Experimental Cookery 2015 #15: Mojito Genoise

It's Lady Chocolat's birthday tomorrow, and as a consequence I have baked her a cake!

The recipe for this one comes from Lorraine Pascale's "Baking Made Easy". It turns out, in the case of this cake anyway, the name is a bit of a lie!

The cake started well enough - I made up the Mojito syrup quickly and easily, and then started on the cake sponge. This required lots of whisking, first over a pan of hot water and then not, and went fine.

Then I had to fold in the melted butter and flour, and this was where it all went wrong. The problem I had was that the egg mixture filled my mixing bowl to the very brim, so folding anything in was very difficult - the whole thing went over the sides. Still, I did my best... sadly, this turned out not to be terribly good.

The cake then went into the tin, and at this point I discovered the poor mixing. I did my best to recombine it, but that knocked some air out of the mix, which wasn't ideal. Still, into the oven...

When it came out, I strongly considered binning it. It really didn't look good, and the thought of spending another hour on it was not appealing. It was a dark time.

But it turned out that although it didn't look too appealing, it actually did taste rather nice. So I did a bit of a trim, cooled it off, and decorated it. It wouldn't get anywhere on the Bake-off (other than a laugh or two), but it's a cake. And it's the thought that counts, right?

Anyway, here's the cake:

We'll try it tomorrow, but I'm hopeful that it tastes better than it looks. At least, I hope it does!

And, no, I'm not planning on doing this one again!