For the Love of British Food

Whichever method you choose for your cake, the ingredients are the same.  You want 3 large very fresh eggs for a cake made in 8 inch tins. For 9 inch tins, use 4 eggs. 

My weight measurement conversions are approximate but they are for fillings so small differences are not significant. The weight of eggs vs other ingredients in the cake mix is what counts.

How do you know an egg is fresh? Break it onto a plate. If the yolk stays domed and stands away from the white, the egg is fresh.  If it collapses into a flat disc, the egg is stale. Really bad eggs go green and smell.

Use it in scrambled egg, put it in a foo yong stir fry, or throw it away, but don’t make cakes with it. The yolk colour is not significant to this test, and will depend on what the hen was fed on and to some extent on the breed. It can also be seasonal, summer eggs are usually darker.

The yolk of free range chickens that have pecked round a field or yard to forage for themselves a bit as well as getting good quality grain feed will be dark gold, almost orange,  battery eggs are much paler yellow as a rule.  Brown eggs are not necessarily better and again depend on the breed of hen. End of eggy lessons.

Now, weigh your eggs. This is absolutely vital.  You need exactly the same weight of fat, flour and fine caster sugar as your eggs.  What fat to use. Only one thing will do and that is good quality UNSALTED butter.  Please don’t use the spreadable butter for baking as many have a small proportion of vegetable oil. Save it for your toast.

I go to France several times a year, popping across the Channel is easy from where I live in Southern England, either underneath on the Eurotunnel service where you sit in your car, on a train for a 35 minute journey, or by one of the many ferry routes. Point here, is that even now, with the decline of the pound sterling vs. the Euro, French unsalted butter – even the organic (biologique) type - is cheaper and you can buy plenty and freeze it for all your home baking

For these recipes, you want the butter soft, but not melting. If it is the right consistency it will blend easily with the other ingredients with no unmixed lumps or curdling.

The flour needs to be self-raising flour that needs no additional baking powder and bicarb. I think in the USA it might be called cake flour – perhaps someone can help me here. Caster sugar might be berry sugar?

Prepare your tins. I use 2 x 8 inch sandwich tins.  If your tins are not non-stick, use the wrapper from your butter to thoroughly grease your tins or use a bit of paper towel to do the job. Now tip in a couple of teaspoons of flour. Roll and tap the tin around in your hands so that the bottom and sides of the tins are perfectly coated and tip out and discard any surplus flour. You may alternatively use a circle of non-stick baking parchment paper in the bottom, but still grease the sides of the tin.

Don’t forget to turn on your oven at this point. Set it for Gas Mark 4, 355 Fahrenheit or 180 Celsius.
If you have an electric fan assisted oven, set a roasting pan of hot water in the bottom – the steam will help to keep your cake moist.

Method 1 – Traditional

Put the weighed butter in a large bowl and attack it with a big wooden spoon until it is softened enough to stir. If it’s a bit hard when you start your preparations, dice it into small cubes and leave on a plate for a few minutes while you weigh your other ingredients and prepare your tins.

Now sift in your sugar and start to blend with the butter. At first you will have a gritty mass, even with fine caster sugar. Be patient and work at it and you will end up with something that is pale and creamy and with most of the grittiness gone.

Break each egg separately into a cup or small bowl and beat briefly to barely amalgamate the yolk and white.  Even supermarkets can manage to get a bad egg in a box once in a while and you don’t want THAT smelly horror in your cake mix. Add each beaten egg separately and beat it into the creamed fat and sugar very well. Beating at this stage will get air into the cake. If you end up with a curdled mix, just add a tablespoon or so of your flour and beat again. It will come back together.

This is the stage where you would add other flavourings – not after the flour or you’ll lose that precious air in the mix.  Even if it is going to be a plain cake, I add a scant teaspoon of vanilla extract here. I said EXTRACT, not ESSENCE. The first is made from real pure vanilla pods, I don’t want to know what synthetic flavourings went into the other.

Next, you need a fine sieve. Tip your flour into the sieve over your mixing bowl and get lumps out and air in. You can put all the flour in at this point. To complete the mixing, you need one of two things. A very big metal spoon or a large flexible plastic or rubber spatula, but not your wooden spoon. You are going to use a cutting and folding motion to gently mix in your flour without bashing out all the air. Use the cutting motion through the mix to ensure there are no pockets of unblended flour.

Method 2 – For those with modern all purpose food processors

Weigh your ingredients as before. Put your sugar and butter in the mixer bowl, put the lid on, but leave the funnel tube open. Start the motor and blend – it will take much less time than the traditional method.  Break eggs into a bowl one by one and add down the tube and then the vanilla.  When all eggs are blended, stop and scrape the mix off the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the pre-sifted flour, put the lid AND funnel cap back on (unless you want a cloud of flour snowing over your kitchen) before you start the motor again. Mix as briefly as you can get away with to reach an even consistency.

The best cake mixer is undoubtedly the old fashioned Kenwood Chef style with a rotary K-beater and a big deep bowl. Unfortunately the one I inherited from my Mum is broken, but I’ve heard you can get replacement motors on ebay….

Divide your mix between your two prepared tins, and put in the oven, in the middle. They must go on the same shelf if possible. Gas ovens vary more in temperature  top to bottom and from front to back. You can buy oven thermometers.

Your cakes will take approximately 25 minutes in a conventional oven, maybe a little less in a fan assisted oven. Do not open the oven door for AT LEAST 20 minutes.  If the cakes are done, the top will be an even gold, the middle will be firm and springy when pressed and the cake will be coming away from the sides ever so slightly.  Allow your cakes to cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack. You may need to slide a knife around the edge of the tin first. I use two racks, so I can turn what will be the top of my cake right side up again to keep its slightly domed shape.

When the cakes are completely cold, remove any paper liners, and sandwich with a generous layer of raspberry jam and thick double cream or buttercream. (Buttercream is the same mix you used to start the cake, use about 3 oz (85 grams) each of butter and sugar and flavour with a few more drops of vanilla. Some people use icing sugar for buttercream – whatever you have).

Dust the top of your cake with icing sugar and set on your prettiest plate or cake stand. You just created a true work of art. Make sure you get some before the greedy hordes eat it all.

Variations

At the pre-flour stage, add grated orange zest and the juice of a large sweet orange OR, two teaspoons of powdered instant coffee and  2 oz (50g) of chopped walnuts. The orange version is sandwiched with English marmalade and orange zest flavoured buttercream. The coffee version has half a teaspoon of powdered instant coffee in the buttercream and sprinkle with more finely chopped walnuts, dust with icing sugar.

The chocolate version has two tablespoons of best quality cocoa substituted for the same amount of flour. Cocoa often has lumps so make sure it is sifted in. More cocoa in the buttercream, or use plain fresh cream. For the top, you can do a layer of sifted cocoa followed by a little sifted icing sugar to make it look like fine snow.

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