Good afternoon my lovelies and a Happy Tuesday to you all.
Today’s post features the first addition to a new series that I am creating on
my blog that I am calling ‘The Great Blogging Bake Off’. At this point if you
have already guessed what this series will be related to and inspired by then
ten brownie points for you and a whopping great big gold star. A few clues for you: it involves baking once
a week with a different theme each week inspired by two celebrity bakers. Yes
you guessed it – The Great British Bake Off has returned to our screens for
series six which fills me with so much excitement I feel as if I could burst. I
have been waiting for the return of this show since the last series ended for
my baking fix. I have religiously watched every series and it is always on
repeat in our household. It’s the show that everybody and their mother and
their mother’s dog have been talking about and it seems to take over the nation
with a toxic baking wave. Luckily the
baking god’s have honoured us with another series sill featuring Mary, Paul,
Mel and Sue, which is a magical combination.
As I have mentioned on my blog previously I have a very
strong passion for baking of which I bake at least once a week to satisfy my
baking craving. I don’t publish all my
bakes but I don’t want to swamp you all to death with cake. Each week after
each episode I thought I would put my spin on the show by having a go at each
weeks signature challenge and what better way to start off then with week 1 –
cakes. Cakes are my favourite things to bake and this week’s signature
challenge involved baking a madeira cake. Ever since I was little I have loved
eating madeira cake as when I was little as in 3 – 4 I didn’t like icing and I
only really liked plain sponges so madeira cake was perfect to feed me and shut
me up as my Mum raced round doing the Tesco food shop. Having said that I have
never attempted baking one so I was really chuffed with week ones challenge. I
always thought Madeira cakes were supposed to just simply be a plain vanilla
loaf sponge so the fact that these were all different flavours and shapes
boggled me. I’ve always thought that Raspberries and almonds is an amazing
combination and always a personal favourite of mine so I thought why not throw
them in for my spin on the classic madeira cake. I baked this cake with my mum
which was really nice as we never normally get a chance to do baking together
any more but when I was younger we always did cooking and baking together so it
was really nice and just like taking a trip down memory lane.
Ingredients
- 175g butter
- 175g caster sugar
- 2 tsp almond extract
- 3 eggs
- 50g flaked almonds
- 100g plain flour
- 100g self-raising flour
- 2 tbsp milk
- 200g fresh raspberries
Method
1) Grease your loaf tin and line it with grease proof paper. We
cut the paper leaving you with two ‘handles which in theory should help you to
take the cake out of the loaf tin once baked
2) Preheat the oven to 160°C/ 140°Fan/ gas mark 3
3) Cream the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl, you want
to do this until you are left with a light, fluffy and pale mixture
4) Beat in the almond extract which oh my it smells so good,
you need to spend a good five minutes just appreciating the smell
5) Add all but a small handful of the flaked almonds to your
batter and lightly fold these in
6) In a separate bowl, beat your eggs together with a fork
lightly
7) Add half of the beaten eggs to your cake mixture and beat
in, don’t worry if the mixture curdles this will be resolved once you add the
flour
8) Sift in both types of the flour together followed by the
remaining egg mixture and fold all of the mixture together. It may look lumpy
at first but don’t worry if you continue to lightly fold all of the ingredients
together it will resemble cake mixture. To fold you don’t want to violently and
heavily beat the mixture, you lightly fold the ingredients together
incorporating the ingredients around the edge and through the middle which will
combine the mixture whilst leaving air bubbles to help the cake rise and it
will also leave you with a light textured sponge
9) Fold in the milk followed by all of the raspberries minus a
small handful. Again you want to be gentle whilst folding the fruit in so you
don’t crush the raspberries, which would leave you with a pink, speckled like
sponge. The aim is to keep the raspberries whole
10) Pour the mixture into your loaf tin and decorate with the
remaining almonds and raspberries on top
11) Bake in the oven for an hour and a half, this slow bake
ensures the cake is fully cooked without burning
12) Once baked and a skewer once inserted into the middle of the
cake comes out clean, remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the
tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack.
You could serve this cake served with a vanilla cream or
ice-cream and fresh raspberries or just simply on it’s own. I can’t express how
good the almond smell is once you remove the cake from the oven. It’s a really easy recipie and the cake is so
worth the wait so I can strongly suggest that you have a go at this one, it’s a
gooden.
Thank you for reading my blog post my lovelies. Let me know
in the comments if you attempt baking the madeira cake and feel free to send me
some pictures. Also let me know if you join me in my ‘Great Blogging Bake Off’,
I would love to know what you attempt each week for your signature challenge. It
might give me some more inspiration and ideas as there is so much potential out
there for different flavour combinations. I shall see you at some point next
week for week two which is going to be biscuit week. After the next episode
which I hope you all have marked and underlined in your diaries for 8pm
tomorrow night I shall have to put my thinking cap on once we know what this
week’s signature bake will be.
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