Dundee Cake – Alcohol Free Fruitcake

I wanted this to be the first recipe of my blog.  Back when I was thinking of starting one, I had numerous ideas about which cake recipe I was going to make for my first post.  Extravagant layer cakes were the first option as they had the showstopper appeal.  Then I thought about this Dundee cake as it would be a homage to my city.  I also like fruitcake more than most people.  In the end I decided on my Date, Orange and Pumpkin cake as my first post because those were the ingredients I had at the time and that pretty much describes how I bake most of the time – with what I have to hand, with what is seasonal and with what is easy to acquire for me.  It was also an own recipe and felt it would show how I liked to work with ingredients.

I didn’t forget about the Dundee Cake though and when one of my sister-in-laws requested fruitcake once more (her favourite type of cake) I felt it was the perfect time to make this.

This is the River Cottage recipe I found online and one I felt most comfortable with.  I did of course modify it somewhat – I didn’t have any ground almonds so substituted 100g of spelt flour for 125g ground almonds.  I also omitted the rum and used orange juice.

A Dundee Cake is basically a Christmas style fruitcake with the emphasis on oranges and almonds.  It is also traditionally decorated with blanched almonds on top of the cake and utilises marmalade in the cake batter.  It turns out be much lighter than traditional fruitcakes with a more crumbly texture.  It shouldn’t really contain glace cherries although I have seen some versions containing it online.

For my interpretation of the cake I wanted to really highlight the orange flavour and the almonds.  For your 500g of dried fruit you technically add what you like; sultanas, raisins, dried apricots, even prunes and dates.  But I stuck to golden sultanas and flaked almonds and made up my 500g with these ingredients only.   

For fruitcake I always soak the dried fruit in orange juice and just love the way they plump up over night.  Having absorbed all the liquid they’re like little squishy bursts of orange sweetness when you bite into them.  As well as the juice I added the zest to the batter as well which I felt made a difference.

Although the recipe specified to soak the dried fruit in 75mls of rum, I increased the amount of orange juice to about 100ml (which was how much came out of one orange – it was a particularly large orange).  All of this got absorbed overnight by the dried fruit so just before adding the fruit to the cake batter I added the juice of another orange (about 70-80ml).  Due to the large amount of flour in this recipe I took the chance that the extra liquid will be ok and it was.  You get a nice hit of orange with this cake.

This cake is a lovely light orange flavoured fruitcake that has a beautiful sturdy but soft texture and a surprisingly moreish flavour.

Dundee Cake adapted from Cakes (River Cottage Handbook)

·         500g golden sultanas and flaked almonds

·         170ml orange juice to soak the dried fruit in

·         zest of 2 oranges

·         250g unsalted butter, softened

·         250g light soft brown sugar

·         5 eggs

·         275g plain flour

·         100g spelt flour

·         1 ½ tsp baking powder

·         Pinch of sea salt

·         2 tbsp orange marmalade

·         75g whole blanched almonds

Soak the sultanas in 100ml of orange juice overnight so that all the liquid is absorbed.  When you come to make the cake, add in about 70ml more orange juice.

Preheat oven to 175C gas3, prepare a 9” round cake tin.  Combine the flours, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and the sugar until light and creamy.  Add the eggs, adding 1 tbsp of the flour mix with each to prevent it from curdling.  Beat the egg thoroughly before adding the next one.

Fold in the flour mixture until fully incorporated.  Mix the marmalade into the dried fruit and fold this in along with the flaked almonds. 

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, spreading it out evenly with the back of the spoon.  Decorate the top with the blanched almonds placed in concentric circles (I find it easier to start from the middle and work my way out).

Bake in the oven for about 1 ½ hours until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean (my cake took 1 hour 40 minutes in total).  Check after 1 hour and, if the surface is getting too brown, lay a foil cap over the top.  Leave to cool in the tin before removing.

Orange, Apricot and Marzipan Cake

I wanted to make this cake with clementines.  But the mountain load we had of them surprisingly got finished.  I have a hungry family. 

