August 12, 2013

REDCURRANT, ROSE AND RASPBERRY BUNDT CAKE

redcurrant jelly8

Bundt cakes, or rather, the tins you make them in, fascinate me.  You can get Bundt tins in such an enormous variety of shapes and designs that virtually anything is possible when it comes to fancy cakes.  If you want to make a cake shaped like a steam train, or a Christmas tree, there is a Bundt tin for it.  No longer is it necessary to carve up cakes and glue them back together in the shape you want.

The thing that has always puzzled me is what recipe to use.  I wondered if you could bake any recipe in a Bundt tin and it would turn out right.  I suspect not.  Then I stumbled upon a blog called Dolly Bakes written by Rachel, who makes all kinds and flavours of Bundt cakes and gives a basic, completely adaptable recipe that she says works every time.

It certainly worked for me when I was deciding what to do with the few redcurrants I had left over from making jam, jelly and relish.

redcurrant jelly3I use a recipe from Delia online for redcurrant jelly, which is incredibly quick and easy and works really well.  You can see it here.

redcurrant jelly4I had so many redcurrants this year that I decided to branch out and make strawberry and redcurrant jam.  It’s a recipe I had not tried before but the jam is delicious.  You can see the recipe here.

redcurrant jelly5I used just a few redcurrants for this relish which is absolutely gorgeous.  There are still some redcurrants to ripen on the bush and with those I think I will make some more of this.  You can see the recipe here.

So that just left a handful of redcurrants from my harvest so I decided to mix them with strawberries and make a cake.  Then I noticed that I had used all the strawberries so I used a few raspberries instead!

redcurrant jelly6 redcurrant jelly7 

I used a traditional Gugelhupf cake silicone mould that I got recently and very reasonably from Sarah at Silicone Moulds.  I still feel slightly nervous about using silicone.  Putting cake mixture into something so wobbly and then into a hot oven just somehow seems wrong!  But it worked perfectly.  I expect that sooner or later I will get used to silicone and learn to trust it!

I greased and floured the mould and the cake turned out fine with hardly a crumb left behind stuck to the mould.  But the shape was not as I expected.  The finished cake was not the dome shape of the mould but flatter.  I suppose logically this makes sense.  If you put that amount of cake mixture into a flexible object the weight of it is bound to make it sag or flatten.  I don’t know if there is a way round this, but the cake looked nice anyway.

redcurrant jelly9In fact, not only did it look nice, it tasted lovely.  Here’s the link to the recipe on Rachel’s blog:

http://www.dollybakes.co.uk/2012/10/BuildaBundt28.html

I followed the recipe exactly except for the following adaptations:

I substituted strawberry yoghurt for the plain yoghurt

I substituted 2tsp rose water for the 1tsp vanilla

I added 100g of mixed raspberries and redcurrants.

redcurrant jelly2 The cake was huge, cut easily into thick slices and had a lovely crumb.  It would be great for a party, special event or cake stall as it looks so good and would probably serve 20 people.  It was still perfect three days later when we had the last slice made into a raspberry trifle.  So a great big “thank you” to Rachel for a great recipe that I shall no doubt be using over and over again.

As I used my few remaining redcurrants and a handful of slightly tired raspberries I am entering this cake into Kate of Turquoise Lemons “no waste” food challenge, currently hosted by Elizabeth of Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary.  You can see the details here.

Calendar Cakes Challenge

Also, because it is full of the tastes of summer, I am also linking it to Rachel’s own Calendar Cakes challenge on her blog Dolly Bakes.  You can see the details here.

14 comments:

  1. I've found that silicone cake tins sag. Silicone is great for small cakes like cannelé and muffins, but I've considered putting my log tin inside a metal one to keep it from sagging on one side. Never done it, but it might work. I haven't used my fluted silicone bundt tin yet (bought at MaxPrix for €3).

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    1. I did wonder if next time I should put the mould inside a large pudding basin or Pyrex mixing bowl and see what happens. But then I wondered if that might affect the cooking time.

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  2. Mmmm your cake sounds delicious and I love that you make your own jams and jellies. It's a dying art, I think! I like that you've used your leftover cake to make trifle with too, kind of a double entry for the No Waste Food Challenge! Thank you for sharing!

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    1. Elizabeth, making jam is so much easier than I thought. I only started because we bought a redcurrant bush which produced so much fruit in its first year that I felt compelled to do something with them!

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  3. my god it's GIANT!!!... love that raspberry and rose combo and the added red-currants are just so now aren't they!?!... jam looks fabulous too... an all-round wonderful day!

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    1. It was certainly a large cake, one for a crowd I think!

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  4. I still haven't ever tried baking a bundt cake (despite buying a bundt tin), I must try this recipe out! Yours looks delicious :) x

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    1. It's an anxious moment when you find out if the cake is coming out clean or half of it is still stuck to the tin....good luck with yours !!

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  5. Great to meet you both at the Saturday cakenic. Love the blog & have already made a note of 12 different recipes that I just have to try out!!!
    We too have had a bumper crop of red currants this year and so vernon made a couple of pots of the red currant & red onion relish & have to say it is so yummy.
    Going to get him to have a go at the strawberry and red currant jam as it sounds divine.

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    1. Thanks Christine, we had a lovely time and Nick is already planning his next cake !!

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  6. That's a lovely summery cake and a fine recipe. It's been an exceptionally good year for berries (round here at least) and I've got plenty of redcurrant jelly for the months ahead. I very often use silicone moulds but there are some larger moulds that do need support, especially the square or rectangular ones.

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  7. Jean - I've taken out a mortgage and ordered the fancy bundt tin we talked about!
    I'll pop over to Dolly's site to make a not of the basic recipe. I rather fancy a lemon bundt cake.
    Your cake above is gorgeous to look at and I can only imagine how lovely it tasted.

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  8. Good luck with the Bundt!
    Remember to grease and flour the tin well!
    I have sent you a link for a lemon and poppy seed cake!
    http://deliciousdeliciousdelicious.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00:00:00Z&updated-max=2012-01-01T00:00:00Z&max-results=38

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  9. This looks fabulous and I love the summery flavours! Thanks for entering this month's Calendar Cakes :-)

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