Merlyn (with a 'y')

"When he had listened to all this, Merlin went up to the King and asked: 'Why have my mother and I been brought into your presence?' 'My magicians have advised me,' answered Vortigern, 'that I should look for a fatherless man, so that my building can be sprinkled with his blood and thus stand firm.'  'Tell your magicians,' answered Merlin, 'that they'd be better served pouring me into a cake.'"¹

It's true: sprinkling the fatherless Merlin's blood over the building would not have steadied its foundation one bit, because the real problem was caused by a pair of dragons fighting beneath an underground pool.  Which is to say: it's not true at all.  Clearly.  That last bit about the cake, however, is especially untrue in that I made it up rather than Geoffrey of Monmouth or Nennius (with whom this episode - minus the cake -  first originated).  Nevertheless, pouring Merlyn (with a 'y') in a cake is tasty tasty tasty.  It's not the stuff of prophecy, but maybe it should be.

Merlyn (with a 'y') is a cream liqueur made by the Welsh distillery Penderyn.  It is delightful straight, but because I'm a fan of putting booze in cake, I couldn't resist...  The liqueur is made with cream, so it took no stretch of the imagination to think that it might taste nice in a whipped cream.  And because I love whiskey and chocolate, I decided to make a chocolate cake.  It also didn't hurt that I already had cocoa powder, and since I was operating in an ill-equipped dormitory kitchen, primarily with leftover ingredients, catering to what I could do (whip cream) and could use (chocolate) was key.  I used the chocolate cake recipe in the Recipe Box, but substituted self-rising flour for plain flour + baking powder.  I did get a bit extravagant, though, buying an entire container of baking soda for this one cake.  After the success of the self-rising flour in my yogurt cake, I had thought that I could get away with omitting baking soda from a chocolate cake.  I tried it that same week, and I was wrong.  More on that another time, perhaps...

Because I was using a tall, 6" cake tin, I halved the original recipe.  I was also short on liquid measuring tools (I had none), and so had to estimate measurements for the oil, buttermilk, coffee and Merlyn.  Because Merlyn wasn't in the original recipe, I allowed for it by dividing the amount of coffee and devoting half of it to the booze.

Guesstimation is an art, not a science...

The student kitchen was also lacking a mixer of any description, but thankfully one of my flatmates had brought one along from home.  It was a manual hand mixer, and this was the first time I'd ever used one to make a cake.  Surely, in the days before electricity, they were very effective; but that didn't stop me from being slightly afraid of a shaky foundation from a loose whipped cream.  So I sprinkled some Merlyn over it... just kidding.  Instead, I purchased extra thick heavy cream, thinking that it would make for a naturally firm whipped cream.  When I opened the lid of the stuff, it was so thick that I was worried it wouldn't whip at all!  I could have turned the container upside down and it would have hung in there like an aging rock star clinging to his youth.  In the end all my fears were unfounded: after a small learning curve, the manual mixer did the job very well, and the whipped cream was thick and fluffy and the leftovers (I know, leftovers! Don't worry, they were eaten...) never deflated.

I used the manual mixer on the cake batter too, and despite the lack of measuring tools and the use of a possibly-questionable oven, it baked well.

To finish the cake, I wanted to cover it in ganache.  The recipe for ganache is also in the Recipe Box.  Normally I just use a store-brand bar (or several) of dark chocolate, but the local store didn't have any, so I went for a pair of large Cadbury Bournville chocolate bars.  Candy bar chocolate can sometimes have a waxy texture that isn't that desirable to begin with, but which also doesn't translate well into ganache - it can go grainy or be temperamental when melting.  I'm no doctor of chocolate, but I suspect that's something to do with some additive designed to stop candy bar chocolate from melting.

The Bournville chocolate, however, works well.  It is a bit softer than darker chocolate, so I added more of it to the cream than I might have otherwise - about a bar and a half total.

Chocolate ribbons just starting to form.

While the ganache was setting, I got going on setting up the rest of the cake: splitting the layers, whipping the cream... that's it really; this was a gloriously simple cake!

After the ganache had set, I spread some on the bottom layer of cake to test my suspicions that it wouldn't be thick enough to pour over the whole thing.  It was not liquid by any means, but it was at this point that I decided to add the extra half-bar of chocolate.  If the ganache has already cooled when you decide to add more chocolate, melt the chocolate on its own and stir it into the prepared ganache.  If the ganache has been stored in the refrigerator, let it reach room temperature or warm it up in the microwave before adding the melted chocolate to prevent it from freezing up.

