Filled cakes & fruited cakes

Ah so many cakes since my last post! I have now finished the filled cakes section, am almost through fruited cakes and will be onto biscuits before I know it.

I'm quite surprised that I'm still doing this, I'm one of those people with a short attention span who gets bored easily. Obviously this little project of mine is interesting (and yummy) enough to keep me going. I'm also surprised at how quickly cakes leave my kitchen and make their way to other people's homes, and tummies. I must have at least 2 social occasions a week where it has been handy to have a freshly made cake in the kitchen, and the rest seem to have been readily devoured by hungry mouths at TFG. Tony's 'cake reports' have been a little lack luster of late though, so I'm relying on mostly my own opinion as to how good the cakes are.

So The courgette cake way AMAZING. Filled with lime curd and slathered with cream cheese icing. The Victoria Sponge was nothing like a sponge, but still tasted nice. The Boston Cream Pie managed to do a total back flip off the cake plate onto my kitchen bench. Despite this looking like a possible disaster (and at this point I envisioned myself having a tantrum on the floor a la' 'Julie and Julia') it was quite easily put to rights. The Autumnal birthday cake was a total triumph and ended up looking like something a professional cake maker would make, and I will certainly be making that one again. The 'icing' was incredible. It was basically a cooked meringue. But not in the traditional sense where you put it in the oven and the outside goes all crispy. This was meringue that was cooked as you whipped it with a handheld beater. So you end up with this fluffy, sticky, marshmallowy coating on your cake. It was full of maple syrup too, so it had that gorgeous golden, toffee, earthy taste that you can only get from really maple syrup.

Onto 'Fruit cakes', and there has been Banana cake which has walnuts and sultanas in it. Very nice and moist, but Banana cakes don't overly thrill me at the best of times. After that a Rhubarb and cornmeal cake. I thought I wouldn't be able to make this due to it not really being rhubarb season, but low and behold I found some! It was $8 a kilo though, and so I only bought a small amount, substituting the rest for apples which worked very well. The polenta (corn meal) gave the crumb a lovely grainy texture and helped soak up the juices of the fruits within the cake.

Tonight I go home to make a marzipan fruit cake. I adore, no LOVE fruit cake. It is my one weakness, and so I am very excited to be making this! Instead of the usual mixed peel it contains only sultanas, dried pears and cherries. So it does away with the sometimes nasty bitter mixed peel. Instead the recipe calls for a teaspoon of orange flower water. I doubt though that such a delicate flavour like orange flower water will even be noticed in this cake, and so I'm not too worried that I can't find it. I will use a drop of orange essence instead.

My students seem to be enjoying the steady stream of cake also! Being 15 and boys they are veracious eaters, which has also helped with using up cakes.

Two or three more cakes then I'm onto biscuits. I'm still trying to cook a cake a night, so hopefully by the weekend I will be onto biscuits. The first of which I think is rosebud madelines. I've always wanted to make madelines, they look so pretty and delicate. The sort of thing you'd serve as a petit four with tea.

Until my next post
Happy eating.