Sunday 4 March 2012

'Bounty' Cake and points of interest from my experience of baking it

I like trying out new recipes (when I have the time and inclination) and this one came courtesy of a blog which I follow.   http://thequincetree65.blogspot.com/  Sue, the blogger, is a very imaginative cook and often puts recipes up.  This time, it was just too tempting!
Here's the recipe:
Cream together until light and fluffy
9 oz (250g) soft butter
9 oz (250g) caster sugar
Beat together in another bowl
4 eggs
Add the eggs a little at a time to the butter mixture, beating well with each addition.
Fold in
4 oz (110g) desiccated coconut
4.5 oz (125g) self-raising flour
Finally fold in
4.5 oz (125g) plain chocolate chopped into pea-sized chunks
1 tbsp milk

Scrape the mixture into a greased and base-lined 8 inch (20cm) loose-bottomed tin.  Bake at 185 degrees centigrade /165 degrees centigrade fan oven for 45-50 mins.  A skewer should emerge from the centre of the cake clean when it is done.

Having baked the cake this morning, there are a couple of amendments/points of interest that I would like to make - purely from personal preference/experience. 
I used a mixture of butter and margarine.
I used granulated sugar (I don't tend to have caster sugar in the house as a rule)
I used a mixture of plain and milk chocolate.  However, I used 70 per cent plain chocolate, which gave quite a bitter taste.  When I make the cake again,  I shall use all milk chocolate, as both Chris and I have a sweet tooth.
The mixture is very sloppy.
The chocolate pieces all went to the bottom of the cake, but I noticed that this also happened with Sue's cake too.
The cake took much longer to cook in an ordinary gas oven - at least an hour at Gas 4.  I kept checking it and did do the skewer test which worked.
Don't neglect the loose bottomed tin or a base lining for the tin.  I thought that just my usual margarine and flour would be fine, but it wasn't.  The cake is extremely moist and sticky!  Trying to get the cake out of a non loose bottomed tin was quite an interesting experience...
 So, how did it taste?  Apart from the bitterness of the dark chocolate (which detracted from the flavour for Chris and me), the cake is moist and sticky with a good coconut taste.  It would make a nice pudding too.
I'll definitely have another go, this time with the correct lining of the tin, and milk chocolate pieces, and then it will be totally delicious!

3 comments:

  1. It sounds very yummie! It's always a good idea to use a loose-bottomed cake tin, it just makes everything so much easier.
    we've (husband and I) testing and tasting :) a tarte tatin recipe this weekend. We tried using two different sort of apples to see which worked best. Taste-wise both attempts were delicious but we want to figure out how to avoid the pastry from getting soggy from all the juices... so, I see more tarte-tatins in my future!

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  2. Dear Aledys
    Thank you for your comment. I should know that baking is a science as well as an art and that sometimes it really doesn't pay to try and 'make do'. I think a loose-bottomjed cake tin is next on the shopping list! Good luck with your tarte-tatins which sound delicious, soggy pastry and all!
    Best wishes
    Ellie

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  3. Sorry, that should be loose-bottomed cake tin!

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