Vintage Cakes: Review and Giveaway

Polenta Cake on my Great Grandmother's vintage china

Vintage Cakes 

Tremendously good cakes for sharing and giving

It doesn’t take much to encourage me to make cakes.  Currently, the market is flooded with baking books, some written by professional bakers and others by well known ‘professional’ home bakers like Mary Berry.  And then there is a whole shelf of baking books written by Great British Bake Off finalists like Jo Wheatley, Edd Kimber and Ruth Clemens.  I already have a lot of baking books but I wasn't going pass on the chance to review another book about cakes.

Jane Brocket, the author of Vintage Cakes, is also the successful author of 'The Gentle Art of Domesticity' and 'Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer'.  Both books include recipes for favourite family treats and old fashioned cakes. 

Starting out

The book starts with some 'essential' chapters. Essential ingredients; this provides a comprehensive guide to the most common ingredients used in baking.  This is followed by an equally comprehensive chapter about Essential equipment.  This isn’t a huge list of expensive kit, it’s a useful checklist with a caveat that you can ‘use what you have’ and adapt! In Essential techniques the author covers everything from oven temperature, through sifting, and testing for doneness.  These are a real boon for new or inexperienced bakers and even experienced bakers can learn from the information in these three chapters.

 The Recipes

The chapters are organised by the type of cake, I think this is really useful as most bakers have a purpose in mind when they want to bake.  There is an index at the back if you are looking for something in particular.

cake-tin cakes includes Marmalade Cake, Sticky Date Cake, Parkin, Gingerbread, Plum Streusel

everyday cakes  includes Victoria Sandwich, Welsh Cakes, Sour Cherry Muffins, Genoa Cake, Swedish Tosca Cake

little cakes includes Lamingtons, Fat Rascals, Eccles Cakes, Maids of Honour, Orange Teacakes

posh cakes includes Lemon Chiffon Cake, Sacher Torte, Coconut Cake, Marble Bundt Cake, Black Forest Gateau

fancies and frivolities includes Fondant Fancies, French Madeleines and English Madeleines, Sponge Kisses

celebration cakes includes Simnel cake, Jewelled Christmas Cake, Buche de Noel, Stollen, Red Velvet Cake

*This represents only a selection of the recipes, there are many more.*

Who is Vintage Cakes for?

This is a book for home bakers who want recipes that have been perfected over time.  All the recipes can all be made with basic baking skills, so it is ideal for someone who is new to baking or for someone who has a little experience and wants to make a range of homely comforting bakes.

Pros

The introductory chapters are well written and full of useful information.

Each recipe starts with a short descriptive paragraph including information about the history of the cake

The recipes are well organised and clearly written with excellent photographs

There are cook’s tips throughout the book and each recipe has information about how to store the cake and how long it is likely to keep.

There are enough ‘different’ recipes to keep an experienced baker interested.

Cons

Experienced bakers are likely to have recipes for about two thirds of the recipes in the book

If you baked your way through every recipe in this book, you would cover wide range of techniques and have a repertoire of cakes that would make your Granny proud!  Even with 40 years of experience of baking, I found recipes I would like to bake and some I would like to revisit.

Polenta Cake

Makes 1 medium – large cake (serves 8-10)

For the cake

Finely grated zest of 3 lemons (unwaxed or well washed)

Juice of ½ a lemon

225g soft butter, plus extra for greasing

225g caster sugar

3 eggs

200g ground almonds

110g polenta

1 level teaspoon baking powder

a pinch of salt

You will need

A 23cm springform tin or round loose-bottomed cake tin, greased with butter and base lined with baking parchment.

Preheat the oven to 160C (gas mark 3)


Start by zesting the 3 lemons, and squeezing one to obtain half its juice.  Set aside until needed.

Put the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl.  With a wooden spoon or an electric whisk, cream them together until they are pale and fluffy.  Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.

Add the ground almonds, polenta, baking powder, salt and lemon juice and zest.  With a large metal spoon or flexible spatula, mix well until all the ingredients are combined.  Spoon into the prepared tin and level the surface with the back of the spoon or spatula.

Bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes until the cake is golden brown and pulling away from the sides of the tin and a metal skewer or sharp knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool for 10 minutes before turning out of the tin.  Serve with creamy yogurt or mascarpone, and a glass of something nice and chilled.  Polenta cake is also delicious with a light tea such as Darjeeling.

STORAGE: Polenta cake keeps well for up to 3 days if wrapped in aluminium foil and stored in an airtight tin in a cool place.

 What a fantastic cake, it's moist, with a lemony tang and a lovely grainy texture from the almonds and polenta.  I have no doubt I will make this cake again.  I didn't want to make a big cake, so halved the ingredients and made it in a small pie tin, it behaved beautifully.  I sliced it up and froze most of it, so it will be interesting to see what it is like when it thaws.  It would make a great dessert cake, served warm with cream or ice cream.

*GIVEAWAY*

I have one copy of Vintage Cakes by Jane Brocket to giveaway. To enter this giveaway, please leave a comment on this post telling me which cake evokes warm and comforting memories of your childhood.  So I am able to contact you, should you win, can you please also leave contact details e.g. farmersgirlkitchen at gmail dot com OR your Twitter name e.g. @serialcrafter
The giveaway will close at 7pm on Saturday 3rd November 2012.

This giveaway is open to those with a UK residence address only.

The winner will be chosen by Random Number Generator and the blog owner's decision will be final.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored giveaway, Vintage Cakes and the giveaway copy was supplied by Jacqui Small LLP an Imprint of Arum Press

And the Winner is...LynB 

Congratulations!

 I'm entering the Polenta Cake for the October Random Recipe Challenge.  Dom at Belleau Kitchen challenged us to put our hands in the cupboard and pull out something we hadn't used, then look through some cookbooks till we found one which had a recipe for that ingredient and to make it.

My ingredient was Polenta,  I bought the pack in the summer, but have never got around to making anything with it.  I took a pile of cookbooks including those I had been sent for review and, hey presto, Polenta Cake!

Vintage Cakes is published by Jacui Small LLP
RRP - £25
Popular online book store: £13.50