Today was a sundress day in Invercargill! I love sundress days it reminds me of how blessed we are to live in such a beautiful country. The only negative about sundress days is it means being in the kitchen can be a bit like working in a sauna. Fortunately, I had two volunteers turn up in my kitchen keen to test a couple of recipes. Matthew and Sam took over the kitchen and did really well. Their review follows. I hope you enjoy it 🙂
Today we were tasked with replicating two recipes. The first being ginger crunch slice. (Page 67)
The recipe called for creaming the butter and sugar, which was a relatively straight forward procedure. Once we added the dry ingredients, however, the mixture became VERY dry, crumbly, and hard to combine. This meant that it didn’t form the dough as expected in the recipe.
The mixture, once in the pan, still looked very dry but we managed to push it together. After baking for 20 minutes we took the base out, which unfortunately had cracked. Then we made the ginger icing by combining all ingredients over heat until combined, followed by pouring this liquid gold over the sub-par base. Cutting up was the last step to the recipe, which was frustrating, although a great arm workout.
Overall, this recipe was easy to execute but disappointing. The dough didn’t come together as the recipe described, and the base was very hard compared to what is expected of a ginger crunch slice. We actually liked this harder base more than expected but the ginger icing really made the recipe. In fact, a thicker layer of icing would be a very welcome improvement!
The second recipe was a coffee cake. (Page 49) Once again we creamed sugar and butter but this time we also added dissolved coffee, eggs, and vanilla essence. Once creamed, we folded in flour and baking powder, and then added the milk. This batter looked fine but it was a little bit thick/dense. I then got Sam to transfer the mixture into the cake pan as I’m hopeless with stuff like that. It took a bit of encouraging to get the batter evenly in the pan, partly because it was so thick.
Twenty minutes later we had two coffee cakes. Unfortunately, they didn’t rise to the occasion (pun intended), which made me question whether it would be satisfyingly fluffy and soft. The icing queen herself (Sam) then made a coffee icing loosely based on the white icing in the Edmonds book. Generally, the cake looked good.
Overall, the cake was dry and crumbly. It was an okay cake, much like the chocolate cake recipe, and would scratch that cake itch, if you were really in the mood. The cake itself didn’t taste very coffee-like, so I would suggest doubling the strength of the coffee or using a darker roast. Once again the icing was the saviour as it possessed that much-needed coffee-y taste that the cake lacked.