A few weeks ago, I made Mary Berry's walnut cake. This cake was the technical challenge from Series 6, Episode 1 of The Great British Bake Off. The cake itself isn't tricky. It was my first time making caramel, but even that went surprisingly smoothly. The trickiest part was the boiled icing. I wasn't satisfied with my first attempt, so I ended up doing it twice. I also learned a little bit about food storage and sugarwork.
The cake was positively simple. Of course it is important to start off by properly lining one's baking pans. I always line mine with carefully-cut parchment paper and rub the sides with butter.
The batter was fairly straightforward. The wet ingredients and the dry ingredients need to be mixed separately, and then the dry ingredients must be folded into the wet carefully, so as not to lose volume. One of the aspects of the batter with which many of the show's contestants had difficulty was chopping the walnuts to the appropriate size. If the walnuts are too large, they sink to the bottom of each layer. I cheated a little bit; I used my mini food processor on the "chop" setting to get the walnuts just perfect. The pieces weren't too big, but they also hadn't just turned into walnut flour.
The batter came out much thicker than I was expecting, and it formed only a thin layer in each cake pan once it was divided into three. However, it did rise up quite impressively during the baking to form layers of fairly standard thickness.
Likewise, the buttercream was extremely simple to make. You cream together softened butter and icing sugar, and add vanilla extract for flavor and milk for consistency. The amount of buttercream made by the recipe was just barely enough to spread between the cake layers.
Even the caramel went quite smoothly. Since I had never made caramel previously, I wasn't sure what to expect. I made sure to brush down the sides with a wet brush only as needed, and didn't stir the caramel- I only made the occasional shake of the pan. At first, I was a little annoyed at the time things seemed to take at low heat; later I was very grateful. The caramel turns quite quickly. It was only a matter of perhaps a minute or two between the mixture still being white and becoming a perfectly rich tawny color. It probably would have been another 30 seconds before it would be burnt.
Not only did I dip the whole walnuts in the caramel; I also took a leaf out of Ugne's book and did some additional sugarwork. I then learned, to my detriment, that caramel and sugarwork start to liquify and melt when it's humid, especially when the humidity is trapped under a cake dome!
The most difficult part of the bake by far was the boiled icing. The icing uses egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar just like a meringue, but instead of being baked, it is cooked in a double boiler over hot water. The icing requires constant mixing to achieve volume and homogenous mixing. If the mixture is not cooked long enough, the sugar is still granular. If it is cooked too long, it becomes too thick to work with.
I actually timed the mixing the first time that I tried the icing. I even put it on top of the cake, but it was very obviously granular.
I actually scraped off the first attempt at icing and tried it all over again. Although I did watch the clock somewhat, I did not exactly time the second batch... I based my timing more on the consistency. When it was complete, the icing was pillowy-soft and smooth.
I don't quite know how the chemistry of the boiled icing works, but even the second time around, it did not remain as I expected. I got it to the soft, smooth consistency required, and it was great for photos and for the initial tasting, but the longer the cake sat, the more the icing reverted to being granular. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I used granulated sugar instead of caster sugar (which is difficult to find in the United States). Perhaps it is just the normal chemistry of the icing. I don't know. Either way, the cake was not perfect in the long-term.
Furthermore, neither I nor most of the others who tried it were big fans of the cake. Although the flavors were all generally good, the overall product ended up being too sweet. Between the buttercream frosting and the boiled icing, it felt like eating almost pure sugar with a little bit of walnut flavor. I did have a subsequent slice after some time, and I ended up just scraping off the boiled icing to make it less intolerably sweet.
The recipe for Mary Berry's Frosted Walnut Layer Cake can be found here.
My next post will be Mary Berry's Tarte au Citron technical challenge from Series 2, Episode 2.
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