Great British Bake Off, and I've completed each bake every week. This week was of course European week, and the technical challenge was the Swedish cake Prinsesstarta. Here's a few pictures of how I got on:

The cake itself is delicious, it was time consuming to bake but so worth it!

Traditional Parkin - Mary Berry

I had never tried this cake before until we went to a friend's birthday party and having tasted it I thought it was delicious, moist, sticky, spicy and slightly nutty from the porridge oats.

I had heard it is traditionally baked for bonfire night and decided to try baking it myself using the recipe from my trusty Mary Berry's Baking Bible.

I have to say I was slightly disappointed with the result as the cake was dry and crumbly rather than moist and sticky BUT I didn't do as Mary instructed and leave the cake wrapped up for a week before eating so that may have something to do with it!

I also baked the cake in a smaller tin than the recipe stated and think I should have took it out of the oven sooner, so it was probably overbaked.

For these reasons I will give the recipe a chance and bake the parkin again next year, and next time I'll use the correct sized tin AND bake it a week before bonfire night to let the cake become moist and sticky!

Pear and Almond cake with Streusel Topping

I had a rare day at home today with boy no.1 as his school were on strike. Boy no. 2 was at nursery so I saw this as the perfect opportunity to do some baking.

We were away visiting family at the weekend and were very kindly given 3 carrier bags full of freshly picked pears.

I was keen to bake with the pears and flicked through my latest cook book, Delia's Cakes. I came across this recipe and decided to give this a go.

The cake is very simple to bake. The cake itself is made using self raising flour, baking powder, butter, golden caster sugar, ground almonds, an egg, almond extract, pinch of salt and 3 tablespoons milk.

Once combined using an electric whisk, you simply spoon the batter into a lined 20cm cake tin, level the top with a tablespoon, and add 2 peeled, cored and sliced pears on top.

The instructions were a bit ambiguous, Delia instructs you to arrange the pears in a circle on top and states that a few can go in the middle. I was unsure what she meant by this, and simply placed the pear slices going from the middle to the edge all the way round. It's a bit hard to explain but it looked good when finished.

The streusel topping was the final step, which is made using self raising flour, demerara sugar, melted butter and flaked almonds which you sprinkle over the top of the pears.

The cake was baked for 45 mins (we popped out to pick up boy no. 2 from nursery whilst the cake was in the oven!) and left to cool.

A good tip from Delia is to use a palette knife to remove the baking parchment from the cake before sliding onto a wire rack to cool. I don't actually own a palette knife so used a long knife and this worked just as well.

The cake was delicious, we sprinkled it with icing sugar and served it with raspberry flavoured clotted cream ice cream. Yum.

Strawberry and mint mojitos by Lorraine Pascale

So we were away celebrating our wedding anniversary, and picked out this cocktail from Lorraine's book to make and enjoy whilst the boys were in bed.  

The ingredients were demerara sugar, limes, strawberries, fresh mint, crushed ice, white rum and soda water. 

They were delicious, but as you can see, the wine glasses weren't quite big enough!  I would recommend a straw or cocktail stirrer (as Lorraine advises, but we didn't have either of these in our holiday cottage!) so that you can mix everything together before sipping.  Yum yum. 

I particularly liked the combination of fresh lime juice and demerara sugar which you bash together with the end of a rolling pin in the glass before you start.  Sounds odd, but it is so lovely when combined with all of the other ingredients!

Apple tarte tatin by Mary Berry

I liked the sound of this dessert very much, but I'm not sure I'd eaten it before, so I wasn't sure what it should taste like! For me the pastry was a real winner, crunchy, golden brown, light and flaky, sweetened with the caramel apple sauce.  Absolutely gorgeous and so easy to make too.

 

The apples were deliciously sweet and soft but my only complaint about this dessert was that the apples were not caramelised, rather they seemed to have steamed in the juices.  They were delicious, but I was expecting a bit of sticky caramelisation.  Maybe with a tweak I will get this next time!

 

This apple tarte tatin was delicious served hot with vanilla ice cream and with some of the juices spooned over it.  I can't wait to bake this again!

 

 

Cappuccino cakes

I got the inspiration for these cappuccino cakes from Lorraine Pascale's mini strawberries and cream cakes recipe.  Again I wanted to keep the cakes small so I used fairy cake cases and Mary Berry's chocolate fairy cake recipe.



 

I must admit to watching Eric Lanlard's baking programme and picking up a tip from the master baker himself - piping the cake batter into the cake cases!  Totally unnecessary of course, as the cake batter spreads and finds its own level in the heat of the oven, but soo much fun, I will definitely do this again.

The filling and topping was simply double cream sweetened with a little icing sugar, and 1tsp instant coffee granules (I used Nescafe Gold Blend as this is what we buy for visitors, we don't usually drink coffee!) dissolved in a little hot water. 

I sliced each cake in half, filled one half of each with a little coffee cream, and sandwiched the two layers back together.  For the topping I simply piped a little coffee cream onto the top of each cake before adding a square of my favourite chocolate, Galaxy cookie crumble.

These little cakes went down well, I would bake these again for something a little different yet delicious.

Madeira cake by Mary Berry - 20/4/13

 

This is the first bake in Mary Berry's Baking Bible, and one that I had put off for a while as Mary describes the sponge as "rich and densely textured" and for this reason it didn't really appeal.  However, I was going to visit my family and wanted to bake them a cake, one that travelled well as I was travelling on the train, so I thought this cake was ideal. 

The cake batter followed the "all in one" method and was very easy to mix together.  I particularly enjoyed grating the zest of one lemon into the mixing bowl, it had such a fresh citrussy scent! 

The cake had a good buttery lemony flavour but the texture was dense, as the recipe says, and it was a little on the dry side.  Unfortunately, the cake didn't seem to go down too well with my family (now there's a first!) and I ended up bringing a lot of it home with me!

However, we found this cake definitely improved with age, and we ended up polishing it off with great enjoyment.  Husband particularly enjoyed this cake and said it was good, which was surprising as he usually likes a good topping on his cake to counteract any dryness.

I would bake this cake again, but next time I will remember to bake it at least a couple of days in advance, to allow the cake to mature and become moist.