Friday 7 June 2013

Tipsy Cake Club

This months Clandestine Cake Club meet had the theme "tipsy cakes" & was held at the lovely Pensieri coffee shop, in town. Despite being 7 months pregnant & strictly avoiding alcohol & attempting to be relatively healthy, I figured most of the alcohol would be "cooked out" of the cakes, and it would be okay to indulge my cake passion by bringing a cake along & trying just a few of the club members offerings. 

I decided to make a limoncello cake (based on what little alcohol I could find in our rather ostentatious & extremely camp globe drinks cabinet!) ... I found a recipe online which tickled my fancy because it involved a new method of cake baking replacing the normal butter in the sponge mix with natural yoghurt & rapeseed oil. 

Ingredients

Sponge cake:

250g natural yoghurt
  • 2 eggs
  • 75ml rapeseed oil
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons lemon zest
  • 200g sugar
  • 60ml limoncello liqueur
  • 250g plain flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 pinch salt

Icing Glaze: 
  • 100g icing sugar
  • 3 tablespoons limoncello liqueur

Buttercream topping to decorate:

115g soft butter
500g icing sugar
Juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons limoncello liqueur 
Yellow gel colouring 

Method

Prep:15min  ›  Cook:35min  ›  Ready in:50min 

  1. Preheat oven to 180 C / Gas 4. Grease an 8-inch cake tin or line with baking parchment.
  2. Whisk together the yoghurt, eggs, rapeseed oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar and 60ml limoncello in a large bowl. In a separate large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt. Gently stir the dry ingredients into the wet. Do not over mix or the cake will be tough. Pour cake mixture into prepared tin.
  3. Bake in the preheated oven until top is golden and a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly.
  4. Stir the icing sugar and 3 tablespoons of limoncello together in a small bowl until smooth. Poke small holes all over the top of the still-warm cake with a fork or skewer. Spoon the glaze over the cake and spread with the back of a spoon. The glaze will seep into the cake and add moisture.
  5. Using electric mixer whisk butter and icing sugar together to form a light fluffy buttercream, add lemon juice, limoncello and colouring to taste. 
  6. Spoon buttercream mixture into a piping bag with a large star nozzle and decorate your baked and glazed cake with buttercream rosettes. 

I used a bundt tin as I think it really made the cake stand out and look attractive. Any fun cake tin shapes would work, as would a standard loaf or round tin, if that's all you have to hand. 

So... here's my finished tipsy cake...


Limoncello Cake by Lucy

And here are the other marvellous cakes from fellow cake club bakers...

Pina Colada Cake

Lemon & Amaretto cake

Lemon Meringue cake with Limoncello

Rum & Raisin Chocolate Cake

Baileys Choc Mousse Cake

Coffee sponge with Tia Maria & Mascarpone icing

Stout and Chocolate Cake

Dark Chocolate & Amaretto Cake

Very Boozy Fruit Cake (port, rum & brandy!)

The very impressive cake table - what a selection!

I managed to try small tastes of 5 of the cakes - the pina colada cake, the rum & raisin cake, the lemon meringue cake, my limoncello cake and the boozy fruit cake - a pretty impressive effort on my part I think ;-)

I definitely go a bit Mary Berry/Paul Hollywood-esque when working my way down the tasting table. I feel like I need to write notes on the consistency of each 
bad, whether it has a good crumb, and ample sponge to icing ratio - hehe! 
My favourite cake this month was a toss up between two cakes: the boozy fruit cake, which was full of flavour, moist but crumbly and just delicious, and the dense truffle-like rum and raisin cake, which tasted insane but was so rich! My husbands favourite was my cake (apparently!) although I'm not sure if he's just saying that to remain firmly in my good books?! He also really enjoyed the stout and chocolate cake, which I unfortunately didn't have room left to try. 

I was really pleased with the outcome of the new recipe I tried. The cake had a lovely dense, moist texture (from the oil/yoghurt combo I'm sure!),  was really sharp with the limoncello but had a real hit of sweetness from the glaze and buttercream. All in all a good bake me thinks, and one I'd happily repeat again. 

If you had to choose one of the cakes to try, which one would you have tasted?

What is your favourite tipple when it comes to baking?

Mrs B 

xxx