Sticky Toffee Cake and a Bake Off

The Golden Fleece hosted the third annual Fleece Fest this bank holiday weekend and that meant it was time once again for the Great Birkenshaw Bake Off. 

My offering this year was to be a Sticky Toffee Cake and I set off down to pub full of hope yet these were soon to be dashed as cake upon cake arrived each looking better than the next. 

There seemed to be a common feeling in the air between this year’s bakers as similar recipe ideas kept cropping up, there were two chocolate orange cakes and even another sticky toffee cake to accompany mine. I knew I should have done that raspberry and pistachio cake that I had been planning.

Are you not going to take the bloody foil off?

There was new marking system in place this year, one which seemed to favour presentation and so although I had upped my decoration game this year, the piping even worked this time,  my cake still came up short.

Third places went to the Sticky Toffee Pudding cake, second to the Terry’s Chocolate Orange cake and the winning cake was the very elaborate fondant icing decorated ‘Down The Rabbit Hole Cake.’ 

As I was accompanied this year by both my mother and grandmother we took it up on ourselves to buy a slice of each of these winning cakes to take home to try. It turns out that I am a very harsh critic. 

I think he's trying mine

Does that look like a happy face? I can't tell

To make your own Sticky Toffee Cake you will need:

For the cake:

400g prunes/dates

500ml tea

250g butter

400g sugar

6 eggs

1tsp bicarb 

4tbsp golden syrup

500g self-raising flour

Start by preheating the oven to 180 degrees c and lining a deep cake dish with greaseproof paper. 

Finley chop the dates and prunes and soak in hot tea for about 10 minutes

Cream the butter and sugar

Slowly add to the mix your syrup, bicarb, eggs and fruit as well the flour, folded in a spoonful at a time. At this stage, I divided the mixture into two, one-half for the competition and the other half for my mother’s birthday cake. 

To this second batch, I also added 50g walnuts. 

Bake in the oven for 55 minutes (maybe longer depending on the size of the tin) or until it brings back and an inserted skewer comes out clean.