Memorable cakes

[RubyToogood]

Inspired by Biddlybee. What cakes really stand out in your memory?

One really memorable one for me was a two layer chocolate sponge with chocolate buttercream. It was, and still is, a favourite of my next door neighbours. I made one for them after Mrs Next Door Neighbour died of cancer, and handed it to Mr NDN over the back fence. He butterfingered it and it went splat on his patio. That lightened the mood. (I made them another one).

Cakes of my childhood: the chocolate refrigerator cake that my mother used to make for birthdays in the shape of our initials, and my granny's coffee and walnut cake. Coffee and walnut is my favourite cake flavour to this day. My mother's awful Xmas cake that was always burnt on the outside.

More recently, scaffolding plank pudding: my niece made an incredibly long pavlova one Boxing Day that had to be served on a plank.

 

[weltweit]

My mum used to make chocolate biscuit cake which I loved, never knew how she made it.

 

[pseudonarcissus]

Royal Teas on Royal Hill in Greenwich used to make a cracking marmalade cake. Unfortunately it was discontinued years ago

 

[May Kasahara]

The warm hazelnut sponge I was served in a south of France restaurant one hot summer night, with a roasted peach and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

 

[Nivag]

The one from Brass Eye

 

[weepiper]

My mum used to make a delicious moist lightly spiced apple cake which she called 'half pound apple cake' because the recipe called for half a pound of everything. There was also an upside down coffee cake which was very good. Our birthday cakes were chocolate buttercream iced hedgehog cakes with chocolate button spines when we were small, then when we were older, triple chocolate sponge cakes with whipped cream and sliced strawberries or kiwi fruit in-between the layers.

 

[StoneRoad]

I make a mean spice / fruit loaf aka crimble cake, using the recipe that my Great Aunt taught my mother. With their help I adapted it to a non-alcohol version as a teenager. I use this for family birthday cakes, as well.
The most memorable were ones I made & iced for my late father's birthdays, when he was in his nineties.

There are two cakes I used to make a lot and have the fondest memories about, those would be butter shortcake and the family flapjack recipe.

 

[Rebelda]

My mum made me a snowman cake for one of my very young birthdays. I think she regretted asking me what kind of cake i wanted but she did it. It was blue. I will dig out the very 80s photos when I'm next there.

Chocolate orange cake my best friend's mum makes for birthdays. She makes it in a square tin and to this day there are fights over who gets a corner.

Carrot cake loaf with fudgy orangey icing that Biddlybee made me ?for my birthday. It was smuggled to me like contraband at a picnic and I didn't share it

Chocolate marrow cake made by JTG this summer. Phwoar.

 

[Numbers]

The very first time I met my wife was in a cake shop on the Strand, in 1989. After she finished her shift we hung out on Victoria Embankment smoking hash eating Custard Tarts and Coffee Cake.

 

[slowth]

The one my missus made for my mate after he had an operation to cure his piles.

 

[Miss-Shelf]

In 1982 the Pope came to visit Liverpool. My Catholic family (and many others) got very excited. Looking up the year, I see news reports say 1 million people lined the route from the airport to the cathedral. We got given a holy medal in school.
Like loads of households, my nan decorated her front window in Papal colours and put up a poster of him that was given away in the Catholic Pic (newspaper ) and Echo.

Anyway, my mum ordered a cake advertised as a Papal gateaux. We lived in a road that had a similar address to a nearby road. The papal gateaux man tried to deliver it to the empty property in that road with the same number as ours. He was banging on the door and he was quite a hefty bloke.

At the same time at our house, a man had been banging on our door and my mum called the police as he tried to pull a knife on my dad a few weeks earlier. ( My dad used to teach him, he had psychotic episode and believed my dad had brainwashed him. Maybe he had. It was a Catholic school)

Anyway the police also went to the wrong road, arrested the big bloke knocking on that door and brought him to our door to verify that we'd ordered a cake.

We had ordered a cake. It was a very nice cake with loads of layers and lemon sponge cream filling and it was yellow and white. Probably the fanciest cake we'd had at that time. And very memorable for its police escort.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

That’s like a scene in an excellent film that I want to see every time I think of it Miss-Shelf .

It’s got everything, plus Papal gateaux.




The first and greatest cake that springs to mind for me is the triple layer coconut cake my granny used to make.

Three layers of angel sponge, delicately soused with fresh coconut milk, layered with coconut butter icing, iced with shiny white coconut cream icing feathered up into little peaks. So sweet it would make my teeth squeak, so coconutty that the smell would pervade the house til it was finished, so rich and big and tall (three layers!) that it took a week to eat it. She made it when we kids visited her home once a year (she lived in America).

She also made excellent walnut brownies, which buffered the disappointment of finishing the cake.

 

[Miss-Shelf]

That’s like a scene in an excellent film that I want to see every time I think of it Miss-Shelf .

It’s got everything, plus Papal gateaux.




The first and greatest cake that springs to mind for me is the triple layer coconut cake my granny used to make.

Three layers of angel sponge, delicately soused with fresh coconut milk, layered with coconut butter icing, iced with shiny white coconut cream icing feathered up into little peaks. So sweet it would make my teeth squeak, so coconutty that the smell would pervade the house til it was finished, so rich and big and tall (three layers!) that it took a week to eat it. She made it when we kids visited her home once a year (she lived in America).

She also made excellent walnut brownies, which buffered the disappointment of finishing the cake.

That is a lush cake so evocatively rendered here

 

[belboid]

My Auntie Jean's Chocolate Mocha Cake.

At least i think that that's what it was. Rich and gooey, filled with deliciously amazing butter cream. I've tried to recreate it myself, but only with one real success, and I can't remember what recipes I'd cobbled together to do so.

