Notes about Recipes in this book

• Fergus Henderson and Justin Gellatly’s seed cake and a glass of Madeira

  • bching on December 26, 2017

    Delicious cake and extra delicious, as the recipe promises, with a glass of madeira. It needed about an hour to bake in my oven. When I make this again, I will make no other changes!

• Yotam Ottolenghi’s fig, yogurt and almond cake with (or without) extra figs

  • Jane on September 07, 2017

    This is a lovely cake - it looks pretty (sorry, I forgot to take a photo) and tastes great. I was taking it to a picnic so I didn't do the extra figs - I'm sure it would be even more delicious with them. It's best eaten the day it's made. I had a couple of slices leftover and it was rather dense after a day in the fridge.

• Claire Ptak’s ginger molasses cake

  • MsMonsoon on December 04, 2017

    Dense, spicy and unbelievably moist! I didn't think a lemon icing would go well with a ginger cake, but it makes it so bright and herbal. Calls for lots of fresh ginger (5 oz.) pulverized in a food processor. I had to use more than the 2-3 teaspoons of lemon juice in the powdered sugar to make the icing. This cake is also dairy-free, except for greasing the pan with a bit of butter. The book recipe doesn't specify, but the dark cake in the photo and some online publications of this recipe indicate blackstrap, which is kind of surprising. I've done that, and regular Grandma's, but lately have been taking what I think is the middle ground and doing Lyle's black treacle.

• Claudia Roden’s orange and almond cake

  • Jane on November 06, 2016

    This is such a fantastic cake - moist, rich, fantastic almond and orange flavor. It probably lasts a long time (though I wouldn't know since it gets eaten in 2 days). The only time consuming thing is boiling the oranges for 90 mins (but unattended) and the cake takes minutes to mix together. I'm not surprised OFM put it into their 20 Best Cakes supplement.

  • Foodycat on September 21, 2018

    This is a great cake - and gluten free if you use GF baking powder.

  • chawkins on December 12, 2022

    Great cake. I cooked my oranges in the instant pot with 1/4 C of water for 30 minutes with natural release. I used the volume measure for the almond flour and the sugar which turned out to be 214 gms and 213 gms respectively, since my oranges were on the samll side, I left those be and baked the cake at 375F for 50 minutes. Probably should have check for doneness at around 45 minutes.