Skip to main content

Maple Syrup Cake for the Weekly Bake Off (aka Icing Hides Many Things)

I'm really pleased to have discovered the Weekly Bake Off, (thanks to the morethanoccasionalbaker), and which is organised by Amy from the Great British Baking Club.

It's based on the challenge of baking every one of the 100 recipes in 'Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes'. I think it's a great way of expanding your repetoire and trying something new! This week, the bake off recipe is the Maple Syrup Cake, and I decided to have a go. Sadly, there will be no star baker badge for me this week. If there was a badge for funniest bake though ...

I'll be upfront about this. It has been a disaster. It was going well up until putting the cake in the oven. The batter tasted really nice (yes, spoon licking does take place in this household). The cake looked lovely and level in the pan, so into the oven it went.


The recipe says to bake for 1 - 1 1/2 hours. That was where my first niggling thought occurred 'That's a pretty wide parameter!'. Having been caught in the past overbaking cakes, I decided I would check after one hour, so the timer was set. As soon as I opened the oven door I could see a dent in the middle. I closed the oven door but the damage was done. Despite trying to salvage the situation and baking for 15 minutes longer, the dent was fast becoming a hole in the middle of the cake.


'That's not good' I thought, closely followed by 'I wonder what it'll taste like' (fantastic actually). I waited for the cake to cool down and then cut into the three layers stipulated in the recipe. This shows the extent of the problem.


The top two layers resemble polos, and while the botom layer has remained intact, it's only because it is glued together by underdone cake. The outside is crispy and seems a little overdone. One thing is clear, this is not a dainty cake.

I've been wracking my brains to think what's gone wrong. Including:

  • The recipe I used was from Baking Bible, but it is the same as the one in 100 Cakes and Bakes (I just checked);
  • I did follow the recipe;
  • I don't think I overmixed everything;
  • All my ingredients were fresh and well before their use by date including the baking powder;
  • I did however use Lurpak spread (according to Mary she uses butter but if you use spread to make sure it is over 59% fat - it was);
  • My oven was at the right temperature (I used a thermometer to check);
  • I placed the cake in the middle of the oven - as I have a fan oven could this have affected it somehow?;
  • The cake tin was the right size but it was dark in colour - according to Rose Levy Berenbaum (US baking guru and author of another cake bible) I should have reduced the oven temp by 15 degrees to compensate - could that be it?;
  • Is it right to add two teaspoons of baking powder to self-raising flour (and 350g?), as the recipe calls for? Not sure about this one. It seems like a lot to me, and there was clearly a massive air buble created in the middle of the cake by something. Still it is a Mary Berry recipe.
In short I have no idea what went wrong. I wasn't sure whether to go ahead and ice it or not, but it is true that icing covers a multitude of sins (I also managed to overwhip the cream so that it firmed up a bit and filled the hole!).

Anyway, in case you are interested, here is the recipe.

Ingredients

225g softened butter
225g light muscovado sugar
zest of one orange
4 large eggs
100ml maple syrup
350g self raising flour
2 level tspn baking powder
1/2 level tspn ground ginger
50g pecan nuts, chopped

For the filling and topping:

450ml pouring double cream
2tbspn maple syrup
zest of one orange in strips, to decorate



Preheat the oven to 140 fan / 160 conventional / gas 3

For the cake, you basically measure everything except the pecans into a bowl and mix well. Then fold in the chopped nuts.



Add the mixture to a greased and base lined 20cm deep cake tin. Bake for 1 - 1 1/2 hours or until well risen, golden and springy to the touch.

Allow to cool slightly, then turn out on rack to completely cool. Cut into three layers.

Whip the cream until it just holds its shape and then fold in the maple syrup. Fill and cover the cake over the top and sides. Use the orange zest strips to decorate.

At least the hole meant lots of cream!



It's a shame this didn't turn out so well, but it still tasted really good. At least my little helper thought it/my reaction was funny ...


I'm looking forward to seeing how the other bakers got on on this one. Ah well, roll on next week!

