After a bit of digging around I found a recipe by Surf & Scallop and after a bit of chatting with Claire on instagram, we decided that her Yerba Mate could be substituted with matcha tea powder. If it wasn't for instagram I wouldn't have even known that matcha exists, so despite my feelings about Instagram, it does have some benefits. One must try new things and challenge ourselves all the time.
I managed to track down some blood oranges at the local farm shop and so I thought I was in business. Setting aside saturday to make the cake, watch the royal wedding and take photos I realise first thing that I haven't got much flour. Undeterred I thought, well it's only me at home this weekend so half the ingredients should be fine.
Second hurdle, I realise that my weighing scales have gone into storage. Today is not going to plan, but Ive been so depressed recently I wasn't going to let a few hurdles stop me. I needed cake to cheer me up.
I think I managed to guess the ingredient ratios ok, however, my biggest mistake was in the cooking time. It didn't occur to me that half the ingredients could mean less cooking time and so I feel that the outside is a bit harder (burnt or over cooked) than Mary Berry would allow. Having said that I really like the slight crisp to the outside with the soft green sponge inside.
I don't know why, but I can never get the icing glaze right. I made a really pretty one with the blood orange juice, it was a lovely pink but as I poured it over, it just disappeared. Perhaps it was too thin. I tried again with matcha powder added to the icing sugar and this time ensured the consistency was a bit thicker.
Yes I've also packed away all my cake stand, so a bit of improv was called for here too, in the end I gave up and just put it on a plate.
Also the sliced blood orange on the top just looked made it look like some weird pizza, so I switched it around for flowers from the garden. I thought that the orange slices maybe would seep into the cake, giving it an extra tang, but it just didn't work visually. There is also a bit of grated white chocolate sprinkled for extra sweetness, I was playing with ideas, and again, the grated chocolate just didn't look amazing. My decorating skills need work.
Because the ingredients were reduced by half, the cake isn't as tall as it should be, so it isn't the perfect photo star, my dilemma being that a huge glamorous cake is a bit much for one person, or even two, so until I have a few guests this size will have to do.
It gives me a chance to practise if nothing else.
I'm considering getting some mini bundt tins as I think that will probably be a better idea when I'm only cooking for one or two.
The taste is lovely, I do like these bundt cakes that use greek yoghurt. The ingredients are as follows;
- 400g flour
- 3 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- 3 tbsp. yerba mate powder (or matcha tea - you can probably get away with a little less of this quantity as it is expensive and my pot was quite small).
- 100g coconut oil, softened
- 170g butter, softened (or benecol tastes like butter spread)
- 300g caster sugar
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean, scraped
- 4 eggs
- 170g greek yoghurt
- Juice of one small blood orange
And for more about how to make this, hop over to Surf & Scallop. Where you can see how Claire puts it all together.
