Week 18: Cherry passion fruit cake & call for submissions!

[for call for submissions: scroll down]

This week, we're making cherry passion fruit cake:

Normally, I make these recipes at the weekend and then put them in the blog on auto-update. Not this one. I made this one today, and took the pictures just minutes before writing this. It was quite stressful, seeing how if it failed, it would mean I missed an update - the original plan for this week was another dish that did fail, so there was some pressure. I'm going to try and create a buffer to avoid that situation in the future!

It didn't fail, it's absolutely delicious, and as far as I'm concerned you should all try it. However, it's not exactly the standard I hope to live up to when recreating these recipes - i.e. it doesn't look like the in-game picture. I've adjusted the recipe a small bit already to rectify that: because there wasn't as much passion fruit jelly in the end as I had hoped for, but didn't want to use even more not-exactly-cheap passion fruit, I have adjusted the recipe accordingly, based on a recipe from the Viennese Hotel Sacher. As for the rest, I plan to make this cake again and update the pictures and recipe accordingly. When I do, I'll be making it in an 20 or 18 cm cake tin as I think that will give a more aesthetically pleasing result, but as it is I recommend a 23 cm tin if you're going to try this as I'm not sure of the baking time for a smaller one yet.

Cherry passion fruit cake

Ingredients:

175 butter, soft

170 g sugar

1 sachet (8 g) vanilla sugar

Pinch of salt

3 eggs

250 g self-rising flour (or flour with the appropriate amount of baking powder)

2 tblsp milk

175 g cherries from a pot

8 passion fruits

50 ml passion fruit juice (store bought, unsweetened) or orange juice (preferably) fresh

Jam sugar

2 tblsp corn starch

Preheat the oven to 165 degrees Centigrade.

Drain the cherries well, preserving the juice or syrup. Mix the butter with the caster sugar, vanilla sugar and a pinch of salt until the mixture is light and smooth. Mix in the eggs one at a time, then continue beating for 5 minutes. Sieve in the flour and add the milk. With a spatula, combine the mixture until it is just smooth but no longer! Put approximately 1/3 of the batter into a different bowl. Mix the pulp of 2 passion fruits with the 1/3 of the batter, and the drained cherries with the other 2/3 of the batter. Spread the passion fruit batter over the bottom of a well-greased round baking tin with a 23 cm diameter. Pour the cherry batter over the top, and spread out evenly. Bake in the middle of the oven for 80 minutes or until a cake pin inserted in the middle comes out clean. Take out of the oven and leave to cool. Do not remove from the tin.

Measure the cherry juice. Reserve 3 tblsp of the juice in a separate bowl, and combine the rest of the juice with 1/3 as much jam sugar as juice (e.g. 1 cup cherry juice=1/3 cup jam sugar) in a small pan. Bring the sugar/juice mixture to the boil. Meanwhile, mix the corn starch with the 3 tblsp of reserved juice to a smooth paste. When the cherry juice is boiling, add the corn starch mixture. Bring to the boil again, and continue to boil for 1-2 minutes. Then, turn off the heat and leave the cherry jelly to cool, stirring occasionally to avoid a skin forming (which will form lumps when poured out). When the jelly is thick and sticky but still liquid, pour it out over the cake (which should have cooled down to near-room temperature, but should still be in the tin). Spread the jelly over the cake; it's okay if it runs over the sides, but make sure the top is covered. Place the cake in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Put the pulp of the remaining 6 passion fruits in a blender and pulse a few times, than sieve into a bowl. Measure the remaining juice. Reserve 3 tblsp of the juice in a separate bowl. Combine the rest of the juice with 1/3 as much jam sugar as there is juice (e.g. 1/2 cup passion fruit juice = 1/6 cup jam sugar) and the passion fruit/orange juice. Bring the mixture to the boil in a small pan. Meanwhile, mix the corn starch with the 3 tblsp of reserved juice to a smooth paste. When the passion fruit juice is boiling, add the corn starch mixture. Bring to the boil again,  and boil for 1-2 minutes. Leave to cool, stirring occasionally to avoid a skin forming (which will form lumps when poured out). When the jelly is thick and sticky but still liquid, remove the cake from the fridge (checking that the cherry layer has set) and pour the passion fruit jelly over the cake. Make sure the whole top is covered. Place the cake back in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Serve straight from the fridge or bring individual slices to room temperature first. Enjoy!

Tip: Passion fruit can be expensive. For the jelly layer, you can use store-bought passion fruit juice or passion fruit lemonade jellified with gelatine rather than sugar

Important announcement/call for submissions: There will be no update from me next week, as I am moving house and do not have a kitchen yet! However, if you, the readers, want to submit a recipe, please do so to guildwarschef [at] gmail [dot] com. Only rules are it must be written at least in English, and it must be a recipe that is found either in the original Guild Wars (e.g. drake kabob) or Guild Wars 2. It can also be your own take on a recipe that has already been featured on the blog. Adding a picture (or several) is highly recommended. Don't forget to include your name (i.e. the name you want published here) and, if applicable, link to your own site/blog/whatever.

 I'll be really grateful if I get a submission that I can put up to compensate for next weeks lack of update; if I get more than one, I'll just choose one and make a list of acknowledgments with links of the others. Thanks!