It’s a wet, grey Tuesday afternoon and somehow all of those productive plans that I had for today have come to nothing. There’s a garage door needs painting, a lawn that needs mowing and a garden that could really do with an end of summer tidy up. But I’m staying where I am at this keyboard. I’ve got some rye bread proving prior to baking and an unexpected opportunity to write.
I couldn’t let Bake Off dairy week finish without mentioning that I had a second bake. In yesterday’s post I talked about the slightly torturous process of making Maids of Honour, the tarts that were the technical challenge this week. For my second bake I made a dairy based cake. This was the signature challenge where one key ingredient had to be a dairy product.
One of the things that i particularly like about cake making is how straight forward it is. Dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another, mix and into the tin. I know there can be more to it than that but after the multiple stages of the last bake this one felt so much easier.
The cake I made was a pear & walnut bundt that used almond milk. Bundt cakes are made in ring shape tins and while they might look impressive on the plate there is always a serious concern that they are going to break as you get them out. I find that greasing and flouring the tin before you put the mixture in helps.
I’ve got two bundt tins of differing sizes and in a moment of madness decided that this cake had to be in the larger one. When something the size of a flyer saucer came out of the oven I realised that I’d perhaps been a bit ambitious. Even with half having gone into the freezer there will still be cake for us all week.
The recipe for the cake is below. As I say be warned as this did produce a monster. The bundt tin that I used is 22cm
5 eggs
150g Muscovado Sugar
250ml veg oil
Half teaspoon of ground cardamom seeds
400g flour ( I used Spelt flour but any cake flour should work)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
150ml Almond Milk (ordinary milk will work)
2 pears peeled and chopped
50g chopped walniuts
Pre heat oven to 180c/gas 4
Beat the eggs and sugar in a bowl with an electric whisk for several minutes. Add the oil as you whisk. Combine all dry ingredients in a separate bowl except for the pears & walnuts. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture in stages, alternating with the milk. Once all combined gently fold through the chopped pears and nuts. Bake for 45 minutes. The cake should be golden and a skewer or knife put in to test should come out clean.
I topped mine with some icing that had a little lemon juice in it and some edible flowers from our garden.
One of the unexpected bonuses of writing these pieces is how much I’m learning about the history of the things that I make. The link blow takes you to a fascinating Wiki page for bundt cakes.
David in the kitchen. 
I think that part you wrote about cakes being mix one part dry ingredients with one part wet ingredients is why I prefer cakes if I am going to bake anything. They are relatively simple. This sounds like a tasty bundt cake and I liked the link to Wikipedia page. I could have imagined rthat the bundt cake originated as a marketing thing back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. We did not have a bundt cake pan growing up but some relative did. She would bring angel food cakes baked in bundt pans and so I came to think (at that time) that bundt cakes were only for angel food cakes.
Still curious about next episode’s focus on 1920’s.
Oh, and I appreciated your opening paragraph:
“all of those productive plans that I had for today have come to nothing” Ha! The story of my life recently!
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I really am finding it interesting to find out more about food history. In fact Food Historian sounds like a dream job. I won’t say too much about this week before I post (just in case you watch it) but you were right about alcohol being involved at some point.
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