Susie

Comments

  1. So pleased you joined in and thank for the mention :) Its a shame the cake didn't turn out. I have to admit I "cheated" by using 3 cake tins as I couldnt be bothered to slice it into 3. I'm not sure what went wrong either as its usually if the oven is too hot or too much baking powder. I've noticed that Mary Berry likes adding baking powder to self-raising flour. I ended up with a super giant cake!! Look forward to this week's entry (I don't think I'll be making one)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, your bake looked really great though! I don't know why Mary Berry went for the deep tin - I would have thought using three can give you better control (I suppose as long as you manage to evenly distribute the mix). Maybe it was just one of those things, as the recipe clearly does work looking at some of the other wonderful bakes. Ah well. I am hoping to have a bash at this week's as I've never done a flourless cake, so that'll be new.

      Delete
  2. Oh my goodness, your little one is adorable! :) I just found your blog and absolutely love it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you, glad you like it! So glad you found my blog, as it gave me the opportuity to find yours! I have had a look and it's fantastic! I'm looking forward to reading more posts :-) x

    ReplyDelete
  4. My cake turned out exactly the same as yours! I just made it today for the first time. I don't have a fan oven and I have a dark baking tin but I've never heard of lowing the oven temp to compensate for that. I use that same tin to bake Delia's Lemon Drizzle cake and it turns out perfectly each time. I'm thinking it's this maple pecan recipe, not us!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment - and although I'm grateful it's not just me, I feel your pain! I think with the additional baking experience I've now got, there is no way I would make this cake again and use 2 teaspoons of baking powder in addition to self raising flour - it's just too much. I don't think it's the colour of the tin (I've used mine for so many more cakes now that I know it's ok). If I did make this again, then the first things I'd try to rectify it would be to either split the mixture between two or three tins, and just use 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder. If it's the one tin I'd bake for 45 mins -1 hour. If divided between 2 - 3 tins then I'd try 25-30 mins. But that's if I'd try it again. :-)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Your comments are very much appreciated.

Popular posts from this blog

Dark Indulgent Chocolate and Walnut Brownies for the Weekly Bake Off

It's been a great couple of weeks in the Bake Off , as Amy has chosen some fantastic chocolate recipes from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes . Although I made last week's American Chocolate Ripple Cheesecake, I didn't enter it. Not because it was a disaster (it was incredibly delicious though very rich - Josh has been able to eek it out all week as he only needs a little piece to get his daily chocolate fix!), but I simply ran out of time. So this week, I decided to get my skates on and make the bake early. Particularly as it's brownies. Yes. Brownies. Those dark, fudgey, chocolatey little bites of heaven. But for me, this week was an experiment. You see, I already have a fantastic brownie recipe . It's been made countless times and been played around with to give an endless variety of treats. (Have I ever mentioned Maya Gold in brownies? Yes? Well I'll have to post about them someday soon because they are amazing - like some sort of out of body exp

Not Viennese, but Swiss Cakes for the Weekly Bake Off

One of my strongest childhood memories is the ritual of our family's Sunday Tea, which always took a certain form. My nan would put the kettle on at just before 4pm, and a pot of steaming hot tea would soon be brewed. There were sandwiches, and always, always some form of cake. Quite often, if nan and mum had had a busy weekend, it would be provided by Mr Kipling. My brother and I looked forward to this with some enthusiasm, as there were quite often French Fancies and Vienniese Whirls, which were our hands-down favourites. We could leave the Battenburg Slices, and the jam tarts were often a bit too dry  for us (definitely not as good as homemade). But the soft sweet inside of an iced French Fancy (my favourite being the lemon yellow ones), and the moistness of the Viennese Whirls were something to savour. Of course, you can still buy these. But they just don't seem to taste the same somehow. So when Amy announced this week's Bake Off challenge as the Apricot Swiss

Limoncello Cake

I really love this cake. I mean really love it. So much so, it's my new best friend. It's like sunshine on a plate. The citrussy aroma tempts you while the sultry lemony pucker hits you full in the mouth. And who can resist anything with 'Limoncello' in the title? The mere mention of the word transports you to to the Sicilian sun. It's one more reason I have to thank Random Recipes for getting me to delve into my cookbooks. This month's challenge had a bit of a twist. Dom, of Belleau Kitchen (who runs the challenge) created a Randometer thingummy-bob to test us. You had to enter how many cookbooks you owned, and then it would generate a random number. You counted along your shelf to that book, and then entered the number of pages, to generate another number and so find your Random Recipe. The gods must have been looking favourably on me this month, as I ended up with this gorgeous lemon cake, from Peggy Porschen's 'Boutique Baking