Hi everybody, and welcome back for Week 4!
This week, I made the intriguing maple syrup cake! This is described as being “Canadian-inspired,” and has pecans, orange zest, and, you guessed it, maple syrup as the main flavor profiles.
To start, this recipe uses light muscovado sugar as its only sugar choice. I had never heard of muscovado sugar, let alone light muscovado sugar, so I went ahead and ordered some on Amazon. It came in a bundle with dark muscovado sugar and demerara sugar, which we’ll revisit in later recipes. Now this bundle only came with one pound of each sugar, and this week’s recipe already used up a half of that, so I scoured the internet for substitutions that were more readily available and cost effective. Lo and behold, you can replace light brown sugar for the light muscovado sugar! The only difference is that there’s slightly less molasses in the brown sugar than in the muscovado sugar.
Now of course this recipe calls for maple syrup, and I definitely prefer the “fake” maple syrup instead of the “real” maple syrup (aka the sugary kind), so that’s what I used. I had the Aunt Jemima brand on hand, original. I believe the only difference in taste would be a little more sweetness when using a brand like Aunt Jemima, but if you prefer the “real” maple syrup, I’m sure it’ll turn out just as good!
If you’ve been reading since the beginning, you know that I’ve had a lot of issues with my cakes sinking (besides Week 3). I did some research this past week, and found great information. Essentially, at high altitudes, the leavening agents in baking (baking soda, powder, etc.), expand too fast, pushing out all the air pockets in the dough/batter. Then, because there’s nowhere else for the air to go, the cake sinks back in on itself. There are a lot of things to adjust, including lessening the leavening agents, increasing the oven temperature, decreasing the baking time, etc. You can read more about the options here. I decided to try decreasing the leavening agent in this recipe, so instead of using two tablespoons of baking powder as the recipe called for, I only used one tablespoon.
This recipe was essentially a dump cake, like the cake in Week 1, where you just mix all the ingredients in at once. These are my favorite types of recipe, because then you can’t get the order wrong when adding ingredients! The batter turned out to be really thick and sticky, which I guess should be expected when using maple syrup! Even though I set my butter out to soften way before baking, I still had a few butter chunks in the batter. I’m starting to think the butter has a personal vendetta against me, but we’ll keep trying!
The batter was pretty darn tasty, with the maple and orange flavors being the most prominent. The recipe called for the grated rind of one whole orange, but I ended up grating only half the rind to insure I didn’t overdo the orange flavor. It turned out to be just the right amount!
The baking time was listed as 1—1 ½ hours, so I decided to try 1 hour first. I looked at the cake after 30 minutes, and it seemed to have risen well, but I didn’t get my hopes too high just in case the second 30 minutes bit me in the butt. Remember, if you want to check on your cake partially through the baking time, try to just use the oven light instead of opening the door – this could let out crucial amounts of heat or steam and cause your bake to collapse!
After checking it the first time, I decided to not jinx myself and not check it again until the timer went off. To my dismay, the cake had sunk again, but not nearly as much as the chocolate Victoria sandwich in Week 2. So, I think I’m going to decrease the leavening agent again for the next recipe, but leave the cake in for a shorter amount of time. The cakes are always done when I check them at the time the recipe calls for, but one of the adjustments you can make at higher altitudes is decreasing the baking time, so we’ll see!
For the filling/icing, the recipe calls for double cream. I again, had no idea what this was, so after a quick google search, I found out that double cream is just heavy cream with a higher butterfat content. If you want to know more about the different types of cream, you can check out the website here. Most websites I found said it’s okay to substitute heavy cream for double cream, so that’s what I did!
When I tasted the filling/icing, I wasn’t sure if it had enough maple syrup flavor, but when I tasted it with the cake, it balanced it out very nicely. The cake itself was nice and moist, and was very sweet. The more mild-flavored filling/icing cut through the sweetness so it wasn’t overwhelming.
Overall, I’d give this recipe a 5/5! This was a wonderfully delicious cake, super easy to make, and it’s definitely on my “make again later” list!
That’s it for Week 4, the maple syrup cake! Thank you for following along with me, and, again, if you have any questions, feel free to use the “Get in Touch” feature on my “About Me” page and subscribe to get updates on posts!
See you next week!
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