Madeira cake

Well, it has begun! The 2015 Great British Bake Off! Two friends and I have drawn contestants names out of a hat to have a sweepstake on the winner… just for fun, no prizes apart from glory! The idea of the TV show is for twelve bakers and cake makers to compete against each other with three different challenges in each programme, at the end of which, one is announced as star baker, and one is regretfully sent home.

The first of the challenges this week was to make a traditional cake which I remember from my childhood, a Madeira cake. I guess my mum used a Be-Ro recipe, and that is what I shall use at the weekend when I make one for some friends who are coming to stay with us.

However, I looked up Eliza Acton’s 1850’s recipe:

• 4 eggs
• 6 oz sugar
• 4 oz butter
• rind of 1 lemon
• ¹/³ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Whisk the four fresh eggs until they are as light as possible, then continuing still to whisk them, throw in by slow degrees the following ingredients in order in which they are written: six ounces of dry, pounded, and sifted sugar; six of flour, also dried and sifted; four ounces of butter just dissolved, but not heated; the rind of a fresh lemon; and the instant before the cake is moulded, beat well in the third of a  teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda;bake it an hour in a moderate oven. In this as in all compositions of the same nature, observe particularly that each portion of butter must be beaten into the mixture until; no appearance of it remains before the next is added; and if this be done, the preparation be kept light by constant and light whisking, the cake will be good, if not better, than if the butter were creamed. Candied citron can be added to the paste, but it is not needed.