4 cake: lardy cake
25 Sep 2011 1 Comment
in cake, recipes, sweets Tags: autumn, baking, british cooking, lardy cake, raisins
a majestic looking Bundt was intended to be cake #4. As exciting as it was to unearth some Bundt history, and as photogenic the packaging and final cake, the pistachio chocolate marble cake – a recipe of cake mixes and boxed pudding offered up as characteristic of Bundt in its heyday – was, well, gassy. At least, it made me gassy. It tasted synthetic. The flavors sounds so grand, promise to capture the nature with real food in a future effort (catch the photos by liking Radical Muffin on Facebook).
this futile venture into boxes sent me right back to real butter. Enter lardy cake. no Pillsbury bake-off winner here; no showboating. Lovingly offered up by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra in her tour of old world breads and sweets Warm Bread and Honey Cake, lardy cake is a British stalwart dating back to the second half of the 19th century.
a harvest cake of freshly rendered pig lard, original recipes earned the name. up-dated versions rely on butter, and real slabs of fresh butter here are a real celebratory ingredient in city hearths, evocative of generous bounty, novel in its old-fashioned rich goodness.
Pagrach-Chandra is a staunch defender of lardy cake. writing from a hostile health-conscious environment in the modern UK, she cites critics’ warnings of “health hazard” and “artery clogger” then scoffs: I suspect that many of its detractors would not hesitate to pour cream sauce over a huge steak on a regular basis, yet they begrudge the bit of butter that goes into an excellent cake. Perhaps they simply do not like cakes.
radical muffins only live once, and butter is delicious. Lardy cake is an utterly worthy breakfast or coffee treat, a cinnamon roll all in one cake round that you slice to eat. Not only a great cake—in the vein of not too sweet coffee cakes—but also a good introduction to bread make. So take this on if working with bread is among your desired kitchen skills but its seemed too daunting to start.
in a large bowl, stir in a packet of dried yeast into half of ¾ cup warmed milk. Let the yeast come to life. Melt 3/8 a stick of butter, stir in a tablespoon of sugar, and set it aside to cool.
stir 2 ½ cups flour along with the rest of the milk and the butter. knead knead knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. leave to rise an hour or so, until doubled in size.
butter and line the bottom of a 9-ich spring form pan.
punch down the dough and knead in ¼ teaspoon of salt. pat the dough into a circle and sandwich between two long pieces of parchment paper or lay out on a well-floured surface. Roll out until about ¼ inch thick.
cream together 7/8 of a stick of butter, unsalted and softened, and 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar. work in ½ teaspoon cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg.
spread the sugar-butter on 2/3 of the rectangle of dough, leaving a margin at all the edges. Sprinkle the buttered areas with 1/3 – ½ cup currants or raisins and lightly press them into the filling with the palm of your hand. Fold the dough over the filling like a burrito, taking care to seal the edges. Let rest for 5 minutes.
turn the dough for a fresh angle. Roll out the pastry burrito to form a slightly smaller rectangle. Fold again and let rest. Repeat 2 or 3 more times, depending on how much the filling begins to ooze. Less maybe more here; this cake may have benefited from one less turn or a sit in the fridge to firm up the butter.
on the final turn, roll the cake into a circle and pat into place in the pan. Leave for a final rise, letting the dough double in size.
preheat your oven to 350˚ and bake your lardy cake for 25-30 minutes. Pull it out and leave to rest 15 in the pan then turn it out to cool. Enjoy now or later. Quietly rejoice.
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