Recipe 11: Castle Cake

When I did my first food blog, the second most asked question I used to get was where did I get the time to do it? I always said that I was going to make dinner anyway so it’s not that I was adding on anything much to my day. That said, putting the posts up on the blog religiously every day was a task. I think I used to play it down as to how much time it took but, looking back now, even I don’t know where I used to get the time to post every single day from April to December. In fact, there were a number of occasions where I ended up falling asleep as I waited for Baby Daughter to nod off only to wake up at 3 or 4am and I would actually get up and type up the post. Now I realise that there was a method in my madness. I think I knew that if I missed one day of posting, it would start to snowball which is exactly what happened when I went through the two weeks of the broadband nightmare back in February. That on top of a particularly busy 8 weeks where I couldn’t even get time to watch my beloved programmes (Grey’s Anatomy and Revenge) but, alas, it took a very loyal follower of this blog to draw me back so here I am (so thank you Caroline!).

Well, as it’s been a while, I thought I should write up one of the spectacular recipes which was the Castle cake. As a very loyal listener of the Ray D’Arcy Show, it’s not every day that I get to listen to it. Actually during term time, the only time I get to listen to it live is for half an hour on a Friday as I drive from B to C; the rest of the time is on their player. Anyway, at the same stage every Friday, I could almost tell you at what point of the road I’ll be when I hear the theme tune for Fix It Friday. Love that theme tune! As it plays I am happily driving along bopping my head side to side. Surely other drivers I meet must think I’m a loon but other fans of Fix It Friday will understand. So, on this particular day, a listener emailed in to say that she had borrowed her friend’s hand mixer to bake a cake (or something similar). Of course, the hand mixer was of great sentimental value but, unfortunately, the listener actually managed to break the mixer. Of course, it was an old mixer as I think the friend inherited it from her mother so it was going to be difficult to replace. However, I remember thinking “How does anyone actually manage to break a hand mixer?! Seriously.” Well you know that saying about you shouldn’t judge others until you’ve walked in their path? I’m pretty sure that saying is about far greater problems than broken mixers but I’ve learned that I am just an incompetent with the hand mixer because, in making this Castle Cake recipe, I managed to…yes…break my hand mixer!!! That’ll teach me…

Dear Son’s birthday was in April and although I wasn’t brave enough to leave baking his real cake to my own baking skills (!), I thought I’d try making it as a treat the month before and he could help. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking but he had fun! Six whole hours of it to be honest – well, in between naps and food and play and occasionally getting fed-up with it and then suddenly getting another burst of excitement to spur him on – him, that is – just in case you’re thinking I’m on about me (!).

I know I joke regularly that I could have a share in Kerrygold as I love butter that much but now I am convinced that I should have a share in Kerrygold – I think I went through 4 lbs of the stuff! I started off by making the sponge cakes and, one of the good things about the recipe, is that it gives you two recipes – one if you’re making it in two batches depending on the number of square baking tins you have and another recipe if you’re making it in four batches. Essentially, you make four square cakes using a typical sponge cake mixture. However, another good thing about the recipe is that you can vary it to make chocolate and strawberry versions.

For the butter icing, it was a combination of milk chocolate, butter, icing sugar and cocoa powder. That’s the point where I broke my hand mixer as I hadn’t left enough butter out to soften and not being very patient, I thought I’d try my luck but with disastrous results. I ended up having to beat it by hand and actually ended up with a blister – reminds me of a time when I used to scrub a swimming pool floor by hand in a former life as nothing would show up the white tiles as well as hand scrubbing them. Anyway, I started to cut and assemble the cakes as per the instructions except my butter cream wasn’t soft enough. I know that having every window open in the kitchen on a very cold day didn’t help but otherwise the heat in the kitchen becomes unbearable. Therefore, going back to my earlier point, make sure you have soft butter and a room that isn’t too cold or hot.

 

The butter icing

 

The first layer

 

Getting there...

 

Up we go... 

 

Finally...

 

Oh, but for the fun part while the cakes were cooling (!). I had to drive all the way to Derry to buy chocolate Matchsticks having gone to no less than seven shops in Buncrana. Of course, if I didn’t need Matchsticks that day, I’d have seen them in every single shop but, as luck would have it, none to be found when I needed them. I also needed cones, Bourbon biscuits, chocolate fingers, Curly Wurlys and chocolate sprinkles. Yes, my kitchen reached new depths of being an unbelievable, fine mess by the time I got to work with them. Hours late and ta-da…

The verdict…

This cake literally blew Dear Son away. He just thought I was the best mum ever which was worth it to hear him say that alone but, ah sure, two hours later and I was the worst because I wouldn’t give him any more treats! That’s kids for you. Top marks from Dear Son nonetheless and Dear Husband said “Wow!” when he saw it. In fact, the day that I made this cake, I posted a pic to Twitter and I got a reply from a follower to say that her husband saw her looking at it and said “I want one of them!” and he’s 32…lol!

I definitely think that if you make cakes then you really should try this recipe. It is time consuming but nothing is overly complicated. The main advice I’d give is to ensure that your butter is at an appropriate temperature to work with so you don’t end up breaking your hand mixer like me. The other piece of advice is to ensure that your kitchen is at appropriate temperature as if the room is too warm, the butter cream will melt when you’re working with it and if the room is too cold then it will be difficult to spread the butter cream. There is strawberry buttercream version you can make of this recipe if you want to make it a bit more girly. A lot of eating this cake so I had to start giving away large chunks of it as, according to the recipe, it feeds 40. It was totally delish though. Yum yum yum yum yum…