Old fashioned golden cake

Mother's day is upon us. To spoil my mom I will bake her a cake - even though she is far away in Klerksdorp. My husband and I and my mom in law will flatten the cake in two ticks. For us, a Sunday without cake is like a curry without spices. The story of the cake and the recipe will be my mom's gift in the end. She will bake the cake herself and tell me all about it in return. The same cake will be baked for her friends and those happy stories I will also hear. That is why I love my mom so so very much.

I had in my fridge an alarming amount of egg yolks patiently waiting to be put to good use. This, after too many macarons, pavlovas, Swiss meringue butter cream and Italian Meringue was made in The Hunt House Kitchen recently. I remembered reading about a golden cake in my old treasured Betty Crocker recipe book and thought combining this recipe with a custard filling should get rid of a good few lonely yolks.

Of course I tweaked the recipe a bit, as I always do, and I was quite impressed with end result. I am an almond nut - if you are not - use the almond essence very sparingly or simply use vanilla in stead.

The sponge baked perfectly as usual in my Lofra oven
 Use the thermofan setting. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

 

The cake
125g unsalted butter, softened and at room temperature
300g castor sugar
5 jumbo egg yolks (100g)
5ml almond essence (2,5ml possibly also good enough)
300g self raising flour
5ml salt
250ml milk, at room temperature

1. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the egg yolks one by one. Whisk well after each addition and continue whisking to dissolve most of the sugar or all if possible. Also add the almond essence.
2. Sift the flour and salt 4 times.
3. Fold the dry ingredients alternately with the milk into the egg mixture. Mix lightly until just combined and lump-free.
4. Divide the mixture between  the two prepared tins.
5. Bake for 30 minutes. Test and remove to cool completely before removing cakes from the tins.

For the filling
500ml full cream milk
5 jumbo egg yolks (100g)
50g castor sugar
25g corn flour
25g cake flour
A good pinch salt
flavour to taste, in this case a drop or two of almond essence
375ml cream
50ml icing sugar
5ml vanilla
100g ground almonds, roasted lightly

1. I first bring the milk to boiling point. Use a thick bottomed pot.
2. Then, in a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, corn flour, cake flour and salt.
3. Whisk in the hot milk and return to the stove. Cook the custard on medium heat. Taste and flavour.
4. Refrigerate to cool or cool in an ice bath. It should be a really thick custard when cold.
5. Whisk cream till soft peaks, sweeten with icing sugar and flavour to taste. Fold the cream into the cold custard custard.
6. Cut each layer of cake in half and layer with custard cream and dusted liberally with roasted almond dust.

Recipe and styling: Kanya Hunt
Photography: Jaun Haas Photography