Cake and wine anyone

Two of my favourite things in life are cake (I bake most days) and wine (I drink it most days) but it’s not so usual to put them both together. The customary combinations are cake and a cuppa, and wine and cheese. However, I think some of the best combinations are sweet cake with fruity wine!

Sunday was my cake and wine matching afternoon where as well as the sandwiches, savoury tarts and scones, guests get to taste four cakes with four different wines. This is the second time that I have done this kind of afternoon tea event and I think it’s one of my favourite themes. Last year we found matches for lemon cake, sticky toffee cupcakes, carrot cake and brownies (see the wine matching page for the wines that worked) so my first task was deciding which cakes to chose this time.

Having done a patisserie course at Betty’s recently (more about that in another post), I decided to use my new skills and make a gateau opera (almond sponge with chocolate and coffee filling.) A sample was immediately dispatched to Rob Hoult from Hoults Wine in Huddersfield for him to examine, investigate, sample and find the winning combination.

I also wanted to make some cakes that people would eat frequently or could quickly bake so I chose vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and strawberry cake with strawberry jam and buttercream. Due to the high sugar content these weren’t quite so easy to find matches for – Rob and I tried quite a few different combinations! The last cake (and one my Grandma made quite a lot) was an apple and cinnamon crumble cake.

So what worked? Well I think they all did. The hardest pairing was the vanilla cupcake but I think Rob excelled himself and found a perfect match. Here’s what we had:

Strawberry cake: Cono Sur Pinot Noir Sparkling Rosé—Chile

Vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream: Niento Senetiner Torrontes—Argentina (2010)

Apple and Cinnamon crumble cake: Sables and Galets Gewurztraminer—Austria (2009)

Gateau Opera: Bremerton Selkirk Shiraz—Australia (2009)

Oh yes I also made salted caramel macarons but being so sweet we ended up having a lovely Austrian sweet wine with them!

I’d like to give a huge thanks to Rob Hoult for all his time, his palate and of course the wine. His wine knowledge made sure that all the pairings worked.

And I have a few other cakes that I want to find pairings for so watch this space ….

Rhubarb, rhubarb!

I’ve never been a big fan of February, the weather is normally either wet or snowy and spring still feels a long way away. However, on a postitive note West Yorkshire celebrates the humble forced rhubarb at the annual Wakefield Festival of Food, Drink and Rhubarb, so I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate this month’s afternoon tea event to one of Yorkshire’s protected food.

The first task was to source my rhubarb and thankfully Cowling’s greengrocers in Queensgate Market had plenty. I bought what they had available on Thursday but was assured that more would be in stock on the Friday. And with my request for 2 kilos I think I again bought most of his stock on Friday.

The afternoon tea menu was in part inspired by BBC’s Great British Food Revival. I used their recipe for the chutney which was served with the savoury items and I opted for the rhubarb meringue tart as my show piece sweet. For the sandwiches I chose meat and fish fillings that I knew worked with rhubard (ham, duck and mackerel) and for the sweets I baked classic combinations (rhubarb and custard cake) along with patisserie that I like to make regularly (macarons). I even managed to find some rhubarb and ginger jam from Pickles in Queensgate Market which I used as a filling for the pink macarons and as an accompaniment for the scones.

I also decided to serve a non alcoholic rhubarb drink at the afternoon tea. I took inspiration from Jo, the Icelandic cook, and after making her rhubarb drink recipe I added soda water and apple and lemon slices to make it more of a punch. And it was of course served in a tea cup!

This was the first time that I have baked with rhubarb so I was very pleased with all the flavours and how recipes turned out and I think my guests enjoyed sampling the finished products.