50. Eccles Cakes

Oh...my...goodness. Never again! What a bloomin' faff these were! There's a reason why someone invented ready-made puff pastry, and that was probably to preserve the sanity of many a hapless baker who tries to make their own. What a technical nightmare! Still, I did it - at least I can say that. Husband and I quite fancied eating these, hence my decision to bake them. He'd had one a few days previously, and once the idea was in my head, I really wanted to make them.
It all seemed quite straightforward from the recipe; there are even pictures of how to make the pastry, and it did present quite a fun challenge. It involved lots of butter, lots of folding, rolling and refrigerating and so on until you can eventually insert the filling. I thought I was following the instructions quite well until I found some parts of the pastry impossible to work with. The butter got too warm and melty; the pastry got too sticky, and then there was no doing anything with it! I decided to make the Eccles Cakes in two batches and put the melty pastry in the freezer to get the butter to harden up quick. It felt like very high-pressure stuff because of how the pastry was behaving, and I rushed the assembly. I didn't think about the thick bit of pastry where I joined the circles once the filling was dolloped in, but we ended up with a lot of stodgy, not very well-cooked pastry once they came out of the oven, so much of what I made was inedible. The whole process just seemed to take so long, and I didn't enjoy the faff of it all. But then I seem to be able to tolerate faff if I feel confident that I'm doing the right thing: in this case I really didn't! It was all very disappointing really. I feel that yes, I made flaky pastry (you could see the layers), and yes, I made Eccles Cakes. They tasted nice, but I didn't execute the bake carefully enough, although they did at least look the part. Lots of lessons learnt here!
Baker's verdict: tasty, but fiddly. Not really worth all the effort making the pastry.
Husband rating: 3/10 - doughy and inedible, but they did have a nice flavour.

 

49. Coffee Victoria Sandwich

This was baked on a whim. I wanted to bake something which wasn't too complicated and this was on the next list, so off I went. I seem to remember it being a mid-week effort: I felt like I wanted to eat cake and I never feel that I can justify buying cake to eat at home when I'm more than capable of knocking up something myself. Unfortunately I do tend to do things in a bit of a rush these days, and I missed a key ingredient: coffee essence. I just didn't have any in the cupboard and had already started the bake before I realised I needed it. So I mixed up some instant coffee with water and used an equivalent measure of that instead. The cake was very easy to make; the usual all-in-one Victoria Sandwich method; the icing was more 'wet' than I imagined though. I always enjoyed my Mum's coffee and walnut cakes and she uses a much thicker buttercream filling and icing: this one was very wishy-washy. I was a bit disappointed by the end result of this cake - the coffee flavour was quite subtle really, which could be seen as a positive if you don't like the flavour to be too strong, but I wished it had a bit more oomph to it. It was also a very pale cake - I'd expected a darker colour. Still, we enjoyed our slices of it, and my colleagues at school were very pleased to be indulging in the leftovers!
Baker's verdict: a bit bland, so I'll probably use my Mum's recipe if I want to do a coffee cake again. I'll be interested to see how this compares with the Coffee and Walnut Traybake in the book.
Husband rating: 6.5/10 - really sweet icing; not particularly memorable.
 

48. Bara Brith

Ok, so I'm now extremely behind with my blog, having baked several things in the last few months without finding (or using) an opportunity to write about them. I'm doing a big catch-up now though, to try and get the whole project back on track. Such is life when it's filled with everything baby-related and trying to manage working as well! I'm lucky to get time to bake really, but I love doing it so I don't want to abandon the project.
Anyway, Bara Brith. Had it when I went to Wales on holiday years ago, but couldn't really remember what it tasted like. It actually turned out to be one of the easiest bakes I've done, and it's also up there with the tastiest. It all began with soaking currants and sultanas in hot tea overnight. Now, I'm not a tea drinker, so I was a bit concerned that it might have a really strong taste of tea, but happily that wasn't the case - the flavour was quite subtle really.
The following day, all that remained to do was mix the soaked fruit with an egg, sugar and flour and pour the mixture into a loaf tin. As with the other loaves I've baked, I divided the mixture into two 1lb tins rather than just using a 2lb one; it's a good way to ensure we don't over-eat, and these loaves freeze really well. I just reduced the baking time a bit; interestingly they did require a long time in the oven: this is a low temperature, slow bake.
Mary recommends serving slices of this buttered, but the cake tasted really lovely without the butter so we didn't bother; we were both pleasantly surprised by how tasty it was actually. One loaf went into the freezer; the remainder of the first loaf was donated to husband's work colleagues, in honour of his impending work trip to the Land of the Leek...
Baker's verdict: so easy to make and so tasty. I'll definitely be making this again.
Husband rating: 9/10 - enjoyed it; like a very nice moist malt loaf.