Baking Hot

The unexpectedly beautiful weather we've been having lately coincided with a flurry of baking and sweet-making for my stand at a wedding fair last weekend (featured in today's photos). I love nothing more than hot summer sun -while walking along the beach (I'm lucky enough to live by the sea) or in the park or just lazing about drinking something cool and sparkly - but I have to say, baking cakes in this enervating heat is no fun. Although I never realised it before now, our usually 'mild, moist and variable' climate (a phrase I shall never forget from Primary School geography lessons) is the perfect bed-fellow for our well-established and well-loved baking traditions. It's not just about the heat from an oven in an already toasty kitchen (though modern air-con would help on this front at least); it's the way the heat saps the appetite for cake (yes, even from me!). Faced with a piece of cake, some ice-cold watermelon or an ice-cream, I would happily and easily forgo the cake for the cooling fruit or the frosty goodness of the ice-cream.

Sometimes, however, a cake is required, heat or no. Last Summer, we were in Spain for my Mam's birthday and I decided, as a surprise, to bake her a birthday cake (as you do). There were few options in terms of buying a cake and I wanted her to have something delicious. So it was a firm 'no' to the cream- or ice-cream-filled cakes in the cold cabinet of the local supermarket (not very nice, mass produced confections). Likewise, although the local bakery had some wonderful freshly baked breads, the pastries were invariably covered in a glaze and the cakes were far too sweet. That left me, one hot kitchen and an ill-conceived plan to bake a cake while the temperature, outside and in, climbed higher and higher.

It was mid-September but still as hot as Hades in the southern tip of Spain (next stop Africa), so I had to think hard about what to make - buttercream icing was out, as it would slide right off the cake into a puddle of buttery mess on the platter. Mam doesn't have a very sweet tooth but she does love dark chocolate, the darker the better in fact - given the choice, she'll go for a square of 85% cocoa solid chocolate as a treat, which to my sweet-loving palate is way too bitter - so it would have to be something densely chocolatey but not too luscious or sweet. As there would be no icing (too rich for Mam and too melty in the heat), the cake itself needed to be moist and the answer to this conundrum in baking terms is usually ground almonds. Luckily, there are almonds at every turn in Spain - the beloved nut features widely in Spainsh cuisine, both sweet and savoury.

Almond cakes are always a winner - the almonds can replace flour altogether (giving you a lovely gluten-free cake), the natural oil in the nuts provide moisture (cakes containing ground nuts keep extremely well and even improve over a few days) and last but not least, they can be spruced up with some fabulous flavours (chocolate is always good and orange is popular, though lemon is my favourite - I have a recipe for a Damp Lemon & Almond cake that can't be beat). My trusty baking book by Dan Lepard (he of fudge-fame in last week's post) came up trumps once again. I had tried a recipe a few months previously (while sensibly at home in the coolness of last year's Irish Summer) for a Chocolate & Almond Fudge Cake. I came across it while on the hunt for a yummy but gluten-free cake to bring with me to visit my friend (she's Coeliac). Like many flourless cakes, this one uses almonds as a substitute, but as an added bonus it also contains a cooked mixture of fine oats and milk. This gives a lovely fudgy texture (despite the recipe containing slightly less sugar than usual) and a heavier, more moist crumb than other chocolate and almond cakes. The icing on the cake (metaphorically rather than literally in this case) is the use of both cocoa and a substantial amount of lovely, dark chocolate in the cake mixture, to give it a rich, deep chocolate flavour.

This cake is pretty simple to make. I didn't have my full range of baking tins, equipment or my well-stocked baking cupboard to hand, but frankly, with a bowl, a whisk, a wooden spoon and a simple cake tin, any cake is achievable and this one in particular. (Honesty compels me to add here that while simple, it also required a serious bit of elbow grease - whipping 3 egg whites by hand in the heat of a Spanish Summer made me long for my lovely, electric Kitchen Aid Artisan Mixer.) The resulting cake has an incredibly rich, darkly chocolatey flavour, without being overly sweet or heavy. Mr Lepard recommends serving it with a topping of whipped double cream flavoured with some Pedro Ximenez sherry (unwittingly fiiting in with my Spanish theme) and scattered with shavings of dark chocolate. It would also be pretty good served warm from the oven with some vanilla ice-cream on the side. We ate it as it came, with a cup of coffee and a glass of Cava standing by. Fabulous.