I'm not a cake maker at all - sourdough is challenging enough for me! - so I wondered if you guys could help?
We had a lovely breakfast / tea type of cake in a small restaurant in London (called Honey & Co, the owners used to work with Ottolenghi and I think it has middle eastern background). It was called fig walnut & orange loaf - and it was lovely!
I'd like to be able to recreate (however they won't give me the recipe! :-) )
It was done in a loaf tin; it was quite thick and sticky - the closest I could think of in texture was quite like a soft gingerbread; it was quite sweet, some taste possibly of ginger, didn't really taste much orange (I think it was crystallised peel). Lots of fig...
I tried an Ottolenghi recipe for a chocolate cake (which they also seemed to have a version of) but with fig & walnut & marmalade in the filling instead of chocolate - it came out very dry and more like a bread; not slightly soft like the cake in the shop
Anyone any thoughts or ideas of what I could try? My thinking is perhaps a ginger bread recipe, but swapping out the molasses (as it wasn't dark brown at all, more golden)
thanks!
What type of flour was used?
I'm thinking for a cake type a lower protein flour would be used, such as a pastry/cake flour.
I Googled "fig walnut & orange loaf" and came up with quite a few hits. Here's one link: http://suite101.com/article/fig-and-walnut-mini-loaves-a-holiday-treat-a80788
No idea if it's even close, but imagine that if you keep searching the Internet, you'll find a recipe to your liking.
At least, I hope so.
It sounds to me like a pound cake baked in a loaf tin and then syruped. Or are you saying that the original cake that you are trying to recreate is a yeasted cake?