Cake help!

My favourits fruit cake, chocolate cake and lemon cake, how about a madiera for those who want plain no recipe though sorry

Oh, thanks! lemon cake could be one to have - i hadn't even thought of that!! just want it to be a bit special as i'm making it myself!!!! if the cake is yuck, i won't have a cake maker to blame so i've got to make sure its good!! ?

i will google the nigella one - thanks for letting me know about that - i might just try that one out!

I'm not really a fruitcake lover but mum makes the Nigella one and it's fab - so much so that whenever she makes one I get a friend of mine in Dubai trying to persuade me to visit with cake for her She substitutes the almonds for semolina as I'm allergic to nuts but it works. Here's the recipe if you haven't already found it.....

Ingredients

350g/12¼oz dried soft prunes, chopped
250g/8¾oz raisins
125g/4½oz currants
175g/6¼oz unsalted butter, softened
175g/6¼oz dark muscovado sugar
175ml/6¼fl oz honey
125ml/4½fl oz coffee liqueur
2 oranges, juice and zest only
1 tsp mixed spice
2 tbsp good quality cocoa
3 free-range eggs, beaten
150g/5¼oz plain flour
75g/2½oz ground almonds
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
For decoration
25g/1oz dark chocolate-covered coffee beans
edible glitter
gold mini balls
about 10 edible gold stars

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/Gas 2.
2. Line the sides and bottom of a 20cm/8in, 9cm/3½in deep, round loose-bottomed cake tin with a layer of reusable silicon baking parchment. When lining the tin with the parchment, cut the material into strips that are twice as high as the tin itself (it is easier to use two shorter strips of parchment, than one long strip); the height of the strips protects the cake from catching on the outside of the cake tin.
3. Place the fruit, butter, sugar, honey, coffee liqueur, orange juice and zest, mixed spice and cocoa into a large wide saucepan. Heat the mixture until it reaches a gentle boil, stirring the mixture as the butter melts. Let the mixture simmer for ten minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
4. After 30 minutes, the mixture will have cooled a little. Add the eggs, flour, ground almonds, baking powder and bicarbonate soda, and mix well with a wooden spoon or spatula until the ingredients have combined.
5. Carefully pour the fruitcake mixture into the lined cake tin. Transfer the cake tin to the oven and bake for 1¾-2 hours, or until the top of the cake is firm but will has a shiny and sticky look. At this point, if you insert a sharp knife into the middle of the cake, the cake should still be a little uncooked in the middle.
6. Place the cake on a cooling rack. Once the cake has cooled, remove it from the tin.
7. To decorate, place the chocolate-covered coffee beans in the centre of the cake and arrange the gold stars around the perimeter of the top of the cake. Then sprinkle some gold mini-balls over the whole of the cake. Sprinkle the edible glitter over the top of the cake.

I dont have recipies im afraid but as a suggestion, we are having our 3 tiers in these flavours

White Chocolate & Lime (sounds wrong, but its soooo good)

Cherry & Amaretto

Chocolate Orange

I have a few suggestions:

1. hazlenut and nutella cake, normal sponge mix but roast some hazlenuts, mix them into mixture and bake, spread nutella between layers. I have only seen this on cupcakes with a ferrero rocher on top but it is yum yum yum

2. nigella does a fab chocolate fudge cake even the most amateur baker (me) made it with no probs

3. lemon with lemon fondant centre, orange sponge with orange fondant centre

4. choc sponge with vanilla buttercream (could do this in addition to a choc fudge cake, evvvvveryone like choc cake dont they!)

5. Like Berlinda says choc orange, esp if you could try to incorporate terry orange in it, or maybe use melted down terrys orange as the filling?

yum yum yum yum yum yum yum ?

I'm just making a simple single layer cutting cake and think I'll be using this recipe:

/recipes/easy-apple-fruit-cake

I've tried it a couple of times now and is lovely and moist, and easy to cut. Will just be adding glace cherries too.