Is that really a challenge, I hear you cry?! Well, I think, aside from those cakes you "bake" by mixing all the ingredients and putting them into the fridge you make at school, this is the first ever cake I have truly baked. It's a deficiency I needed to correct. How could one really reach this ripe old age not having fashioned something so simple as a cake?
I quickly discovered it's a more time consuming and difficult process than I had imagined. First, which cake to make? I had one solid criteria - it had to be something that went into the oven, and not just one of those (albeit delicious) fridge concoctions. The go to reference for any Englishman - Delia "lets be 'avin you" Smith (all football fans will appreciate that reference). I thoroughly enjoyed paging through the many cakes all well presented with close up photography. So many cakes, so little time, as my imagination runs wild taking me to dreamy Saturday afternoons cooking up a storm on a regular basis as I work my way through every cake in the book, in order, and seeing friends and family queue up as my baking reputation spreads far and wide.
Cake selected - an iced English Walnut cake. Perfect as we have many walnuts from our single fruit bearing tree in the garden. Is a nut a fruit?
This is the image that attracted me...
Cake selected, I began to shell walnuts. Quite a lengthy process, but fun all the same, to get the required 125g. Then I followed the recipe as a man does - to the letter, precisely. First the sponges, which were then set aside to cool. Then the icing - and here is where I came a little unstuck. Carefully mixing in the icing sugar to the egg whites and vanilla extract the icing got thicker and thicker. "It's not thick enough yet" my head chef advised, keep going. So I did. Then it was bedtime for the girls, so upstairs to supervise and prayertime. Upon descending once more, I found the icing a little stiff. Should stick - right? It did, but did take a little of the sponge with it as I tried to spread it. Plus I seemed to be a little lacking in quantity. But persevere I did, and finally (most) of the cake was iced. You can judge for yourself below.
But how did it taste? We cut the cake in half, and tasted a little morsel with coffee before church. Not too bad, a little dry maybe, but only a little. Plenty of walnuts coming through, which pleased me. We packed half, and took to church, where Mary laid it out nicely. I trust her opinion. "Tasty, although a little sweet", she said. That works for me!
Am I inspired to bake more cakes? Yes. Will I find the time, lets check back on that.
