Heaven: Cakes We Have Loved
Over in All Saint on The Between the Equator and the South Pole thread there has been some discussion on Neenish tarts. Living in the UK I'd never heard of them but it got me thinking of cakes I've enjoyed in the past.
My family used to have an Eccles cake challenge where we would always buy them from any bakery we were passing while on holiday and give them marks out of ten. The best we found were from a bakery in Lyme Regis, quite a long way from Eccles. I also like Bakewell Tart and even more Bakewell Pudding. I haven't had one of those in years, as unlike the tarts they don't seem to have caught on outside of Bakewell.
Round here in our new East Midlands home a lot of bakeries sell cornflake tart. Not something I spotted while living in London, but I don't know if it is a local speciality or not.
What are your favourite traditional sweet cakes, pastries or tart?
My family used to have an Eccles cake challenge where we would always buy them from any bakery we were passing while on holiday and give them marks out of ten. The best we found were from a bakery in Lyme Regis, quite a long way from Eccles. I also like Bakewell Tart and even more Bakewell Pudding. I haven't had one of those in years, as unlike the tarts they don't seem to have caught on outside of Bakewell.
Round here in our new East Midlands home a lot of bakeries sell cornflake tart. Not something I spotted while living in London, but I don't know if it is a local speciality or not.
What are your favourite traditional sweet cakes, pastries or tart?
Comments
We shun the horrible Mr K*****g and buy a brand called Nevis. Or occasionally a porter cake (at the end of the Asian aisle in Sainsbury's there's a tiny Irish section).
I can't actually think of anywhere near by that resembles the bakeries of my childhood, with trays of fondant fancies and cream buns. It's all artisanal sourdough, or at best Danish or croissants.
Of my own creation I have a rather crumbly chocolate traybake, which adds syrup, dried fruit, yoghurt and chopped dark chocolate to a chocolate sponge.
Little Miss Feet has devised a recipe for chocolate muffins that uses cream cheese to make them moist.
My husband does most of the baking round here but I am rather partial to a proper Yorkshire curd tart made with homemade curds.
If I'm picking up a cake in a supermarket it will probably be a custard slice as I love custard. At Christmas it would be Stollen as I love marzipan too.
Rennet sounds an unnecessary expense if you just want curds for baking (rather than cheese making, which I used to do but no longer have the space).
But the mere mention of caramel cake results in transports of delight. It’s the icing that’s caramel; the cake is what around here is called yellow cake—a batter cake made with butter and egg yolk. Buttered coconut pie and gooey butter cake also make me very, very happy. And while bad-to-mediocre pecan pies are easy to find, a good pecan pie is a thing of beauty.
My favorite cake to make and share is gingerbread. It's not too sweet, but has a lot of spicy goodness because I add 3-4 times the amount of ginger and cinnamon that's called for in the recipe.
Last July 4, I took an old-fashioned dessert to the party Daughter-Unit and her dear hubby hosted. It was a staple at pot lucks and family reunions when I was growing up. It's really easy to make, and has a cheesecake like layer on a graham cracker crust bottom, and then covered with cherry pie (or blueberry) filling. None of the young 30-40 year olds had ever had it before and they absolutely ate every crumb!
Some people use rainbow sherbet instead of vanilla ice cream.
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.
I'm not immune to fancier stuff though. My most recent triumph was a blood orange and rhubarb confection with ground almonds in the batter. Mmmmmmm.
We have another recipe in our family which we know as ‘Mrs Pye’s Sponge’. She was married to William Pye, founder of Pye Radio and they were patients of my GP grandfather. It produces a lighter sponge, but it doesn’t keep quite as long.
A nice variamt on Brown Betty is made with gingersnaps.
The birthday party cakes and special occasion cakes in this house are baked in pans that my grandfather used. He was a commercial baker in Montreal from the 1920's to the 1960's. They supplied all the baked desserts to many restaurants all over the city. The pans are about nine inches round and take a full regular cake recipe in each one. I must say that I get a lot of pleasure from using a these pans. Someday, when this pandemic eases up a bit more, I will bring out the cake pans. I know they are just pans, but they bring me such pleasure.
