What a long and crazy journey it has been! I was so moved by Nadiya’s speech, her incredible family and Mary Berry herself. And then on “Extra Slice” Mary once again teared up – she clearly has a soft spot in her heart for Nadiya (as does most of England now).
For the finale this week, the bakers made iced buns, mille feuille or a perfected “classic” British cake. I don’t love iced buns and I couldn’t be bothered doing something as fiddly as mille feuille so a classic cake it was! And whilst Ian and Nadiya perfected cakes that were already in my repertoire (carrot cake and lemon drizzle), I decided to do the route of Tamal and make a cake that was inspired by another classic British dessert. (He made a sticky toffee pudding cake.)
This led me to the idea of Bakewell Tart Cake. 
Ingredients:
For the cake:
200 g butter
200 g sugar
100 g ground almond
100 g flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
4 eggs
For the filling and frosting:
170 g of cherry conserve
175 g icing sugar
7 teaspoons of lemon juice
flaked almonds to sprinkle on top
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 180 C and line and grease two cake pans.
Cream together the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs and almond extract. Lastly fold in the flour, ground almonds and baking powder. Stir till smooth. Divide your batter between your two pans and bake for 25 minutes.
Set your cakes aside on a wire rack to cool. They need to be cooled completely before you construct your cake or else they will melt your icing. I set mine aside for 45 minutes.
To make the icing, add your lemon juice to your icing sugar a teaspoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency. It might be less than I used, it might be more.
To assemble your cake, top one cake with your cherry conserve (be generous) and flip the other cake over so the bottom is on top when you create your “sandwich”. This just gives you a more smooth surface to frost. Smooth your icing over top and then sprinkle with almond flakes.
Remembering the horrible twist of events, where I was disqualified after winning last year, I had a secret weapon….
Clutching my beautiful winners bouquet!
A thoroughly satisfying 10 weeks! I hate that it’s over. Link up your bakes for the very last time!
