Wedding cake recipe trials

After my wedding cake work experience, I then headed back to the Emerald Isle to visit Ma and Pa Chan. During the last couple of weeks, I was pretty impressed by the cakes we were using to cover for wedding cakes - taking them out of the parchment that they were wrapped in would fill the kitchen with lovely smells of freshly baked fruit, carrot or lemon cakes and to be honest, they didn't taste bad either!! (I was then secretly wishing that I had used these recipes for the wedding cakes which I had made last year!!) Anyhoo, being back at home, meant that I could finally try out some of the recipes so I had a go at making a vanilla sponge, as well as a lemon version. Technically, not very challenging as they are just made using the creaming method....taste wise, they were OK but nothing exceptional (well, Ma Chan did say that my lemon cake tasted better than the version I had covered for a Father's Day cake on the masterclass!) Since I wasn't covering them for a wedding cake, they looked somewhat plain without any decoration and I was pretty embarassed (my French pastry snobbery background shining through!) at taking them to the restaurant to share with people. Nevertheless, people did enjoy them and even complimented me on how light they tasted so some consolation. On my final day of wedding cake work experience, we had a discussion about Rachel Allen and one of the other girls (also doing work experience) commented on how she felt that Rachel was a bit like a Home Economics teacher....an opinion also echoed by the founder of the cake company. All very well, I thought, but at least her recipes work and have yet to make me feel embarassed about my own baking so who looks the more likely Home Economics teacher now?? 

Lemon cake filled with lemon curd and lemon buttercream (buttercream also on the sides of the cake)

Vanilla sponge with fresh raspberries and vanilla marscapone cream - I preferred this to the lemon cake but the quantities for raspberries and cream were not enough, resulting in a "mean" looking cake, char!!