I recently bought Jane Brocket’s Vintage Cakes and the very first cake featured is marmalade cake. To me, it seemed like an easy recipe and a perfect cake to trial as a possible treat for my book club. Last Sunday night, still feeling sad about my cousin leaving, I whipped it up and noticed right away that it didn’t seem…right. The batter was really thick and didn’t look as dark as the cake in Ms. Brocket’s book. Well, I thought, it will darken in the oven. As you can tell from the photo below it didn’t darken at all and, in fact, when I took it to work one of my co-workers thought it was corn bread! The glaze also looked nothing like Ms. Brocket’s as I couldn’t get the confectioner’s sugar to dissolve in the orange juice no matter how much I stirred it so there are lumpy bits of sugar resting on top of the cake. It was also just a tad too dry.
The taste was, however, a success because it was really delicious. Not too sweet, like most American cakes, and the glaze might have looked ugly but it smelled and tasted like orangey goodness.
I did find this blogger who is doing a ‘Brocket Bakes’ series, which I think is an outstanding idea, and her cake looked very similar to mine (minus my gloopy glaze) so I am not too disappointed!
Have you had any baking fails lately?
A Certain Fondness 
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