Tunis Project

The Great Tunis adventure.

The Tunis project was not as auspicious as I would have preferred for my first round of the Baker Bee experience.  Over a year ago, I binge watched my first season of the Great British Baking Show and fell in love with the style of the show. I loved the new and interesting bakes as well as some that I had heard of.  Almost none of them had I tried to bake and believe me I like to bake.  Soon after the first season, I came across the Master Class series that complimented the show.  I knew pretty quickly that I wanted to be a student of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. But you can’t be a true student sitting on the couch. So I decided to embark on an adventure.  I would complete one of the bakes from the Master Class a week.  And then I would share my experience: the successes, the failures, the adjustments, and the lessons learned.  Sprinkled in I would share some classic bakes from my childhood and repertoire.

So now about the Tunis Cake. The image above is Mary Berry’s version of the Tunis cake. Beautiful isn’t it.

Let me assure you that mine did not turn out like that.  At least not on the first attempt. I added a full cup of almonds when the recipe called for a 1/2 cup.  I didn’t have a spring form pan and I couldn’t find our parchment paper (someone put it in a different drawer).

After I baked the cake for the first 45 minutes, I pulled it out of the oven and low and behold it fell.

I put the tin foil over the top to keep it from burning and cooked it a bit longer and went back to the recipe to see what I did wrong. pssst. I think it was the almonds.

Then I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool overnight with its giant sink hole hoping I would wake up in the morning and it would be perfect. Not really, I’m not that crazy. So as expected, there it was in the morning with the same dip in the middle.

That night I took it out of the pan, wrapped parchment paper around it, (I found it when looking for something else–grrrr.)

I made the ganache and poured it over the cake.  I could see immediately that it wasn’t going to be perfect.  The dip in the center was covered up but some of the ganache was seeping down the sides. Still it looked pretty good.  I was hopeful.

Then came the final foolish mistake.  I was too impatient and pulled the parchment off too soon. Sploosh. There the ganache went pouring over the sides in a slow seep. Dang.

I will say this, it tasted pretty good.  The chocolate ganache was a perfect foil to the lemony goodness of the cake. The only issue in flavor was that the cake was a bit dry.  So stay tuned for the second attempt tomorrow as I try to fix my errors and come out with a better result.

Notes:  I used fondant instead of marzipan.  It was okay but I will be using a recipe for marzipan on the second attempt. I won’t be doing the holly leaves and berries though. I will do a molded candy forms. Also, I used semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of chopping up fine chocolate. The ganache was still really delicious.

Recipes and information:

I used Erren’s Kitchen Cooking Conversions for converting the British measurements to US. I used this marzipan recipe from Daring Gourmet, with one adjustment; since I couldn’t find rose water I didn’t include it. Finally the recipe for this cake, from PBS.org can be found at here.

History of the Tunis cake

Interestingly enough, (at least to me), Tunis Cake did not get it’s name nor origin from Tunis, Tunisia in Africa.  I’m not sure why it is called Tunis but its earliest origin which are Edwardian can be traced back to Northern Scotland where the bakery Macfarland Langs started selling them.  These cakes have become a British tradition at Christmas time. Some historians believe that the cake was introduced during WWI to replace the traditional fruit cake. During this time, fruit was hard to come by and expensive. Replacing the fruit cake with a simple Madeira Cake topped with chocolate ganache and fruit shaped marzipan made for a delicious, less expensive alternative. Tunis cake became a wide-spread tradition in Britain in the 1930’s.

After making and eating this delightful concoction, even with its imperfections, I would definitely recommend it become a US Christmas tradition. It is easier to make than the traditional fruit cake and quite scrumptious.  Wait until I get it down to perfection!

Resources:  Wiki-Tunis Cake and Epicure An Answer-Tunis Cake