Series 6, Episode 7, Tennis Cake

A tennis cake is a Victorian era fruit cake decorated with a tennis court on the top. Here’s the recipe I used for it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tennis_cake_09325

I’m not normally a fan of fruit cake so I haven’t made one before. I was looking forward to seeing how well I could make a tennis net out of royal icing that I’d made myself, but not really excited about eating the cake.

All of the fruit needed for this cake meant that it was probably the most expensive cake I’d ever made, not even including the ingredients I already had. Here’s the bowl full of the fruit after I’d prepared it:

Next was to make the sponge using the creaming method. Mary Berry usually likes an all in one, but for this one I did as she said in the recipe. It was only a 5 egg cake but it came out huge due to all of the fruit. The recipe said to bake for 1 hour, cover it with foil to stop it from burning, then bake for another hour. It was still raw in the middle after 2 hours so I left it for longer than that. The top didn’t look burnt but all of the edges did.

I’ve made almond paste before – I didn’t know what the difference between almond paste and marzipan is but I just Googled it and almond paste is coarser, which was definitely true for the one I made. I forgot to take a photo though so you’ll have to use your imagination. I did take a photo of the royal icing though, which was also easy to make:

I’d never made fondant before so was excited to try. I wasn’t sure whether to soak the gelatin leaves before adding them like I normally would with gelatin, but the recipe didn’t say to, so I didn’t. This turned out to be a big mistake because it just would not melt. I had enough to repeat it and soaked the gelatin first, which worked much better. I was really pleased with how it turned out:

It got softer as I kneaded it more and was quite easy to handle, just took a bit of time and was a bit of a faff.

Next the recipe said to roll out the almond paste and royal icing into a rectangle. It didn’t say how thick to have it so I used as much of what I had as possible, however, this looked much too thick to go on top of the cake so I made it slightly thinner and had some leftover.

The royal icing caused me a lot of issues. It seemed like it was too dry and thick so I struggled to pipe a pretty border with my star nozzle so I did squiggles instead. To make the tennis rackets and net I had to pipe them onto baking paper and wait for them to dry, then stand the net up along the centre of the cake. It was very thick and difficult to pipe but I managed to make several tennis rackets so that I had some spare and one net. The tennis rackets turned out fine. Here’s the net after I’d piped it:

Here’s the net after I tried to pick it up:

This was actually my second attempt at the net and it was drying pretty much as soon as I’d piped it so just wasn’t sticking together. I’d been working on this cake for hours at this point and had people coming over to eat it soon so just gave up on the net. Here’s the finished product:

You can tell I was in a rush because I didn’t get a very good photo.

Aside from the burnt edges, the cake tasted pretty good for a fruit cake. People who liked fruit cake also told me it was good. I managed to get a lot of slices out of it too so had plenty to share around, which nearly made up for the cost of it.

In the Great British Bake off episode this cake was in, the bakers had 3 hours to complete it. I think I took around 6 hours and it looked a mess and nearly made me quit baking forever. I have no idea how they managed to finish it in time, clearly I need more practice with making three types of icing for a cake! I think I’d make this fruit cake again, but not have a tennis theme and not make any royal icing or fondant, it’s easier (and cheaper) to buy them.

Lily

https://www.instagram.com/lilylilysparks/