52 Cookbook Challenge, Week 2: Rachel Allen - Bake

So, week 2 saw me baking.  Hubby's team at work were all putting in massively long hours dealing with year end and were in need of a little motivation.  This is usually furnished in the form of cake, and this week was no exception.  Hubby selected two tempting treats from Rachel Allen's Bake: Finnish cake with crystallised ginger and Dutch Apple Cake.




I spent a very pleasant evening cooking up both recipes after I had put Baby Bird to bed (always much easier to concentrate).  The Finnish cake was very easy to make - it is basically a sponge cake recipe with a few small adjustments and lots of chopped crystallised ginger.  Unfortunately, I slightly overcooked it so the top was a little scorched and had split in a couple of places.

Still, it went down ok with a cup of coffee the next morning.  I wouldn't say this was a favourite - I personally don't like crystallised ginger (it reminds me of soap for some reason) and it wasn't as popular with Hubby's work colleagues as some of my other offerings have been.  However, the cake was light but with good texture and I liked the spiciness (cinnamon and mixed spice feature prominently in the mix as well as ginger).  I'm thinking I will try this again but with cherries instead of the ginger pieces.

On to the Dutch Apple Cake.  This was a bit fiddly to make and involved eons of hand whisking.  I'm very glad I have an electric hand-whisk as otherwise I think my arm would have fallen off.  I'm not convinced I quite got the mixture right.  I'm not sure if I underwhisked or if I didn't understand the comment about whisking until the beaters traced a figure of eight properly (should the figure of eight remain visible?).  Either way, I found it a little fiddly to make the batter.  I'm more from the school of lump it in a bowl and mix it up and this called for a little more finesse.  I'm not entirely convinced it needed to be as complicated as it is though, and that is probably a comment I would level at many of Rachel Allen's recipes.  (Her buttercream recipe, for example, is significantly more complicated and involved than any other recipe I have ever seen, and I'm not at all convinced the added complications result in a better flavour than my granny's tried and tested "mix butter and icing sugar until blended, add flavour and/or colour, ice cake" approach.)   Still, I persevered and followed the recipe as carefully as I could.  Here is my cake before baking.

The recipe informed me that the apples would sink but not to worry, they were supposed to.  I was therefore more than a little concerned to remove this from the oven.

Hmm... I tweeted Rachel herself seeking guidance.  (Yes, I'm that sad!)  Where had I gone wrong?  The response?  "Don't worry, sometimes mine don't sink either".  Well, it was comforting to know the cake wasn't likely to kill anyone, but did leave me rather questioning the consistency of both recipe and cook...  The book is beautiful to look at and has some very tempting recipes, but I think I may be a little more willing to go off-piste and to simplify them in future.    I very much want to try the red velvet cake though - that looks divine - but I shall have to leave that to another week.