Week 39 - Teisen Cariad (Love Cake)

This past weekend was a momentous one life wise and baking wise, it was my first wedding anniversary and I reached a baking milestone, I made pastry! Woopwoop!! On the 29^th of September 2012 I was lucky enough to marry my best buddy, in front of our wonderful friends and family, who had travelled from all around the world to celebrate with us in one of our favourite towns in the world; St Andrews in Scotland. This week I wanted to bake something to celebrate our anniversary and remind us of our special day. I was inspired by the Courting Cake as featured on the first week of this year’s series of the Great British Bake Off. http://www.lancashirelife.co.uk/food-drink/the_history_of_the_courting_cake_a_lancashire_tradition_1_1645135

You can read more about it in the article but basically ladies in Lancashire traditionally made a Courting Cake (a combination of Victoria sponge and shortbread with fresh strawberries and cream) as a token of love and affection for the man they were betrothed to. Well I thought that seeing as that ship had kind of already sailed I would look around to see if I could find any anniversary cake ideas, when I stumbled upon the Welsh Teisen Cariad or Love Cake which seemed to fit the bill.

http://recipewise.co.uk/teisen-cariad-love-cake

“Teisen Cariad is a traditional Welsh recipe for a ‘Love Cake’ a light apple and sponge cake – apples being the traditional symbol of love and desire in Celtic lands. Connla in Celtic mythology receives an apple which feeds him for a year, but each bite also gives him an irresistible desire to go off to the immortal lands with the beautiful and magical woman of the Faerie, who gave him the apple. In this, as well as many other cultures, and in many forms of art, the apple is often used as a symbol of love and sexuality.

In Wales ‘Teisen Cariad’ was baked for a special person, at valentines, or for weddings. It is a simple apple cake held in a thin shell of sweet, buttery, pastry. Served with a little whipped cream this cake is quite delightful”

Ingredients

Apple Puree

• 500g apples
• 50g sugar (as a guess I went for golden caster sugar)
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Sponge

• 85g caster sugar
• 85g butter (softened)
• 2 eggs
• 115g flour (as a guess I went for self raising flour)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 lemon (finely grated rind)

Shortcrust pastry

• 225g flour ( as a guess I went for plain flour)
• 115g butter
• 115g caster sugar
• a little milk
• lemon zest (finely grated rind from 1/4 lemon)

Icing

• a little lemon juice (1/4 tsp)
• a little water (1/4 tsp)
• 70g icing sugar

To serve

• 1 tbsp strawberry jam
• a heart shaped cutter
• 75 ml double (thick) cream (whipped lightly to serve)

Method

• Peel, core and slice the apples, put them into a saucepan with the 50g sugar and a little water. Stew the apples until they become soft (I had no idea how long this would take... I think it took about 20 minutes on a medium low heat in the end), then add the ground cinnamon and mix it in. Use the back of a spoon and push the stewed apples through a fine mesh sieve to make a puree (I tried to do this and while it did make a nice smooth purée it took AGES!! So I in the end I gave up and just mixed the rest of the apples into the purée because really life is too short and who is going to notice a slightly chunky apple! Also, I guess you could probably do this with a hand blender instead).
• Make the pastry by rubbing the softened butter into the flour, add the sugar, grated lemon zest, and mix with a little milk until a stiff paste is made which can be rolled out. Cover the pastry and chill in the fridge for twenty minutes, then roll out the pastry quite thinly.
• Line a buttered, shallow 20cm cake tin with the rolled out pastry (bottom and sides of the tin). Spread the cooled apple puree all over the bottom of the tin on the pastry base. (I really debated about baking the pastry on its own first - or ‘blind’ as it’s called in the baking world - before adding the apples, I really didn’t want to have a soggy bottom! But having never made pastry before I thought I’d better just stick to the recipe and hope for the best).
• In a mixing bowl cream the butter and caster sugar and grated lemon rind from the rest of the lemon, until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and lastly fold in the flour and baking powder. Spread this batter mixture carefully over the apples.
• Bake at 190C for 35 minutes (I baked the cake for quite a bit longer, more like 50-55 minutes, I just wanted to make sure to bake the crust properly), until the cake is springy but not dry – test it by inserting a skewer and see if it comes out clean. Take the cake out of the oven, (the sponge will continue to cook for a few minutes) and allow to cool. In a bowl blend the icing sugar with a little lemon juice and water to make an icing. Take the cake out of the tin and spread the thin icing over the top of the cake while it is still gently warm. Let this icing cool and set.
• Take a heart shaped object, like a cookie cutter, place this on the cake and dab in a little strawberry jam to make the heart shape.
• Serve slices of the cake with a spoonful of whipped cream.

Now as you will see that the recipe isn’t super detailed so it ended up being like my own mini Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge where they leave out some of the details to test you. This was a bit of challenge but I got through it and I conquered my fear of pastry which I think is a major win. I decided to approach it like riding a horse, I think someone told me once that they can sense fear so you just need to relax when you are riding so I did that with the pastry and just went with it. And you will be very pleased to hear that there wasn’t a soggy bottom in sight and the love cake was super tasty.

The Teisen Cariad was the perfect accompaniment to our anniversary celebrations and I would highly recommend it if you are looking to make someone a special treat to remind them of how much you love and care for them.

Happy anniversary to my lovely husband Dave. I also want to say a big thank you to all our friends and family for their cards, gifts, messages, love, support and hugs we are incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so much love, and now so much love cake!!

Happy baking xx Linds xx