Madeira cake

A visit to Bachmann's of Thames Ditton last week, to procure a cake against weekend celebration.

We had a roulard - a rather splendid sort of cream cheese version of a slice of Swiss roll - to keep us going in the car and an almond flavoured Madeira cake for the main business. Very good it was too, taken with a little Sauvignon Blanc, from Dog Point in New Zealand.

Note the double cardboard underneath, apt to foil the unwary server and intended, so BH thought, to allow a neat job to be done with the icing glaze. Note also the flatness of the cake, only obtained by slicing off the humps natural to cake baking - a slicing which has caused some home friction in the past, with me being firmly in the no-slicing camp, particularly in the case of something like a fruit cake where there is only one hump to contend with. In this case, however, I grant the necessity.

The first time that we have visited this shop, in so far as can be told from the blog record, for more than four years. BH made the cake which prompted reference 2, but I am fairly sure that we bought another from Bachmann's shortly afterwards, it being one of their staples.

Reference 1: http://www.bachmanns.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=linzer+torte.