Madeira birthday cake...bake now for Sat?

[sarimillie]

Will it stay good till then? Assuming it is good - have never made this particular cake before!
I want to give myself a bit of extra time to a) decorate it and b) have another go if it doesn't work out - is for a birthday.

yes if kept airtight

they actually keep better once iced (assuming it isn't a pirate ship or similar that needs elaborate construction)

MrsBadger, thank you - you came to my rescue on my last foray into Food, too! That was to do with plums, and very good advice it was too.
TBH I don't hold out mcuh hope for this Madeira cake - after I posted I went ahead and made the recipe, as much for practice as anything, but it looks awfully sad and flat through the glass. If it's been in half and hour already it should really have done most of its rising, shouldn't it? I suspect I'll be resorting to my standby chocolate cake recipe after all...
BTW did you make it back from abroad in time to harvest the fruit from your garden?

I also baked a Madeira cake today. What's your recipe? I used Mary Berry's. It was nice but it tastes like there's too much baking powder in it and i didnt use any at all! The recipe called for self-raising flour. I want to try another recipe.

It's from Carol Deacon's Party Cakes, and there's no baking powder in this one either - for a 20 cm round tin I used 285g SR flour, 230 g caster sugar, 230g butter, 4 medium eggs and 2 tbsp milk. Very simple method - just mix it all up and beat for one minute. Can't recommend or otherwise yet, since it's still in the oven (takes 1 3/4 - 2hrs)...

9 inch round recipe:
4 eggs, 4ozs Plain Flour, 8 ozs SR Flour, 8 ozs Butter, 8 ozs Caster Sugar, 4 tsp Lemon Juice, zest from 2 lemons. Cream butter & sugar, add eggs one at a time (with a little flour to stop the mixture from splitting, fold in rest of flour. Gas3 / 160deg.C for 45 minutes.

Always worked well for us.

Thank you! Will try that next time...

Hi,was just wondering how the madeira cake went?