How gorgeous are these mini Madeira cakes? They were made by Jenna from Tinyfootsteps.co.uk for our ‘Bake With Bake Off’ competition and everyone at Silver Mushroom was left with rumbling tummies at their sight.
If you didn’t catch last week’s Bake Off, you absolutely missed out! The new team of bakers were tasked with creating the perfect Madeira cakes and whilst we’re biased, we think our Silver Mushroom bakers made some treats to rival this year’s contestants, particularly so in Jenna’s case. Mary Berry would be proud!
As the winner of the first week of our BWBO challenge, Jenna has won a gorgeous set of Mason & Cash bake tins. However, we doubt there will be any cakes left to actually store in the tins as they look good enough to eat straight away!
To say that Jenna has never attempted to make these cakes before, we were amazed by how great they looked. We also loved the simple icing and lemon drizzle combo. You just can’t beat the classics, can you?
Jenna has also kindly allowed us to share her winning recipe for you to recreate these mini Madeira loaf cakes at home. Get your oven mitts at the ready, it’s time to get baking!
Ingredients
4 medium-sized eggs
250g of butter, softened
290g of plain flour
130g of icing sugar
1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 lemon
1 tablespoon of milk
Icing sugar (made to your taste)
Method
- Grab your loaf tray and line with a little butter to grease the sides down and line them with baking paper. Whilst doing this, preheat your oven to 170 C (fan oven).
- Beat your sugar and butter together to bind. You can do this by hand but using a mixer is much quicker!
- Gradually add your eggs one by one with your milk and vanilla extract. Don’t worry about how your mixture looks at the moment, once we add the dry ingredients it will soon look much more like tasty cake batter.
- After you’ve combined your wet ingredients, you can add the zest of your lemon and sift in your flour and baking powder. Take it slow and ensure every ounce is well beaten into the mixture.
- Separate your mixture into each section of your tray and remember, this cake rises! You certainly won’t need to fill them all the way to the top, especially if you want the trademark golden cracks that every Madeira cake should have.
- Bake your cakes for around 30 minutes, or until they’re a gorgeous golden brown shade.
- Leave them to completely cool on a baking rack before adding your icing! This is vital because if you put icing on to a warm cake it will simply melt into the cake.
- To make the icing sugar, we’ll be using the juice of a lemon, instead of water, for a gorgeous zingy hit! Juice your lemon and ensure all the pips are removed. Gradually add a little icing sugar to thicken your mixture until you have some smooth icing to adorn your cakes.
So there you have it, our first winning recipe! We hope you have fun recreating Jenna’s cakes. Don’t forget to join us over at the #BWBO chat 9pm-9:30pm on Wednesdays to get some more top tips and Bake Off gossip with our brilliant blogger bakers!