There are none in this town, and those I have seen elsewhere in the area have quite a limited range, No cream horns, no choux buns, not many shortcrust pastries except mince pies at Christmas, and certainly none of the pineapple tarts I remember from my childhood.
In fact I was standing in a bakers in a nearby town looking at their meagre display and fancying a non-existent cream horn when I realised what a wide range of traditional baked treats had disappeared from our shops.
Like Heavenlyannie I can be tempted by a supermarket custard slice, but not much else that has been in a chiller cabinet for a couple of days.
The ginger cupcakes he made today, hot on the heels of yesterday's chocolate orange ones are doing nothing good for my waistline.
I'm not a fan of whipped cream (needs mixing with mascarpone, sugar and alcohol in my view) but I might suggest he try cream horns. There would be a nostalgic market for them, clearly, not to mention younger people buying them ironically or not even realising they're not a new thing. I'm old enough to remember the "Naughty but nice" fresh cream cakes adverts.
[Muses]Or Creme pat. horns (he did some chocolate éclairs with creme pat. the other month. His elder brother is dairy intolerant and you can make a dairy free creme pat. All his output is dairy free at the moment.[/Muses]
Anyone hungry? Anyone remember Dastardly and Mutley? "Mutley! Get me out of this giant cream puff!"
Meanwhile, in bakeries I’m a sucker for Mandelhörnchen/almond horns and for cannolis.
Good luck to Boy #2!
We're not cake-bakers, but do so when necessary. A trick we've adopted to make life easier is to buy a packet cake mix and substitute a bit of liqueur for some of the specified liquid. Not a great deal, but it well and truly disguises cake's origins. Swapping a bit of jam or marmalade for some of the sugar helps also.
I don't bother making my own Chantilly, though. I can buy it in a can in the cheese shop. It's proper whipped cream, not synthetic squirty cream.
Hard to get outside Kernow. As are decent pasties. It is a matter of some disquiet that Ginsters mediocre offerings legally qualify as Cornish Pasties owing to being made there. A proper one is a thing of beauty.
Cake to love when eating out - most types. My cake-with-coffee of choice would usually be caramel shortbread, but I'm also partial to carrot cake and chocolate brownie. And Belgian buns. Mmmm...
I was in the UK around Easter some years back & tried out the Waitrose version; not bad for shop bought.
I still make my own mincemeat, and that provides a good filling for Eccles cakes. My mince pies are a tiny spoonful in puff pastry. They are not too heavy for a sub-tropical Christmas.
I have tried different Easter cakes such as Simnel, kulich, and last year I made my own pannetone.
My favourite bought cakes are Portuguese tarts and kataifi.
I will add though that all those who talk about Eccles Cakes have you tried Chorley Cake? They are kind of a flat scone with all the fruit in the middle and the paste wrapped around. Served with propped butter.
My favourite things to make are French Fruit Tarts.
On Thursday mornings we transport meals from a community centre to a breakfast 'club'. On the way we stop for breakfast at a French Patisserie called L'Ultime. They have fabulous looking (and eating) individual and large fruit tarts.
I started buying them as an alternative for Mr RoS who hates sugar sprinkled on anything, and now I would pick a Chorley cake against Eccles any time
I used to enjoy baking, but cooking of any kind is now mostly a chore, and in recent years my attempts at making cakes have generally failed - except for boiled fruitcake. That, thankfully, seems to be idiot-proof so that is what can usually be found in my cake tin. It lasts well, too, so I don't have to make it very often.
“Tray bake” is another term not used here, at least not in my part of the US. Such things would usually be called “___ bars” here.
Also flapjacks as I've known them all my life do not have fruit in them as standard. I do have a recipe from the eighties, or thereabouts, for banana flapjack, but have never made them.
I expect dried fruit and other luxurious ingredients have crept in during the last couple of decades, but may very well be on their way out again.