Really, France? Gateaux de voyages? Cakes meant for travelling well, technically. I guess this could be considered a “loaf cake” or some sort of weird sub-genre like that, but basically its as I have said before -a cake is a cake…and I like cake, so I’ll go with you for now on this one, France. But its getting a little nuts with these numerous names.
Anyway, since these recipes are fairly simple and straightforward, any 2 month veteran of pastry school should be able to make these easily and therefore the 9 of us drew numbers and started in on the 13 recipes. I was deemed the Le Week-end baker. Fittingly, I might say. It was a Friday, I like week-ends and it’s a French word I can spell and pronounce! This cake and I started out strong.
Weighed out the day before and waiting for me when I walked into class, my ingredients were simple. Eggs, flour, sugar with lemon zest, butter and a couple of items for glazes. I got started and the batter was ready after a manner of minutes. Into the oven and out came…
Yeah, I wasn’t impressed. Chef was also confounded. We looked at the recipe, cut this guy open and saw a weird dense interior that can only be described as blob like. After looking at the other pastry class’s, I realized this was the intended outcome. This is a cake that could be wrapped in a hate note and thrown through a window. Not at all what I expected from a French pastry.
Luckily Chef had his own recipe (our recipe book was developed by the other class’s chef) and I gave this one a try, with a few tweaks of my own because this was certainly something that was open to interpretation and innovation.
Much better. It was fluffy, soft, smell faintly of lemon and I was much happier. I cut the top off and proceeded to icing this little sucker. I, of course, ate the two tops I cut off in class as not to waste.
The glaze soaks in and protects the loaf. Not the prettiest thing I’ve ever make, but it was delicious.
Here’s what the rest of my class made:
There’s marble cake, Dundee, brownies, raspberry cake, fruitcake, lemon cake…and lots more. And they certainly travelled well. They take a beating and still look the same. Granted, hard to really push around a dense loaf cake…