Thursday 6 August 2015

GBBO 2015: Week 1 Cakes - Madeira Cake

I was pretty happy when I read that the first week of GBBO included a Madeira cake as it is relatively simple to make - something which always gives me hope.

As I have never made a Madeira cake before, I decided to keep it plain and simple rather than trying to make it fancy and fail.


Ingredients:
200g Self-raising flour
175g butter
175g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
50g ground almonds
1tsp vanilla extract
grated zest of 1 lemon


First, prepare the scene! Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius, then grease and line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper. My papering skills aren't great so that's why mine looks a bit messy. I use the shove and hope method as I don't have the time or patience to be measuring and drawing on the paper.

Now to actually make the cake mix. Whisk together the butter and sugar.

Then add the eggs to the mixture one at a time. I'm not sure why it's done one at a time, I don't know what difference it makes. If someone does know, please feel free to leave a comment below explaining it to me!

Add the vanilla essence - I actually couldn't remember how much the recipe said to use so I dropped in a large teaspoon worth of it. Also grate the lemon so you only have the zest and then add that to the mixture. The lemon I used was on the large side and I think that was too much zest, so maybe next time I will use a smaller lemon.

Last but not least, add the flour and ground almonds to the mixture and whisk away!


Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and pop it in the oven for about 55-60 minutes.


Once the cake had cooled I dusted the top with some icing sugar as I think that always makes a cake look fancy.
I was actually really surprised and impressed with how the cake turned out. It has a good crack in the top which after watching GBBO, I have learned is a good thing, and it also tasted pretty good as my family enjoyed it and didn't complain.



4 comments:

  1. You definitely aced the "crack" test! xx

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  2. Sometimes simple is best, check out the crack on that! ;) You should get yourself on Bloglovin' so people can follow your bakes more easily! It's really simply to set up! Hope you enjoy blogging, there's a great community of likeminded people, I've only recently started myself! Alice xx

    www.woodenwindowsills.co.uk

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  3. haha I am totally with you on keeping things simple! and simple is always delicious :) looks gorgeous!

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