So, for the first ‘official’ post of this blog I thought I would treat you dear readers to a taste of one of my favourite chef’s bakes: Daniel Galmiche’s ‘Suzanne’s Cake’
With this being a nice low-cost bake if your pantry is well stocked (if it’s not then why not you lazy swine 😉 ) with the exception of the savarin case that set me back far more than I would like to admit, you will find that it is both a relaxing way to spend an hour or two as well as rewarding your effort with a tasty treat at the end.
Having initially picked out a tiny rum-baba case (Doh!) I had to pick up a correct cake tin as I strolled around to pick up my ingredients for both the next blog as well as this sweet treat! With the main decision in an un-named supermarket (I’ll give you a clue that it’s Heston and Delia who are marketing it!) being whether to pick up French crème fraîche or British crème fraîche (of which I still don’t know if there is a difference!) it all came in very cheaply and that set me in good stall for the effort of both convincing my lovely wife Charlotte to help bake the beast as well as letting me know that it may actually raise some cash for her charity bake that it was made for!
With the shopping out of the way and my mise en place prepped and ready to be destroyed by flour, the first challenge was getting the mix nice and frothy without over-beating the eggs before getting the ‘guns’ out and mixing by wooden spoon the crème fraîche, plain flour as well as butter (which I had to get Charlotte to ‘slightly’ melt after forgetting to do so). While the mixture appears to be very heavy when it’s being mixed, this belies the fact that the dish is surprisingly light when finished.
With the tin pre-greased and the oven pre-heated (one negative of the excellent recipe is that it doesn’t say if the oven is at a fan temperature or not so I set it 10 to 20 degrees lower) pouring the mixture out was actually surprisingly challenging – especially avoiding putting all the mixture in one place.
Forty minutes later and a quick knife into the well risen beast confirmed it was cooked through and that it was ready for a tricky element – opening my oven a fraction and only a fraction for ten minutes! With the oven seemingly determined to either be closed or fully open this was a slightly less precise affair than hoped for but a stage that allowed the cake to cool enough to slide nicely out onto a wire rack.
Finally the fun bit for Charlotte – the tasting of the off-cuts! With the bake rising unevenly you do need to make sure you get it nicely cut down to get the beautiful circular look and not a mountain range on the underside of the cake! A quick dusting of icing sugar and a tasting of the off-cuts for me confirmed that it was a lovely, light cake with plenty of moisture and a great pud to enjoy with a nice cup of tea.
With this in mind, I would certainly try the bake again, especially as I won’t get to try the full finished result, but I would say that the addition of chocolate drops to the mixture could add a little more flavour, as would some glacier cherries.
Bon Appetite!