This recipe is a good way of using up any marzipan you might have left over from Christmas.  And initially that is why I chose this recipe from Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell.  This book is one of my most used and most loved books, yet I had never tried this recipe.  

In the words of my brother, ‘This cake was bloody awesome!’  I don’t think I’ve ever heard my brother describe a cake in such a manner.  He’s not too into them.  Well, he is sometimes; it’s just that he’s a fussy eater.  Curiously, my little sister who is also a keen baker but is extremely hard to please when it comes to cakes also liked it and praised it highly.  Even more curiously, my other sister who is easy to please and usually loves everything I bake without prejudice thought it was a bit ‘blah’, a good cake but nothing exceptional. 

You know it’s because of the fact I have such varied input and feedback that I just no longer care really about what I bake.  I bake whatever recipe catches my eye or what I want to dream up because with a family as large as mine you are always going to please some and not really affect the others either way.  I don’t think I’ve ever disappointed though, which is a good thing.  At least I’ve never been told to my face anyway.  Saying that, I do love praise for my baked goods.  I’m not ashamed to admit it – it’s one of the highlights of baking.

Now back to the cake.  This was a layered recipe with shortbread at the bottom, topped with marzipan which was spread with marmalade which in turn was topped with a sponge cake.  It was a great opportunity to use up more of the home-made marmalade I made almost a year ago - it was my first time and I think I made a wee bit too much since it's still not finished. 

 This was inspired from what is called the ‘Orange and Marzipan Cake’ recipe in Gorgeous Cakes but curiously has no orange (zest or juice) in the actual recipe.  The only orange hit you are getting is from the marmalade. 

Well I wanted to change that, if I’m going to call a cake an orange cake it needs to have orange (either zest or juice) in it to warrant the name.  So I added orange juice in place of the rum and grated some zest to impart some real orange flavour into it.  I also swapped the raisins and sultanas for dried apricots just to stick with the colour theme.

I used golden marzipan instead of normal marzipan (again the colour theme) and 250g instead of the 200g specified in the recipe.  I did this because firstly I wanted a thicker layer of marzipan than what I could see in the book, and secondly because I changed the cake tin from an 8” round to a 9” round.  I’m glad I did this because I suspected that this might be a large quantity of batter and I was right, it was.  I was very happy with the height the 9” tin gave to the cake.  If it had been even higher than this then it would have taken even longer to bake than it did (my cake took 1 hour 10 minutes to bake).  

I also completely changed the shortbread that came with the recipe.  This was because I didn’t have enough butter for the shortbread and the cake so had to substitute Stork baking spread and shortening.  Because the Stork makes baked things soft I wanted to add a little shortening in order to give the biscuit that crispness and structure that butter imparts.  I also increased the flour amount and decreased the ground almonds.  It worked very nicely and I want to make this again as a separate bake.

I have large hands for a female.  I’m quite self-conscious about them as they’re not really the most feminine part of my body.  I once had one of those Bupa health checks they give you in gyms and after testing my hand strength my personal trainer noted with some admiration that my hands were as strong as some men’s.  He meant it as a complement but I was cringing inside.  I like dainty things but dainty I ain’t.  It was a little consoling that he did say that my job/hobby at the time (I was doing Swedish massage on clients) would make the muscles in my hands very strong.

One good thing my ‘man-hands’ come in handy for is measuring.  The span of my hand from my pinky to my thumb when I stretch it as far as possible is 9” exact.  So while rolling out the marzipan it was pretty easy to keep track of how much more I had to roll.  I liked working with marzipan, it wasn’t as hard as I imagined.  Even the taste was better than what I remembered – I have bad memories of marzipan confectionary I ate as a child.  But this was nice – better than sugared almonds which I’m not too keen on.

