Sugar fix

1115: it had been decided that we would treat ourselves to a sugar fix today, something we once used to do on a near weekly basis, with Alberta date cake and seed cake jostling for first position. Whereas today, blog search suggests that the last time was more than a year ago, noticed at reference 1. Not counting all the shop, café and canteen stuff consumed in the meantime.

We elected to return to Dundee cake, but also elected to omit the almonds. Assembled the ingredients, got over the shock at the number of calories and other stuff therein, mixed them all up and got the cake into the oven at around 1100. Progress to be reported in due course, with the big issue being how wet or dry the cooked cake is, something I am fairly fussy about, not liking a cake to be dry. On the other hand, not making cakes very often, I have lost any sense that I might once of had about how wet or dry they should be on entry to the oven. Today, I aimed for what I think is called stiff dropping.

The little issue being what to do with what is left of the lemon after take a good part of the rind off - in which condition they do not keep very well. Should we allow even more sugar to the fix by making a drop of lemonade?

1410: BH, by then in the kitchen, thought the cake smelled cooked at 1305. It passed the skewer test. Removed to cool down a bit. At around 1345, the cake lifted out of the tin, on its loose base. Knifed off the base about 15 minutes after that. Off in one piece with no corners knocked off. Mid brown rather than dark brown, still looked a touch damp in the middle of the bottom. Top nicely domed. Stood, the right way up, on a wire grid to finish cooling.

PS: BH used to turn cakes over onto the grid to cool, easy to execute, but resulting in a flattened rather than a domed top. I did not approve, but she never came around to my way of thinking on the matter.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/cake-time.html.