Baking Advent Calendar day 5

Someone recently asked me which was the most difficult bake I’d ever made. It didn’t take a lot of pondering to decide on a Gateau Vert and that’s the one I’m sharing for Baking Advent Calendar day five. I remember being undecided after first seeing this cake as a technical challenge in a Great British Bake Off series 9  show as to whether I was going to bake one, but after I’d gone out and bought over £10 worth of pistachios the point of no return was gone. Having said that I also remember thinking half way through making it ‘who’s silly idea was this’. The kitchen looked like a bomb site, the washing up was piling up and I still had five steps of the recipe to go.

There’s every chance that you’ve never heard of a Gateau Vert. I know I hadn’t until Bake Off featured it. The cake is apparently best known for being the favourite of the artist Cause Monet and he is reputed to have had one baked every year as his birthday cake. As an aside I’d not realised that Monet was such a foodie and it’s only today that I’ve discovered that his Cooking Journals are published. That one is definitely going on my Christmas list.

Back to the recipe and as you’ll see if you click on the recipe link this is one with a seriously long list of ingredients. The one that you’d probably least expect to see is 300g of spinach. Don’t worry though, this isn’t a vegetable cake. You boil the spinach but then only use the spinach water that’s created by wrapping the leaves in a muslin cloth and squeezing them. The liquid then forms a natural green dye in the cake.

One thing that I’ve noticed looking at Prue Leith’s recipe today is that she estimates an hours hands on time for the eleven step method. All I can say is that I must having been doing something very wrong because my memory is of taking at least twice that time on my bake.

It’s one of those bakes where I’m glad that I tried and I was pleased with the results, but if you asked me would I do it again…probably not.