Tuesday 4 December 2012

Dan Lepard's Lime Syrup Marble Cake


I hadn't intended to bake this cake, from Dan Lepard's recent Guardian column, as the combination of lime and chocolate isn't very appealing to me, but the rest of the family persuaded me to give it a go. I'm glad I did, as this was a delicious cake with a wonderfully tender and delicate, crumb. However, I think it was so successful because the lime and rum flavours totally overwhelmed the flavour from the one tablespoon of cocoa used in the dark marbling. I feel that the marbling is for appearances, rather than flavour - this would have been just as good as a plain lime drizzle cake.

The recipe is easy to follow and quick to mix, as it uses oil, creme fraiche and melted butter, rather than a creaming method. I wasn't very happy with the marbling effects though - if I make it again I will use the traditional method of putting alternate spoons of batter into the baking pan. Making it Dan's way meant most of the marbling stayed in the top half of the cake.

The cake uses the zest of 5 limes, which makes it quite expensive, but I only used the juice from two of them to make the syrup. I think I will need to follow up Dan's suggestion of lime curd to use up the rest of the zestless limes!

I did use the rum in the soaking syrup, which added a greater depth of flavour and made the cake seem very tropical. I had the usual trouble of getting the syrup to soak into the holes I made - perhaps they weren't large enough, but I think large holes can spoil the appearance of a cake.

Everything considered, this was a wonderful cake and I'm pleased I was persuaded to make it.

9 comments:

Hello said...

Looks lovely, i've never had a marble cake. Yours look delicious, is there the recipe on the Guardian website? x

Chele said...

It looks so impressive. I really need to start buying the guardian!

Suelle said...

The link to the recipe is at the top of the post, Miss C Flash.

Anonymous said...

Sounds tasty, Suelle, but not nearly as pretty as your other marble cakes! :)

Katie said...

I saw this too. I love the marble effect you got. Maybe you could dye one part green instead of chocolate for a lime marble cake :)

Choclette said...

It sounds delicious, I do like lime and I like lime curd too, but I think needing so many limes just for the zest would have put me off as a good lime curd needs the zest too.

Snowy said...

Saw this recipe Suelle and wondered about making it, but after your post will definitely do so. Think your idea of leaving out the cocoa is a good one, if it doesn't add anything to the flavour.

Caroline said...

Glad it worked out well in terms of texture and lime flavour even if the marbling was a bit of a let-down (it still looks good though!). I've made marble cakes in the past and agree that you often can't get a very strong chocolate flavour - one of my favourite tricks is to add little bits of chopped chocolate to the chocolate portion of the batter. They don't seem to sink and give a good chocolate flavour. I'll have to bookmark this one, whether I do it as a marble cake or not.

Anne said...

I adore those chocolate lime sweets so your cake super appeals! Love the marbelling, is delicious!