Friday 26 August 2011

Gin and Tonic Cake

So, one of my favourite things about Friday is Gin o'clock.

I haven't been drinking gin for that long, but my friend Nancy introduced me to it after a hard day and work, and now Gin O'Clock is very much embedded in my routine.

So, when I can across this recipe for a gin and tonic cake, I obviously had to have a go. I made this cake for the Clandestine Cake Club meeting:


So, the first thing you may note is that its certainly not the prettiest of cakes in the world. I made three layers of the sponge, but the ganache was very runny so kind of ran and flopped everywhere, despite a long time in the fridge. I resorted to putting some cocktail peacocks into it to deflect from the ugliness of it. I did have a little practice run of making this cake, but that time i broke up the sponge and layered it in glasses, which worked quite nicely. Making a bit cake was a slightly different story.

I'm not totally convinced by the recipe on the link
-1kg of white chocolate?! really?! I used half quantities and that was more than enough to cover one huge cake. And besides, would anything be more pathetic than going to the shop and buying some gin and 1kg of white chocolate? What would the shop assisstant think?!
-The gin and tonic syrup is fine, although not hugely viscous. I used some cheap gin and fever tree tonic. Someone I was talking to at the cake club suggested using Soda Stream syrup, which i think is a great idea which i may try sometime.
-The earl grey steeped ganache is lovely, but rather runny.
-The sponge is really weird. Its very dense, which i guess should make it absorb the gin better, but it's quite difficult to feed, and i think i will try it with normal sponge sometime to see if that is better.
-it had a very subtle gin flavour. Which, for some people may be good, but for me, was rather disappointing.

So, people said they liked the gin and tonic cake, and it is nice, but there is definitely some room for improvement. I shall let you know how any future experiments go, of course.

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