Hello! Thank you so much for checking out my blog! If you check out my “About Me” page, you’ll find a little more information about me, but my name is Hunter, and I’m embarking on a baking and blogging adventure!
I’ve always enjoyed baking – the smells, the satisfaction when you pull something out of the oven, and, of course, eating your creation! I’ve come a long way from when I was little and my mom wouldn’t let me crack the eggs in fear of me getting shells in the bowl, but I am definitely not a professional baker. I have a few from-scratch recipes, but admittedly, boxed mixes are typically my go-to. So, I decided to challenge myself!
My boyfriend bought me my very own copy of Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, and I was SO excited. If you haven’t watched The Great British Baking Show (GBBS) yet, you’re seriously missing out! Mary Berry is a queen when it comes to baking, and I remembered some of the recipes in her book as challenges on the show. I held on to the book for a little over a year, and hadn’t gotten around to making anything, but I decided that 2021 was going to be the year of baking! Here’s how this blog is going to work:
I have looked through the book and found 50 recipes that I want to try baking. Each week, I’ll be baking one recipe, and blogging about my experience while making it. There are 19 chapters in the book, and I have at least one recipe per chapter on my list. I haven’t made any of these recipes before, so I’m not cheating! Due to plagiarism worries, I won’t be posting the actual recipe, but if you’re interested in trying a particular bake, message me and I’ll be happy to send it along. I will be posting on either Wednesdays or Thursdays. If you’d like, you can follow our Instagram (@didibakethat.blog) for updates when I post.
So, now that we have the logistics out of the way, let’s talk about this week’s bake – the Madeira cake!
This cake was a great way to start off this year of baking! I had only ever heard of it from GBBS, so I was very excited to try it! The basic Madeira has lemon zest and ground almonds included with typical cake ingredients. Essentially, this recipe for a Madeira cake calls for you to just dump all your ingredients in your bowl, mix, and bake. I quickly realized I had to remember that her oven temperatures are listed in Celsius, and her ingredients are listed as weights, not Fahrenheit or cups/teaspoons/etc. like I’m used to. Thanks to Google conversions and food scales, this wasn’t an issue. If you know me, you know that I really like sticking to exact measurements in recipes, so using a scale was a fun change for me! If you’re interested in knowing, 180 degrees Celsius is approximately 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and 6oz of butter is approximately a stick and a half, ha-ha!
After mixing the ingredients, I noticed it was a reeeally thick batter – much thicker than any cake batter I’d made before. The description did say that it was a “densely textured sponge cake,” so I figured it was fine that I had to plop the mixture into the pan instead of pouring it. Once in the pan, it baked for 30 minutes, then called for a slice of citron peel to be placed on top of the cake before baking an additional 30 minutes. I had never heard of a citron peel, so I looked to my friend Google once again. Apparently, citrons are fruits similar to lemons, so instead of buying one off of Amazon, I bought a lemon and cut part of the peel off, like so:
Once I put the citron peel on and put the cake back in for another 30 minutes, I didn’t check on it again until there were 5 minutes left on the timer. I might’ve made a mistake with that decision, however, because when I looked into the oven, the cake had a huge dip in the middle where the lemon peel was sitting. I quickly took the lemon peel off in hopes that I could somehow lessen the dip by removing the weight of the peel. To my dismay, it didn’t really help much. The book does have a note saying that if your cake has a dip in the middle after baking, turn it upside down on a baking parchment-lined cooling rack so gravity can assist with leveling off the cake as it cools, so I tried that.
I think my mistake with the lemon peel made the dip in the cake a little too large for even gravity to help, but the cake looked wonderful all the same!
Cutting into the cake, it was definitely a little dry and crumbly, so I’ll cut the baking time a little shorter next time and see if that results in a moister cake. The taste, however, was fantastic! I am definitely more of a chocolate-lover when it comes to desserts and not necessarily citrusy flavors, but this was very light and refreshing! The main flavors were lemon and almond, and they were present enough that you could taste them, but not too powerful as to overpower everything. I would 100% make this cake again, but maybe sans-lemon peel. I don’t know if the peel did anything for flavor, so I would just leave it off completely.
I would give this recipe a 4/5 for simplicity and overall taste!
A few things to note before I sign off for this week:
1. Everyone’s oven is different, so if you do make your own Madeira cake, your experiences might not be the same as mine.
2. I am currently living at an elevation of almost 6,700 feet above sea level, which does occasionally mess with baking times and temperatures.
3. This is my first blog ever, so picture quality and content will improve as I go along, and I thank you for being patient as I learn.
That’s it for week one, the Madeira cake! Thank you so much for reading and following along on my baking adventure! If you have any questions, please 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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