Merlyn cake: surely the recipe was in the Liber Vetusissimus or somewhere.  Geoffrey probably just didn't have a sweet tooth.

¹Thorpe, trans., Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, p. 168, except for the bit about the cake.  There's some weird stuff in Geoffrey, especially in and around the Merlin material, but cake is not one of those things.

Pop-up Ty 2: Teisen mewn Tafarn

Not far from where the girls of Llanbadarn once rebuffed the poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, I carried a birthday cake into a pub and hoped not to cause my own trafferth or 'commotion' - one of the fire alarm/indoor sprinklers variety.

You see, the cake was a birthday cake, and you can't have a birthday cake without candles.  Unfortunately where there are candles there is fire, and when that fire is inside a building it is often followed by an unsolicited cold shower.  Perhaps not if the birthday boy or girl requires only one or two or three candles, but this one required considerably more... which is, after all, why the celebration took place in a pub in the first place.

In this edition of Pop-up Tŷ, I set up shop in a friend's borrowed caravan.  He assured me that the caravan was equipped with a cake pan and an oven, so all I needed to do was purchase ingredients.  In the name of simplicity (and because I was working with a loaf tin), I opted for a recipe by Ina Garten for lemon yogurt cake.  A lemon drizzle cake is an easy option for baking in a loaf tin, but the idea to use yogurt was inspired by the delicious natural Llaeth y Llan I'd picked up the day before.  Mixed with a bit of jam and muesli and you'll almost forget about cake... just kidding.  It's good, but nothing is that good.

This was my first go at making a cake with yogurt, and it was also the first time I opted to use self-rising flour.  I did so with much trepidation.  With self-rising flour you simply don't have the same control over your ingredients that you do when adding the rising agent or agents yourself, but since baking powder alone would have cost as much as the flour, and there would have been far more of it than I needed for my Pop-up Tŷ, I picked up the self-rising flour and popped it in the basket.

In the end I altered Ina's recipe in part intentionally, in part incidentally (the self-rising flour) and in part accidentally.  My version can be found in the Recipe Box.  Note the addition of a raspberry swirl (intentional) and the removal of salt (accidental).  Because I used butter and not oil, as called for in the original recipe, I also changed the method.  I began by creaming the butter and sugar together, which I hoped would also give the cake an extra boost if the self-rising flour failed.  Creaming creates tiny air pockets in the butter, which adds volume to the cake.  I don't know if it actually had any hand in the success of the raising of this particular cake, however, as I left the bowl too close to the hot oven and the butter began to melt fairly rapidly.  Next I added the zest, and then beat in the eggs followed by the yogurt.  Finally, combine the self-rising flour with this mixture.

Pour one third of the batter into the prepared tin; I lined the tin with parchment in addition to greasing it, but simply greasing and flouring it is an option.  On top of this layer, dollop about a tablespoon or so of raspberry jam.  I tried to dollop it in a pattern that I thought would enhance the swirl, but it's not necessary (and perhaps not effective...).  Pour a second third of the batter on top of this layer, and repeat the jam process.  Top it off with the final third of batter.

After all the batter was in the tin, I swirled a skewer through it.  This process did create a bit of a swirl, but the technique needs perfecting.  While the cake is baking, prepare the drizzle by measuring out approximately 1/3 cup of confectioner's sugar and mixing it with the juice of your lemon.  I used the juice of about one half of the lemon; the drizzle should be runny, but you also do not want it to be too thin if you want it to drip nicely and hang on the cake.

Despite my apprehensions, the self-rising flour seemed to do a fine job of raising the cake.  The caravan oven also produced a nice result; any unknown oven can turn out to have unexpected quirks, but this one seemed to be a steady worker and didn't cause any problems with the bake.  I wish I could say the same for my dormitory oven, but that's a story for another time...  I also learned something new at this Pop-up Ty: the Gas Mark is indeed a scale that people use (it was a first for me!), and if you want to bake a cake, chances are you'll want to be set to mark 4 - maybe mark 3 if you're taking the low and slow approach.

A Pop-up Ty, a car delivery through the windy roads of Wales, fire in the pub, and no trafferth... Iechyd da!