Well, it's that time of year again. On Wednesday night's I will be unavailable between 8 and 9pm for the coming months as I'm glued to this season of The Great British Bake off. For those of you new to the site, last year I was challenged to try milk, egg, wheat and soya free versions of all the technical challenges. I think I got as far as week 5 last time, I did complete some of the others, but didn't get round to writing them up. Lets see if we can do better this year…
Not off to a great start though, I was on holiday the week it started so I'm already behind. And I hate glacé cherries… Good excuse to buy a new shape cake tin though… Also for those of you who watched it, you may have spotted them saying you need a good thick batter or the cherries drop to the bottom. Anyone who has made wheat free cake, knows it needs more liquid and tends to be a thinner batter. Oh well… We managed Angel Cake, Floating Islands, and Tuilles last year without a single egg, so how much harder can this year be…
 |
| The sponge is a lot lighter than it looks in the picture, you can get a more open texture using water instead of milk substitute, but then you miss out on the added calcium. |
So, which recipe to use… Do I try to adapt Mary's recipe, or my fail safe cake recipe from Gemma McFarlane's 'Celebration Cakes' book? Mary's has ground almonds in, which would normally give a great texture to a wheat free cake, but I want to make this as accessible to as many people as possible. Gemma's recipe is quite a loose mix using vegetable oil as the fat, so I swapped that for dairy and soya free spread. This is what happened…
Cake
510g (Wheat free) Self Raising Flour
165g Dairy and Soya Free Spread
220g Caster Sugar (original recipe 330 if you prefer it sweeter)
Juice (about 50mls) and Zest of 1 lemon
1tsp Vanilla Paste (or extract)
550mls Milk Substitute (500mls if not using wheat free flour)
150g Glace Cherries - Rinsed, Dried and Chopped
Decoration
160g Icing Sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
4 Glace Cherries - chopped in half
Flaked Almonds - toasted (optional)
Preheat oven to 180ºC and grease a ring tin.
Put spread, sugar, vanilla and lemon zest into a bowl and whisk until light and fluffy.
Add the lemon juice to the milk substitute.
Slowly whisk about 200mls of this into the sugar and spread mix (about 50mls at a time) - it might look a bit like scrambled egg, but keep whisking, it will be fine.
Fold in the flour and the rest of the milk substitute until well combined.
Fold in the cherries.
 |
| You might want to make sure your bowl is big enough... |
Spoon into the tin and smooth the top.
Bake for 50-60minutes, until just coming away from the sides of the tin.
Turn out of the tin to cool.
 |
| Note the even distribution of cherries... |
Mix the lemon juice with the icing sugar to form a thick smooth paste.
Spoon over the cake.
Sprinkle on the almond (if using) and decorate with the remaining cherries.
No comments:
Post a Comment