Birthday Cake

“Happy birthday, happy birthday”  – my teen era is defined by Altered Images and Claire Grogran chirruping her way through this the year I turned 13. I’m an August baby. Much of my family is too – my maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, aunt, cousins and niece all have August as their start date. Even my godson and several of my dearest friends are Augustines. Maybe like attracts like? Or perhaps there really wasn’t anything else to do in the past dark nights of November….

Birthdays have a peculiar resonance for me. On one hand I hate them, time’s winged chariot and all that, on the other hand, I think they should be celebrated and ones with a zero need to be marked.  I think this love/hate relationship started early in my life. As my birthday is at the literal end of summer  and invariably coincides with yet another wet and windy bank holiday, my childhood birthdays were marked by a distinct lack of my peers, who were usually on holiday with their families. I didn’t have parties like the termtime children did, my birthday fell at the far end of the 6 week summer break, so there wasn’t an opportunity to invite classmates and my mother was not the organised type who could issue invites far enough in advance to reach school friends before we broke up. My junior school wasn’t in my home neighbourhood either, so encounters with school friends outside the classroom were limited too.

Then there was the added complication of the Hungarian. Aka Dad. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that as a family we spent the summer holidays driving maniacally through Europe to Lake Balaton in an overloaded BMW to the sound of opera and Boney M. We usually had returned home before my birthday but of course, that didn’t mean we were AT home over that bank holiday weekend. As well as being a GP, my father was a competitive sports pistol shooter. Elite level. He competed, representing Great Britain at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games, the European and International Championships. He travelled far and wide across the world, guns and ammo in tow, both as a competitor and then coach and medic for the teams. He also shot for Lancashire, holding several unbeaten records for pistol shooting high scores and wrote a definitive book, which I was still being contacted about several years after his death, from admirers across the world wanting a copy. In short, shooting was a BIG deal in our household.

I grew up in a rambling Victorian house, complete with cellar and attics. The cellar was where the washing machine, dryer and the big freezer lived. It was also Dad’s practice range. Wedging himself behind the open ladder steps down, he had a clear sight across the cellars to where he pinned his targets for practice. Above the gas meter. The gas meter readers regularly looked askance and in horror when they came to read the meter, crunching over the spent bullet casings and smiling nervously as they cracked the same joke about it being a good thing Dad was a good shot. My sisters and I thought it was normal to bang on the cellar door with a pan and shriek down that we had to use the washing machine or access the freezer to ensure we didn’t get a leg full of shot on the way down, as Dad wore ear defenders due to the enclosed nature of his “range”.

What has this to do with birthdays or indeed food? Bisley. Every August bank holiday we headed down to Bisley Shooting Camp, for Dad to compete. Described as  “a holiday camp with guns” the vagaries of the earth’s revolvement round the sun meant that most of my pre and early teen birthdays fell on the bank holiday weekend. So that meant staying in a caravan, with me in a tent outside. 4am walks in the dark to use the toilet block, with a torch to light the way. It nearly always rained. My birthdays were not fun. I spent them fighting with my small sisters, driven mad by boredom and playing yet another game of Ludo or Happy Families (the irony) whilst the rain drummed on the roof and mother had one of her “lie downs”. The one bright spot was that Dad always made me a birthday cake. Granted, he brought back his shooting mates, and they mostly ate it all but the thought was there. It wasn’t just any old birthday cake either. It was a diótorta – a classic Hungarian cake made using ground walnuts instead of flour to create thin sponge layers, sandwiched together with a nut cream butter. It remains one of my favourite cakes, possibly because it reminds me so much of Daddy and those wet caravan bound birthdays.

In the hands of a skilled patissier, this cake can look beautiful.

Diótorta

6 eggs, separated into yolks and whites

75g caster sugar

100g finely ground walnuts

50g of fine breadcrumbs (not the orange panko type ones!)

25g plain flour

Buttercream:

120ml whole milk

50g caster sugar

125g finely ground walnuts

225g unsalted butter at room temperature.

Preheat oven to 175C or GM3.  Grease and line 3 20cm/8inch cake tins.

Whip the egg yolks with the sugar until it becomes really thick and the whisk leaves a trail over the surface. Add the walnuts, flour and breadcrumbs, mix well.

In a super clean bowl whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks – full on you can turn the bowl upside down over your head stiff peaks.

Add a tablespoon of the whites into the nut mix to loosen it a bit and then carefully fold the rest of the egg whites into the nut batter. Make sure you get right into the nooks and crannies of the bowl. Be gentle – you want to keep all the air in.

Divide equally between the 3 tins. If you only have two tins put 1/3 in one and double up for the second – we’ll bake it longer.

Put cakes in the oven and bake til done. Yes this is one of THOSE recipes. I’d start testing the single layers after 15 minutes.

Once cooked, leave to cool in the pans.

Make the buttercream by placing the milk, sugar and walnuts in a pan and bring to a boil, stirring as you go. Reduce heat and cook until the liquid has almost evaporated. Pour into a bowl, set aside to cool, then pop in fridge to really chill.

Beat the butter until very fluffy and thick, gradually add the chilled walnut mixture until all incorporated and the icing is thick.  Let it sit in the fridge for 15 minutes to firm up.

Spread each layer of the cake with the buttercream, then put them together. Use more of the buttercream around the sides of the cake. Sprinkle the sides of the cake with yet more ground walnuts. Chill the cake for an hour before serving.