When I was younger I used to help my Mum bake cakes. In fact when I was really little I used to pretend to make pies by rolling out scraps of pastry with my mini rolling pin and Mum would let me bake it along with what she was making for our tea. I wish I could say this was the start of a Nigella-esque existence for me, but it wasn’t. OK, so I know that to make your basic sponge you want 4oz of flour, 4oz of sugar, 4oz of marge and 2 eggs. Plus cocoa powder if you’re making chocolate cake. Easy enough to remember. But I can’t say I have ever used that knowledge to bake anything. I made some fairy cakes a while back but that was simply to have fun piping chocolate fudge sauce on the tops (and into my mouth). The husband is a bit of a fitness fanatic and as a consequence we don’t have cake or biscuits in the house very often, so baking would be pointless. Except when you work for a charity and have volunteers to bribe.....
I had arranged an envelope stuffing session to get our charity newsletter sent out at the weekend and decided to bake a cake to keep the troops sustained. I didn’t use the 4,4,4,2 combo but went instead for a carrot cake recipe which didn’t use marge (I know! Crazy....) but used bananas instead. Hmmm..
Well, this is the baked cake pre-icing (please note used cake tin as evidence that this was a home-spun effort!
And this is the iced cake with me adding chopped walnuts...
And is
le gateau avec walnuts. Tres bien non?!
I can’t pretend the cake didn’t suffer from the lack of marge. I think it did. It had a good flavour but was a little on the dry side. Seemed to go down well with the volunteers though which was the main thing. TICK! And a bluey-grey star for me.
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My boyfriend's mum had her gallbladder removed and is not very tolerant of fat, so I have spent the last couple of years perfecting a cake that is very low in fat. I often use carrots (or courgettes, or both - remember to peel the courgette if you don't want green flecks in your cake) and sometimes a tiny bit of rapeseed/sunflower oil (1/4 cup in a large cake) but my secret ingredient(s) are yogurt/sour cream, a good dollop of stewed apple, some skimmed milk and sultanas. This should produce a pleasingly moist cake. A variation on this is a cake that has courgette and grated pears in place of the carrot - this one can be made to look special by placing caramelised pear slices (with their caramel) into the top before it goes in the oven. Ginger goes well in both of these.
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