Home Sweet Home Bakealong 2: Almond Cake with Macaroon Top

2/100

Another cake that had I not been doing this Home Sweet Home bakethrough with Beckie would never have made it high enough up the to-bake list to grace the presence of my oven.

Does it look right?

I halved the ingredients in this cake as, quelle surprise, I hadn’t checked the amounts and didn’t have enough ground almonds. I thought about just using 100g instead of 125g for the top but the thought of failing completely on only the second in this epic 100 part series was too much and I went for a petite cake instead. A 7 inch loose bottom tin lined well around the sides to help getting the cake out. I wish I had piped the macaroon top on to make it look a bit more refined but hey – why break the habit of a lifetime – we all know may baking is on the happy-slapdash-side of things. I’m hoping that will change a bit with this challenge, but for the moment I shall content myself with a lovely cake  dainty in taste and sturdy in constitution.

Would definitely make this again …after the next 100!

If you halve the ingredients then the marzipan content is tiny, so I would suggest buying one of those little bars like Niederegger make, or wait until you are icing your christmas cake and nick a bit from that! I baked the cake for 35mins instead of 40 before I added the top, and then baked for 15more. It was still very moist.

Almond Cake with Macaroon Top

from Home Sweet Home by the Hummingbird Bakery

For the sponge
80g fine yellow cornmeal (mine was actually coarse but i hoped for the best and it was fine. I suppose it would have had a smoother texture but no one commented that it was grainy or anything.
80g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
115g unsalted butter, softened
50g marzipan
200g icing sugar
4 large egg yolks
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
60g sour cream
Fo the macaroon
2 large egg whites
125g caster sugar
125g ground almonds

You can find full instructions in the book or here and here.

Do join our bakealong – we may even start a linky if you sound enthusiastic. Here’s a badge to get you started:

Also linking to Cook Blog Share

Next week it’s Linzer cookies as made before by:

The Yorkshire Bakery

Rhiannon’s Bakes

After that it’s “black bottom pie”.