Tunis cake

Now James Martin is one of my favourite chefs and his Chocolate Coca Cola cake is a favourite in our family and at parties and can be found here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolatecolacake_7614

He has a new series on the Food channel called 'United Cakes of America' but having watched the first four I'm a little disappointed.  For the first part of each half of the show he visits an American baker and sees their speciality in action then for the second halves he's back in his kitchen making something similar from his own repertoire.  Yes they're good but I really want to see how to make the American stuff.  I was also really surprised when he didn't seem to know what a bundt tin was.  American bundt cakes are a category of their own but the tins can be a bit expensive. A good source of recipes is the Bundt Cookbook by Nordic Ware who also make the tins.  I've just checked and its currently out of stock on Amazon but worth looking for.

Today however I made a cake from a recipe I wrote by hand in the back of a cookbook about 38 years ago and have never made.  It came out perfectly which proves that a good recipe never ages and so here it is...

 

TUNIS CAKE

 

 

• 3oz ground almonds
• 6oz softened butter
• 6oz sugar
• 3 eggs
• grated rind of one lemon
• 8oz plain flour
• 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
• milk

 

Preheat the oven to gas 3/170c/325f

Grease and line a cake tin.  My recipe didn't specify so I used an 8" loose bottomed tin.  Use a smaller radius if you want a taller cake.

Cream the butter, sugar and lemon juice till soft and fluffy.

Beat the eggs and add them gradually to the mix.

Fold in the dry ingredients with a metal spoon

Add enough milk to make a dropping consistency

Turn the mixture into the tin then bake in the middle of the oven for about an hour until cooked.

It should look like this...

 

Now the original recipe called for a topping of plain chocolate but experience shows that this will tend to crack when you cut it so I made a simple ganache by melting 200g of plain chocolate with 100ml of double cream and beating them together.  Let it cool and thicken a little then just pile ,it on top and let it ooze down.

The cake has a delicate lemon flavour and the combination with the plain chocolate may not work for everyone.  I think it would be just as good with no topping or maybe just icing.
As you see, its going down well!