#GBBO | CAKE WEEK | Rhubarb, Raspberry & Lemon Drizzle Cake

Consider this my warm up for The Great British Bake Off 2017. 

I love baking, but I never seem to find the time to bake and then eat whatever it is I've managed to produce. Anyway, when I saw the emoji for the #GBBO hashtag on Twitter the other day, it really got me thinking. 

So I've decided, that this is the first of (hopefully!) a series of blog posts, where I'll be having a go at one of the challenges each week! Let the baking begin... 

WEEK 1: Cake week
SIGNATURE BAKE: Drizzle cake

One of the few cakes I tend to make on a regular basis is a lemon drizzle cake. I'm fairly sure that the recipe came from the BBC Good Food website years ago, and I've not stopped using it ever since, hence, I am a dab hand at the standard lemon drizzle cake, and my family can vouch for that (hi mum). 

Always wanting to improve myself, amongst other things, I decided to try something a little different, you know, really push my baking limits. After all, GBBO is all about testing the boundaries and generally being the best. 

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend in Essex, where my mum and stepdad grow Rhubarb. Whilst I was cutting the Rhubarb, I came upon the idea to make a Rhubarb & Lemon Drizzle Cake and, having researched various recipes, decided to add some Raspberries to the cake itself, in order to add further flavour. (Also because I've never baked with Rhubarb before, and so wasn't sure how strong the flavour would be by itself). 

Two days later, and here I am, baking and blogging. The recipe for the cake was not mine, and so I shan't bore you with the details, but if you wanted to have a go, you can find the recipe here. The Rhubarb glaze/icing recipe was from this website, however as you can see, I also added raspberry and lemon to it. 

There were several occasions, whilst I was baking this cake, that I began to wonder whether I actually knew what I was doing, and whether I should actually be promising to bake an entire series worth of cakes, desserts and biscuits. 

First of all, I decided to use frozen raspberries in the cake as I had them to hand and forgot to buy some fresh ones from the supermarket. I knew it would take longer for the cake to bake, but at the point the cake had been cooked for an extra 20 minutes covered in foil, I was starting to wonder whether it would ever cook! It did, by the way... 

Secondly, I love Rhubarb, but as I've said before, I've never cooked with it. So you can imagine my surprise to when I lifted the lid of the saucepan during cooking, to smell what I can only describe as the smell of a garden, instead of the deliciously sweet fragrance I'd been expecting. With some trepidation, I tasted the glaze after I'd blended it, and to my absolute shock, it was amazing! (This was before I'd added the raspberries and lemon, I hasten to add.)

Clearly, I am no expert at writing concisely, so I think I'll leave it there for this week. 

UP NEXT: Biscuit week. 

Laura xx 

(P.S. The cake was delicious!)