Red Wine Cake

[hmmm_tea]

Recipe as requested by chainmailmaiden:

250g Margarine
250g Flour
250g Sugar
1 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Cocoa
3 tsp Cinnamon
splash Vanilla Essence
100g Chocolate Chips
125ml Red Wine
5 Eggs (separated)

- Mix margarine and egg yolks

- Add dry ingredients. Mix well

- Add wine, egg whites and vanilla. Stir thoroughly

- Bake at 150C for 1.5 - 2 hours

Comments

[morganmuffle]

*adds to memories*

Always good to have new cake recipes and I've never seen a wine cake before!

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that end up a bit soggy? Not quite enough dry ingredients for a 5-egg cake (who uses metric for cakes? Or even imperial, come to that - just put in what seems right :-) ) plus it has a glass of wine on top...

Oh, I see - bake for 1 1/2 hours (!) instead of 20 minutes. I suppose that would dry it out a bit.

[chainmailmaiden]

who uses metric for cakes?
Young people :-P

I therefore generally use Imperial :-) I don't tend to measure stuff out for most of my cooking, but cake making is one of those areas where things can go quite wrong if you don't measure stuff. Admittedly if you don't measure the ingredients, the results are unlikely to be inedible, but they would probably be nicer if the correct proportions were used.

Very runny cake mixtures tend to produce very light moist results, so I wouldn't worry about the dry/wet ratio in this. You might get to taste it later in the year if I decide to bring one to Wightfrag - then you can make up your own mind.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Bah. 2oz-ish of each per egg (ie lump of butter, pile of sugar, spoonful of flour), dash of milk, other ingredients to taste. Bob's your uncle.

Following recipes is for LadyofAstolat and other Delia groupies. No good ever comes of being careful and precise in the kitchen - the food can smell your caution and gets uppity. Confidence is key.

[chainmailmaiden]

You are correct that 2oz per egg is the general rule when making a plain sponge cake. However what you should actually do, is weigh the eggs you're using and use an equal amount of the other ingredients. This is because that rule came about because eggs weigh about 2oz. I'm not normally that anal that I bother doing that, but the results are always good when I do. Certainly additives like choc chips etc. though should be added with a liberal hand and adjusted to taste.

Confidence is key

Definitely, if you start out thinking it's going to turn out wrong it probably will. I always expect the things I make will turn out well and taste very nice, so far they have. The trick though is knowing how to deal with things that haven't worked out quite how you expected, so no-one suspects that isn't what you intended in the first place :-)

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

You're getting into careful and precise. If they're big eggs you just add a bit more. You're not after exact amounts, you're after the right look and feel of the mixture once they're in.

I have actually been contemplating buying a new set of kitchen scales, and was going to get a classic two-pan set with weights simply to allow me to use the eggs as the weights :-) Then I started worrying that it wouldn't cope with mail terribly well (do you get sets of weights that go up to 20lb?) so I'm undecided.

[chainmailmaiden]

I do go by the look and feel of the mixture, however if you weigh precisely then it always looks and feels right :-)

Gosh, the difficulty of trying to decide which new scales to buy. Though hang on, you plan to use the same scales for weighing your rings and food stuffs such as flour/sugar etc. Eeww! Hope you plan to wash the pan well in between uses - sticky, floury mail would be horrible!

Oh, just remembered it's ok, you don't weigh your ingredients out :-P

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the fundamental problem.

I've been irritated for a while that the scales don't work, but as I never actually use them it's only a fairly low-key irritation. It also makes it hard to justify getting new scales, as I never ever buy anything that isn't going to be immediately and continually useful.

To be honest, I just want mail scales. The bathroom ones I got weren't accurate enough, so...

[chainmailmaiden]

May I suggest these:

http://www.scales-r-us.com/scales_info.php/products_id/783

They don't go up to 20lb but they do go up to 15lb 7oz and are ridiculously cheap for what they are.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

No, I need 20-25lb or more. I'm pretty sure my scales (that's the brass ones) come out at about 25lb, so I need to have a margin on top of that.

Fishing scales are probably the way to go, which is perhaps appropriate given that I want the scales to weigh the scales which are derived from fishing spinners.

[chainmailmaiden]

Thanks for posting the recipe, it sounds very nice - cinnamon, chocolate chips & red wine all in one cake mmmm ! *is in heaven*

I just went out to buy chocolate chips so I can make it tomorrow. This will probably make Bacchus very happy as he's always complaining I don't make him enough cake these days.