I felt it was a bizarre bake given how largely uncomplicated and boring it was at this stage of the competition, but at least it fell at a topical time! Plus, it looks pretty and tastes divine, so I can't really complain...
The original recipe can be found on the BBC Food website here, but as ever it's also below with my notes and photographs.
Ingredients:
For the cake:
350g/12oz red or natural glacé cherries, cut into quarters
1 x 225g tin pineapple in natural juice, drained and roughly chopped
350g/12oz ready-to-eat dried apricots, chopped (tip: using scissors to cut these is so, so much quicker than a knife, and given how much you have to prepare anything to save time at this stage helps!)
100g/3½oz blanched almonds, roughly chopped
350g/12oz sultanas
2 lemons, finely grated zest only
250g/9oz unsalted butter, softened
250g/9oz caster sugar
5 large free-range eggs, lightly beaten
250g/9oz self-raising flour
75g/2½oz ground almonds
For the almond paste:
250g/9oz ground almonds
150g/5½oz caster sugar
150g/5½oz icing sugar, sifted, plus extra for rolling
1 free-range egg (preferably pasteurised)
1 tsp almond essence
For the royal icing:
3 egg whites (preferably pasteurised)
675g/1lb 8oz icing sugar, sifted
Gel food colouring in dusky pink (pink) and autumn leaf (yellow)
For the fondant:
4 leaves gelatine
4 tbsp liquid glucose
1½ tsp glycerine
500g/1lb 2oz icing sugar
Gel food colouring in mint green (green)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 160C/140C Fan/Gas 3.
Grease a 23x15cm/9x6in rectangular cake tin and line the base and sides with a double layer of baking parchment. I bought this fancy tin years ago with the intention of making a Battenberg cake but I've never managed to actually bake one, or even take the tin out of the box... How fortuitous then, that the bakers seemed to use an extremely similar one on the show! It took a while for me to work out exactly how to connect all the sides properly, but once they'd all slotted into place I have to admit I was embarrassingly impressed with it: it's such a cool tin!
Put the cherries in a sieve and rinse under running water then drain well. Dry the pineapple and cherries very thoroughly using kitchen paper: try and squeeze out all of the moisture without squashing the fruit too badly.
Place all the fruits and nuts in a bowl with the lemon zest and gently mix together.
In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of flour to prevent the mixture curdling. Fold in the remaining flour and ground almonds.
Lightly fold in the fruit and nuts then pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin, making sure to level the surface.
Bake for 2 hours, or until golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. It also helps to cover the cake loosely with aluminum foil hat after 1 hour to prevent the top becoming too dark.
Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack. Be warned: this takes forever. I had my cake sat on a table by the open patio door to try and cool it quicker and it still took over 3 hours and it was still mildly warm when I lost all patience with it and started to cover it with the icing... I have absolutely no idea how the bakers did it in the time limit!
For the almond paste, mix the ground almonds, caster sugar and icing sugar in a bowl. Stir in the egg and almond essence.
Knead in the bowl to form a stiff paste but don’t over-knead as this will make the paste oily. Wrap in cling film and set aside.
For the royal icing, whisk the egg whites in a large bowl or a free-standing electric mixer with a whisk attachment until they become frothy.
Mix in the sifted icing sugar a tablespoonful at a time. (You can do this with a hand-held electric whisk but make sure to keep the speed low.) Beat the icing until it is very stiff and white and stands up in peaks.
Cover the surface of the icing with cling film.
For the fondant, place the gelatine, 2 tablespoons water, glucose and glycerine in a bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water and heat until the gelatine has dissolved (do not allow the water to boil or the gelatine to get too hot).
Make a well in the centre of half of the icing sugar, add the gelatine mixture and using a wooden spoon mix together.
Sieve the remaining sugar onto the work surface and tip the mixture onto it. Knead together until the fondant is smooth and pliable, and little by little, add green food colouring to the fondant to create a pale pistachio green colour. Wrap in clingfilm to prevent it drying out.
Roll out the almond paste on a work surface lightly dusted with icing sugar, to a rectangle slightly larger than the cake. Neatly cut out a 23x15cm/9x6in rectangle and place on silicon sheet / greaseproof paper dusted with icing sugar (this will enable you to slip the almond paste on top of the cake, once the cake has cooled).
Roll out the green fondant on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar, to a rectangle slightly larger than the cake. Neatly cut out a 23x15cm/9x6in rectangle and carefully place on top of the almond paste. Using a ruler and a sharp knife, lightly score the outline of a tennis court onto the fondant. Leave a 2cm gap around the edge and measure it all out from there.
Divide the royal icing equally between 3 bowls. Colour one bowl pale dusky pink (pink) and colour the second bowl a light gold colour (yellow), using the autumn leaf colouring. Leave the third bowl white.
Spoon most of the white royal icing into a piping bag fitted with a number 3 writing nozzle. Carefully pipe the outline of a tennis court. On a sheet of greaseproof paper or a silicon mat, pipe the outline of 2 small tennis rackets (approx. 5cm/2½in long) and a tennis net about 12x3cm/4½x1¼in (it should be the same width as the court you piped onto the cake). The recipe now calls for another piping bag fitted with a number 2 plain nozzle to pipe the strings of the tennis racket within the tennis racket outline and the strings of the net within the outline of the net. However, I couldn't be doing with this level of unnecessary detail so only used the one instead... Leave to dry until you can peel them off the paper - the freezer is probably your best bet here as they take forever to set. Mine weren't even close by the time I needed them so ended up scrapping the net and rackets and improvising!
Spoon the pink icing into a piping bag fitted with the number 8 star nozzle and spoon the gold icing into a piping bag fitted with the number 7 star nozzle. Using the pink and the gold icing, pipe a decorative border around the edge of the fondant.
When the cake has cooled, gently lift the decorative iced layer of almond paste and fondant onto the cake. I found that by this stage the icing had hardened, and when transferring it all to the cake the white tennis court lines all cracked and fell apart. I sort of rectified this by piping another line on top of them to stick them together, and while it's not as neat as I would have liked it's better than nothing!
Pipe a line of white icing across the middle of the tennis court. Peel the net off the greaseproof paper and stick it on the line of icing, so it stands up on top of the cake. Lay the iced tennis rackets on either end of the court and roll a small tennis ball from any leftover fondant. Safe to say, this didn't work for me at all! My fondant didn't set despite spending 2 hours in the freezer, so I improvised by piping tennis rackets directly onto the court (why wasn't this an option in the first place?!) and making a net with 2 cocktail sticks and a piece of ribbon. I wouldn't have won the challenge with that, but I hope I'd get points for creativity!
I don't quite know what to make of this. It took so, so long to make that I almost gave up half way through, and to be honest I don't think the end result is beautiful enough to merit so much faffing waiting around for the sponge to cool and making so many different types of icing! It seems very out of place - even taking into account Victorian week - as it's literally just a fruit cake?! How on earth was this meant to be challenging enough for week 7?! Don't get me wrong - I'll take it, it was success! - but still, it would have been nice to have felt pushed and like I'd vaguely learnt a new skill.
However, appearance and skills aside, this had to be the best fruit cake I'd ever made. If anything, it's probably helped by the fact that it's the first one I've made where it's not drowning in alcohol! The sponge was so light, and literally jam packed with fruit in the best possible way. Also, I was sceptical about the pineapple but it keeps the sponge super moist and sweet. I really don't want to sound obnoxious, but I'm ridiculously proud of how this turned out taste-wise!
So, what did you think of this Tennis Cake? Will you be giving it a go or leaving it in the nineteenth century? Do let mw know in the comment below!
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