I wanted to make a special cake for Battenburg Belle’s birthday and this is the most special one that I know of. Claudette says to get hold of an angel cake and then give it the lemony treatment by making a lemon curd filling and a lemon icing dribbled over the top.
Angel cakes make no sense to us English folk. We don’t do them. I’d never seen one or eaten one, let alone attempted to make one before this project started. Now I know one thing for sure. You have to have the special METAL pan to make them in. Otherwise madness like this will happen…
I’ve had quite a few “fails” in the angel cake department, but a couple of months ago I succumbed to a special offer from Divertimenti and splashed out on an authentic angel food cake pan. It is the absolute business. I am hooked.
The resulting angel cake (made to Rita Hayworth’s very own recipe) was damn near perfect and I can’t wait for an excuse to use my pan again.
Here’s a picture of an angel cake a reader of the blog from Buenos Aires (no less) made to Rita’s recipe a while ago… He obviously has the right utensil too.
So here’s BB’s cake fancified with Claudette’s lemon curdesque filling and lemony pour over icing. I put little glasses of apricot brandy on top and five of us had a large slice each to celebrate the lovely Battenburg Belle’s birthday.
BB (who is the best cook I know) said it was lovely and I should be very proud of it (I was). My God-daughter Ringo said that it was “perfectly lemony” and wanted seconds. A few days later in the car she brought up the subject of the cake and pronounced it “amazeballs”. Ha ha! High praise indeed from a teenager who has home made confections at her fingertips every single day. Here’s a slice view.
Claudette’s directions for the two lemony additions that make her eponymous cake so good will be in the forthcoming book. But for now, here’s Rita’s recipe for the angel cake.
Thank you Rita, thank you Claudette – it’s a match made in heaven!
