I must make a cake! It is a cake that they eat in the Canadia. It is called Queen Elizabeth Cake or Gâteau Reine-Élizabeth, if you are a French Canadian (or French, French-Belgian, French-Swiss, from a French colony, or a pretentious twat). I had a bit of one once, taken from the plate (or should I say 'assiette'!!) of a French-Canadian self-haircutting pathologist. I have never had a sticky date pudding, but it tasted like I would imagine sticky date pudding would taste (if sticky date pudding exists), except with sweet coconut jizz on the top.
But I digress. Soon there is a birthday, and I must make Gâteau Reine-Élizabeth for the person whose birthday it is. I have found a recipe, but following last week's events involving a recipe for spotted dick, a squirt of what is known in the Netherlands as 'slagroom' and a passing Mexican, I am reluctant to put all my birthday cake eggs in one basket and use an untested internet recipe again.
What is more, extensive research (involving 'online research' for up to and including five minutes) 'throws up' a multitude of Queen Elizabeth Cake examples, each one slightly different:
Cake 1
Cake 2
Cake 3
Cake 4
Cake 5
Cake 6
What am I to do? Which is the most accurate? More importantly, who - and you will have to supply REALLY good evidence that your recipe has a solid provenance - can give me a recipe for this accursed cake that they know FOR A FACT is a) nice; and b) works?
There is no prize for it, just the pleasing knowledge that you have made a French-Canadian research pathologist very happy, and perhaps contributed towards supplying him with enough empty-calorie energy to cut the hair that is, even now, flowing down his manly back.
In the meantime, if you neither know nor care about recipes, do us a favour and let me know which of the cakes above you would most like to stick in your hot greedy mouth.
NB: Despite evidence suggested by the weirdly camp QE2 cupcake photograph filched off of Flickr, I believe the Queen Elizabeth in whose honour the cake was created was in fact Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the now-dead suet-faced mother of our* current dear Queen.
* that's you too, Canada!!!
12 comments:
All these cakes are dishearteningly single-layered. My concept of a proper QEC/GR-E involves at least* two (2) layers, separated by a copious cushion of coconut jizz sauce. Am just sayin'.
* N.B.: at least, meaning "possibly, and preferably, more than"
"Copious cushions of coconut jizz sauce"? Are you SURE you have seen a cake like this, or is just wishful thinking?
I have no idea what the cake in question is supposed to be but, I vote for number 3. It looks extremely satisfactory in the texture in the mouth department. And that gets my vote.
Although I hesitate to say this in light of the previous comment from johnnyboy...
1- Didn't even try
2- Cook wandered away from the broiler at a critical moment
3- Looks just about perfect- 30 seconds less under the broiler and it would be.
4-That's just sad
5-Not enough time under the broiler.
You're beginning to see the importance of the broiling, aren't you.
6- Looks like the right texture.
I consulted my 1947 copy of the Evangeline chapter of the I.O.D.E. Cookbook and my 1952 Fanny Farmer. No luck. However, if you want to know how to make Fairy Fluff, Feather Cake or Lightening Cake- I'm your gal.
Asta - I think you and Johnnyboy should perhaps discuss this ... am also laughing very much (whilst paying attention)...
"Despite evidence suggested by the weirdly camp QE2 cupcake photograph filched off of Flickr"...
But surely that is indeed the queen mum's mug?
Mmmmmm, cake.
I think Asta is pulling your leg. Who the hell broils cakes??
(Not that I have the faintest clue what broiling is, now that I think of it, but it sounds way too much like boiling for comfort, and anyway I have cooked about a squillion different cakes in my time and as far as I know I have never broiled any of them).
Clare -
1. No, it's QE2
2. Mmm. Cake.
3. Broil = Grill (put under direct heat from above)
Just for the record, I chose German Chocolate cake. I'm annoying like that.
Someone please explain what are copious cushions of coconut jizz sauce. It sounds like the interior of a sex club during the Weimar period. Johnny Boy really ought supply us with a photograph.
I'm voting for either 4 or 6. They're both a nice balance between dry and gooey. I'm sorry, number 3 is bordering on a candy apple -- with all that sheen.
Cake 3 is the one I'd like to eat in one sitting without bothering with cutlery. When should I expect mine to arrive?
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