I’m sorry, I feel like I’m rambling a bit too much here – I’ll try to keep with the cake.  Ok, this also had apricots in it and I used that trick where you coat them well in flour so that they don’t sink to the bottom during the bake but it didn’t work.  They all sank down and nestled just above the marmalade and marzipan, making a neat layer.  I’m not really sure why this didn’t work – maybe the weight of them?  Although I did dice them pretty small.  The marzipan and marmalade was truly transformed in the heat of the oven, becoming this gooey chewy layer of sweet almondy orange yumminess.  The shortbread at the bottom gave the perfect contrast to this softness with its crisp biscuit texture.  The cake was soft and flavourful but not too light or airy and with a lovely orange flavour that wasn’t too overboard.  All in all, a very nice cake.

Orange, Apricot and Marzipan Cake

For the shortbread:

·         60g Stork baking spread

·         30g shortening (Trex)

·         40g caster sugar

·         120g plain flour

·         30g ground almonds

For the cake:

·         225g unsalted butter, softened

·         225g caster sugar

·         2 oranges, zest only

·         4 eggs

·         1 egg yolk

·         90ml orange juice

·         150g dried apricots, chopped

·         225g plain flour

·         1 ½ tsp baking powder

·         250g golden marzipan

·         75g marmalade (I used about 4tbsp)

Make the shortbread by combining all the ingredients together in a food processor and reducing to a crumble.  Or do what I did and just mix by hand until you have a dough you can handle.  Press it into the base of a prepared 9” round springform cake tin.  Lay a piece of cling film over it and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Roll out the marzipan into a 9” circle to line the cake tin.  There’s no real technique that I can tell you – just do the best you can.  Cut the end result if you need to.  Once you’ve got your circle, place on top of the shortbread layer (remove the clingfilm first).  Spread the marmalade on top of the marzipan layer.

Preheat oven to 180C.  Cream the butter, orange zest and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs and yolk one at a time.  Add the orange juice and mix in. 

Combine the flour and baking powder together and use about a tablespoon from this to coat the chopped apricots – this is to prevent them from sinking to the bottom but mines still did (to good effect).  Fold the flour into the butter mixture and then the dried apricots.

Spread the cake batter on top of the marmalade layer and even out the top.  Bake for 1 hour, adding a foil cap after about 40 minutes if the top is browning too much.  Mines took over an hour so keep an eye on it – if it passes the skewer test it’s done.  Leave to cool in the tin before carefully removing the cake.

The Blue Lady Cake

Hope everyone had an amazing time over Christmas!

I thought about making this cake for a long time before finally getting around to it.  When I saw these blue chrysanthemums in my parents’ dining room I knew the time had come.

I am absolutely mad about tea.  I love all kinds; black, green, white, oolong, Rooibois, tisanes, herbal.  Two of my favourite everyday type teas is Earl Grey and Lady Grey which are both black teas infused with citrus (the latter is slightly softer with less sharpness from the citrus).  I used to always use the Twinnings brand until I discovered my local tea shop’s version.  Their take on the Earl Grey is called the Blue Lady and is a black tea infused with orange, lemon and grapefruit with a smattering of blue cornflowers.

It really is quite lovely and ever since tasting (and seeing) it, I’ve wanted to base a cake on it.  I wasn’t sure exactly how it would come together but I knew that I wanted it to have those bright cornflower blue petals on it.  The picture below isn’t doing those blue petals justice – they really are a vibrant blue but I couldn’t find any locally and thought that visually, the chrysanthemums would work well too. 

When I saw those flowers in my parents’ house an idea of sorts formed and I knew that I was going to make a soft sponge infused with a sugar syrup made from the Blue Lady tea and the citruses used in it.  First thing was to crystallise those blue chrysanthemum petals which took almost two days to dry!

I then grated the zest of one orange, one lemon and one grapefruit and incorporated that into the sponge cake.  

I made the syrup using the juice from the citruses, the Blue Lady tea and about 50g of sugar and used it to soak the sponges when I started layering them on top of each other (if you soak them too early then they might become a little difficult to handle when stacking them).  The syrup was a gorgeous deep burnt orange colour which imparted some of that beautiful colour to the soaked sponge.

I made two 8” round cakes which I then sliced in half to make four layers.  This sponge recipe does dome quite a bit so you will have to slice the dome off to flatten them.  It’s adapted from the American Test Kitchen Fluffy Yellow Cake recipe which is fast becoming my standby sponge recipe.