I'd made it for my work colleagues, and one was desperate for the recipe, so it was kind of lucky that I couldn't entirely fathom it out as it was only when I went home after everyone had praised it that I realised the jam I'd used was lovely because of its 4% alcohol - and half my work colleagues were muslim.

 

[A380]

My aunt makes a frozen Christmas pudding style cake. I've got the recipe and have tried to make it. Mine just comes out quite nice, hers is like heaven.

 

[Saffy]

Cake memories are the best.
My nanna made the best cakes. She never used a scale and they always turned out beautifully. They were just normal every day cakes but they were perfect. One I try to recreate is an ginger cake with an orange glace icing.

My sister's wedding cake was magnificent. It was the first wedding cake I'd had which wasn't a dense fruit cake.
It was a 6 layer vanilla sponge sandwiched with fresh fruit and cream. It was covered with fondant icing and had fresh cream and fruit to decorate.
We managed to get the top tier home in a suitcase from Cairo and I'm almost positive someone was paid off to allow this to happen.

 

[Aladdin]

My mam used to make 4 layer black forest gateaux for really special occasions. Maybe once a year?
She bought proper maraschino cherries (albeit tinned) and kirsh.
I used to get the job of grating the chocolate.
It was the most delicious, moist , melt in your mouth cake.

 

[maomao]

When my daughter wanted a butterfly cake for her birthday and we stayed up late making one that was cut out in the shape of the butterfly (cut in four pieces then turned inside out). Then when she saw it she just shouted 'no! I wanted a round cake with a PICTURE of a butterfly on it!'. That was memorable.

 

[purenarcotic]

There was a cafe where I grew up which was run by two French Canadians. He was a pastry chef and all the cakes / tarts etc were home made by him every day. There was a chocolate layer cake which was incredible. Mixture of mousse and sponge and wafer. Just unreal, it closed when I was still in primary school but I can remember it now. Just lush.

 

[killer b]

My dad makes the best cakes (he actually does, it's not just that he's my dad) and I have countless cake memories as a result. Most recently from towards the end of lockdown in the summer, when we were allowed to go into each others gardens but not each other's houses. He made a ginger cake (this one from Elizabeth David) and it was so exceptionally rich and moist and sweet and delicious... I sat in the porch in the sunshine with a cup of tea and this slice of cake, and as I came towards the end of it I actually filled with deep sadness that the slice would be finished. The last mouthful was so bitter-sweet.

 

[RubyToogood]

My dad makes the best cakes (he actually does, it's not just that he's my dad) and I have countless cake memories as a result. Most recently from towards the end of lockdown in the summer, when we were allowed to go into each others gardens but not each other's houses. He made a ginger cake (this one from Elizabeth David) and it was so exceptionally rich and moist and sweet and delicious... I sat in the porch in the sunshine with a cup of tea and this slice of cake, and as I came towards the end of it I actually filled with deep sadness that the slice would be finished. The last mouthful was so bitter-sweet.

Could you not have had a second slice?

 

[Bwark]

My mam used to make 4 layer black forest gateaux for really special occasions. Maybe once a year?
She bought proper maraschino cherries (albeit tinned) and kirsh.
I used to get the job of grating the chocolate.
It was the most delicious, moist , melt in your mouth cake.

Maraschino cherries ARE preserved, they are not a thing you pick off the tree. Having said that, black Forest gateaux is a thing to worship

 

[ViolentPanda]

Maraschino cherries ARE preserved, they are not a thing you pick off the tree. Having said that, black Forest gateaux is a thing to worship

They're usually in jars though, not in tins.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Got to be Greebo's "Chocolate Quintessence Cake", so-called because it used 5 different chocolates in the recipe. Lovely, but very rich.

Also, Greebo's nan's Bara Brith.

 

[Elpenor]

Also, Greebo's nan's Bara Brith.

I loved my nan’s Bara Brith as a kid. Although looking back now she was actually renowned in the family for being a terrible cook so I’m starting to think it wasn’t made by her

My other grandma’s fruit cake bore a striking resemblance to Mr Kipling Manor House cake

 

[moose]

I've never met a cake I didn't like.

 

[Badgers]

Parkin

 

[Little Piranha]

My mum used to make me a cake for my birthday every year that was decorated like an island. It had a little stream and waterfall of blue icing, Match Maker fences, dolly mixture boats and a little paper tent. I loved it every time. It was from an epic 70s party cake book of my grandma's that I used to ask to look through every time I was there. Those soft focus pictures of cakes with crazy decorations never got old.

 

[Johnny Vodka]

My mum used to make chocolate biscuit cake which I loved, never knew how she made it.

Is that a fridge cake? My gran used to make that. Must be easy enough to find a recipe.

 

[Edie]

My memorable cake story was when my son went to cub camp. He didn’t last long in cubs- less than a term before he got asked to leave, cos he was struggling with his behaviour at that age (about 8?). Anyway, he got to go on this one camp and he had to take a cake.

Obviously I’d never baked a cake or even seen a cake being baked (my family weren’t like that we had Kipling stuff), and this was before Bake Off (after that baking seemed to go mainstream and actually now I have taught myself to bake two kinds of cake). But there was no chance then I could so I went to the garage on the way to get a packet of Oreos and a Jamaican Ginger Cake (these are The Best cake imo) and some fags.

When I got home I realised that somehow in the kerfuffle of getting him out the car with his stuff etc Id given him the garage bag with everything in it. So at nearly midnight I had to ring the Akela mobile hotline to tell her there was 20 B&H gold in with a Jamaican Ginger Cake in dorm two It was not a parenting highlight!!