Saturday, December 3, 2011

Baking for Nightshift- Chocolate and Poppyseed cake




I know it's been ages since I last posted but things around here have been very, very busy. All of a sudden the end of the year creeps up on you and all of a sudden it's only a few weeks until Xmas! As well as that there is Harry's birthday the week beforehand and the end of school for the year. All that, combined with working, makes for a very full-on time. 


Despite all the frantic busyness of this time of year, I still make time to bake for work. I made this cake for night shift last week. The recipe came from Julie Le Clerc's new cookbook called 'Favourite Cakes'. This is a stunning book and I want to make pretty much everything in it, especially the large Lamington cake! This was an easy recipe but I don't think it is one I will want to make again. In the recipe she says it takes 80 mins to bake in a 180C oven. Well luckily for me I thought that seemed like a bit too long so made sure to test it after 60 minutes. I think even then it was a little overcooked. While the flavour was nice I just couldn't get my head around the poppy seeds. I love lemon and poppy seed cake so it isn't the flavour. I think it's the mind thing that goes with being able to see something clearly and then appreciating it. This cake is so dark you couldn't see the poppy seeds at all which meant that while you were eating it you got a weird crunch in your mouth. I don't think they added to the flavour of the cake at all so if I were to make it again I would take the poppy seeds out. The syrup is a chocolate and coffee one and gives the cake a nice shine. Although a lot of the syrup was lost as it was poured over the cake I thought it was a bit of a waste of perfectly lovely chocolate. Maybe cocoa would be better...


Anyway I'm not going to put the recipe on here as I don't recommend making it. However it does look pretty still...

No comments:

Post a Comment