I used Swiss Meringue Buttercream flavoured with a little of the citrus syrup and honey (my choice of sweetener with Earl Grey tea!).  We’re not overly keen on icing of any kind so used as little as possible which is why the whole cake is not covered – you might want to double the SMB icing recipe if you want to cover the whole cake and have some for decorating.  

The top was decorated with the blue crystallised petals and some icing sugar coloured with blue powdered colouring and sifted through a stencil.  Unfortunately I only had a light blue colour which didn’t make the same impact as a darker blue colour would have.  All in all it was a lovely soft citrus flavoured sponge iced with silky buttercream flavoured with honey.  The decorating could definitely have been neater but I got a late dinner invite to my sister’s so things became rushed towards the end.  Decorating is something that I need to work on though!

 

The Blue Lady Cake

·         350g plain flour

·         20g cornflour

·         1 ½ tsp baking powder

·         ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

·         Pinch of salt

·         300g caster sugar

·         200g sunflower oil

·         250ml milk

·         Zest of 1 lemon, 1 orange and 1 grapefruit

·         7 small egg yolks

·         3 small egg whites

·         50g caster sugar (for egg whites)

Preheat oven to 180C, prepare two 8” round cake tins.

Sift flour, cornflour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and 300g sugar together.

Whisk together the oil, milk, citrus zest and yolks.

With an electric beater, whisk egg whites until foamy (About 30 seconds) then add the 50g sugar and whisk until stiff peaks form.

Gradually pour oil/milk mixture into flour mixture and whisk until fully incorporated.

Add ⅓ of the egg whites into the batter to loosen, then fold in the rest of the whites gently, keeping as much air in as possible.

Pour batter into cake tins and bake for about 30-40 minutes checking to see if done (use the skewer test).  If the top begins to brown too quickly then use a foil cap placed over the top.  Leave the cakes to cool, then refrigerate to make them cold and more manageable when cutting.  Make the syrup.

When the cakes are sufficiently cool, slice off the dome on top to make the cakes as flat as possible, then slice each layer into half to make four layers in total.

Blue Lady Sugar Syrup

·         Juice of 1 lemon, 1 orange and 1 grapefruit (about 200ml approx)

·         1 tbsp Blue Lady loose tea

·         100g granulated sugar

Put all ingredients on a medium flame and heat until sugar has dissolved.  Lower the heat and let simmer for around five minutes to make a syrup that’s not too thick.  Sieve the loose tea away and retain the syrup for dousing the cake.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

·         3 egg whites

·         150g granulated sugar

·         250g butter, cut into small cubes and softened

·         2 tbsp honey

·         1 tbsp BL sugar syrup

Heat the whites and sugar on a bain marie until the sugar has dissolved.  I don’t use a thermometer for this, just clean fingers to feel that there are no more sugar granules present.  The minute you feel there are no more sugar granules take off the heat.

Whisk the whites and dissolved sugar until a soft meringue forms (around 5 minutes with an electric whisk).  The bowl should have cooled down but if it hasn’t then wait a while until the bottom of the bowl feels more neutral than warm before adding the butter.

Add the butter cubes in one or two chunks at a time, whisking to fully incorporate before adding the next chunk.  You might not need all the butter but you will need most of it (sometimes I use it all and sometimes I have 3-4 small cubes left over).  Once the buttercream icing has become silky you can add the honey and syrup and whisk in well.

Assembly

Take the cake layers, I try to use the one that looks the thickest as the bottom layer, and spoon over the sugar syrup.   

Spread over the SMB icing with a spatula in a fairly thin layer (or thicker if you really like icing) and top with the next cake layer.   

Repeat the whole process with all the layers.  

 I got a piping bag and piped around the cake where the layers met to just make things slightly nicer on the sides.   

If you want to fully coat the cake in icing then double the icing quantity in order to do so.   

I decorated the top with icing sugar mixed with royal blue powdered food colouring and sifted over a stencil.  I also added the crystallised blue petals over the top.  Dried blue cornflowers would be ideal too if you have any.