Susan from New London, WI (2017 Week 1: Cake)

Baker

Susan

Location

New London, WI

Baking Challenge

Jaffa Cake, Mirror Glaze Cake

Give your cake a name based on the ingredients and decoration – and tell us about the origin of your recipe.

Strawberry Wonders (Jaffa Cakes). Never made Jaffa cakes before (had to look up Mary Berry’s recipe on line). The Wonder part comes from them actually turning out very well – they looked like the photos on Google! My other cake: Strawberries and Cream for the Mirror Glaze – the name says it all

Tell us about your proudest moment – or humble failure – in this week’s baking challenge.

Tackling these two recipes was a challenge, mostly because I’ve never made Genoise cakes before. Mixing the batter, keeping it inflated went very well; it was my accidentally turning off the oven after putting the cake in the oven that caused a great soggy bottom. So mortifying, I’ve never done that before! I had to cut the bottom half off, and then start another cake. And when I starting heating the water to warm up the egg mixture, the burner caught fire. I was tempted to grab the camera to get a good picture of the flames flaring up around the sides of the pot – it was quite a pretty red-orange – but I opted to get the baking soda instead. This is only the second time in 30 years of cooking that I’ve had to put out a fire, and I can now say with some authority that baking soda does a miraculous job of quenching the flames.

Describe how you added a Wisconsin twist to your creation.

I just received my annual postcard from the local strawberry farm telling me it’s time to go pick some fruit. It’s June in Wisconsin!! which means lots and lots of strawberries. I used home-made strawberry jello in the jaffa cakes, and fresh strawberries in the mirror glaze cake.

How did you do?

Absolutely lovely.