A grilled cake made up of what is effectively a fancy pancake batter. How hard can that be? Well not particularly, it was more about concentration than anything.

This bake called for an early morning session so that I could get a head start on the weekend ahead. I wanted to get this time consuming part of the challenge out of the way so that I could enjoy a day off work, and go to the Cake&Bake show at Earl’s Court. The rest of the bake I could finish when I got home. I have my self 2.5 hours for the morning bake, so it would give me enough time to get ready to go out. Ha it’s amazing how long a grilled cake actually takes…

Early bird
In order to speed up, I measured out all the ingredients the night before. It was when I did this that I realised I was low on chocolate as well as not having vanilla bean paste. Surely there can’t be much difference to using a vanilla pod as opposed to bean paste? Deciding to go with the substitution, I would aim to buy the paste during the day, so at least I would have it for the icing, along with buying the additional chocolate.

The first part of the recipe calls for the 10 eggs to be separated, a nice fun messy job for the start of the day! Once this was done the yolks needed to be whisked until pale, thick and creamy, which took about 5 minutes.

Next there was the butter and sugar to cream, with additions of vanilla and lemon. Once it was at the right consistency, the egg yolks were added along with the flour and cornflour, making a pale, thickish batter.

When the batter had been prepped to the stage mentioned, I focused my attention to the egg whites. These needed to be whisked until stiff peaks formed when the whisk is removed. Using the kenwood chef seemed to take ages doing the job. I don’t know if it is the size and height of the bowl but the egg at bottom and some of the sides seemed to take longer than the rest to transform into fluffy like clouds. In the end, after a good 8 minutes, I switched back you the electric hand whisk, and after an additional 3 minutes I had the egg whites I needed.

The key to folding in egg whites into a mixture like this, is to start with mixing a third of them in first, this way it loosens the stiff batter making it easier to fold in the remaining egg whites. With the amount of egg whites required for this, it took a while to combine them all, but eventually it all came together.

The recipe called for an 8” spring form tin, I only had an 8.5″ springform, but I did have an 8” lose bottom tin, so I went with that. With the pan greased and papered, and the grill set to high, the first layer needed to be poured into the tin.

Future proofing
It was difficult to gauge how much to put on the first layer as it’s hard to visualise the batter quantity in layers so I went with a heaped serving spoon. I used a pastry brush to spread the first layer around the bad of the pan, as tilting it like a labyrinth game only made the parchment crumple up! With the layer spread as evenly as possible, it was ready to go under the grill.

Timing is everything
The recipe called for two minutes for the light golden layers and three minutes for the dark golden layers. In the beginning of the bake this didn’t really produce any differentiation, I fact I had to extend both times by about 2 minutes. I think this was because of the depth of the pan at the distance that the batter was away from the grill. The more layers that went in and the closer to the grill it got the quicker the colourings happened. There were a few moments where I almost lost count of the layers and I think a light layer ended up being slightly more golden that it was meant to be. After 1.5 hours I had a 20 layered grilled cake that was left to cool while I went out for the day.

Icing on the cake
This part was less intensive on the brain cells than the layer baking. The apricot jam was melted and brushed liberally over the cake, to act as a glue for the glaze. The glaze was made by melting the butter, golden syrup, rum and the newly purchased chocolate. Once everything was melted to a smooth and glossy consistency it was left to cool, so that when it was poured over the cake it would hold its shape. My cheeky test for when it was ready was simply to dip my finger tip in it, and if it didn’t drip and held its position, it was ready (and eaten off my finger)!

The vanilla icing was just a simple water icing but instead of water it was rum, milk and vanilla bean paste. When the chocolate was poured over it needed a little coaxing to drape down the sides, sometimes with a little help of a palette knife. The vanilla needed to be piped over the top on thin lines. With no particular pattern in mind I went with a simple (if slightly wobbly) lattice.

Proof is in the pudding
After watching the BBC An Extra Slice and seeing the reaction from the judging panel of Tom Aikens, Fay Ripley and Josh Widdicombe, I was a little apprehensive to how this cake would taste. It was a bit tough to cut, and a bit dry, just like in the show, so at least that was right :). As you can see from the photos I had all the layers, even if 1 or 2 may have been a little darker than others

Overall it was a lot of effort for an impressive looking cake but with minimal flavour. Dry, maybe cos it got left out, uncovered, but it still could have done with something else. If I was to make this again I would be tempted to drizzle over a lemon syrup after the final layer in cooked, similar to a lemon drizzle cake. But in hindsight I’m not sure I will be baking it again.