Spelt, Lemon and Maple Drizzle Cake

This is a recipe from January's Waitrose Food magazine, and can be found online here. There were so many things wrong with this cake that I almost didn't bother doing a post about it! However, it's flavour was wonderful, which almost made up for all the things which went wrong. I say 'almost' because, if  I can't work out what went wrong, I won't be making it again, as it was quite an expensive cake to make.

So, what went wrong?

• the cake took 10 minutes longer to cook than the longest time that the recipe suggested
• it didn't rise much
• although it eventually tested as properly cooked, the cake sank in the middle as it cooled; however the area immediately beneath the dip didn't really look under-baked, just a little moist from the drizzle used
• the texture was stodgy, rather than just moist, perhaps because the cake hadn't risen properly
• despite seeming stodgy, the cake was also quite fragile - slices crumbled easily when handled

I have to confess that I made one change to the recipe - I didn't have white spelt flour so used a 50:50 mix of wholemeal spelt and plain wheat flour. 

The cake ingredients were:

190g unsalted butter

190g white spelt flour

2 large eggs

2tsp baking powder

3 lemons - zest of all 3 and juice of 1

180ml maple syrup

After beating the butter until it is soft and creamy, all the other ingredients are beaten in until well blended. The batter is then transferred to a large (900g/2lb) loaf tin and the cake is baked for 35-40 minutes at 180C/Gas 4. (Or 50 minutes, in my case!)

When the cake is cooked, and while it is still hot, it is pricked with a skewer and drizzled with 70g of caster sugar mixed with the juice and zest of 1 lemon. The cake is then cooled completely in the tin. The magazine recipe also makes candied lemon slices to decorate the top, but I didn't get to that stage.

So, why did things go wrong? I'm not sure under-baking was a factor, as the central part of the cake, under the dip, didn't look or taste as if it wasn't cooked. I think what might have happened is that the acidity of the lemon and the maple syrup affected the efficiency of the baking powder, possibly causing the carbon dioxide to be released too quickly. This could perhaps be overcome by adding a little more alkali, in the form of baking soda, to balance the acidity. This theory seems to be borne out by the fact that three recipes I found online, all using a large amount of maple syrup, added half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda along with the baking powder.

I'm going to give this cake one more attempt, trying to get hold of white spelt flour and adding bicarbonate of soda, as the combination of lemon and maple syrup gave such a great flavour. If that doesn't solve the problems I'll have to give up - a cake using 180ml maple syrup is too expensive to keep experimenting with!