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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Giveaway: Win a Subscription to Baked and Delicious Magazine Valued Over $1000

I love to bake. Just look at my recipe index and compare the number of baked recipes to the savoury items. If you ask anyone that knows me, they'll tell you that I have a very sweet tooth and can't get enough of cakes, biscuits and desserts. I own far too many baking tins for my own good, having moved a bulk of them to the garage now. However, not a single one of my cake tins are made from silicone. I've been tempted many times to buy a silicone mould, coming close with a madeleine tray once, but the high prices usually stop me.

I've heard that silicone moulds bake much more evenly, easier to clean, no rusting and light. When Baked and Delicious offered to send me an issue of their new magazine to try out, I jumped at the chance. The magazine is sold every fortnight and subscription gets you a copy of the magazine, which comes with a different silicone mould each time.


I got Issue 3 of the magazine, which came with a green loaf "tin" mould. Upon flicking through the magazine, I found that there were 2 recipes in the magazine to use with the mould. Other recipes looked to be quite traditional and classic recipes. There's a sachertorte recipe in there that I'm dying to try out next. There's lots of photos of what the end result should look like, which I always prefer. I just can't seem to visualise recipes without a photo. There's also step by step instructions for some recipes for novices and advanced students if you're new to that cake.


So firstly, here is my cake. Do you think it looks as good as the photo in the magazine? I'm pretty bad at food styling so took queues from the magazine photo.


So let's talk about the magazine and mould. I must say I was surprised that the recipe still asked for the mould to be buttered and floured. I assumed that the advantage of silicone was that it wouldn't stick? As it was the first time I was using a silicone mould, I didn't want to risk the cake being a disaster and floured the mould. Next time I'm going to try not buttering and flouring. Does anyone know if it will still stick without the butter/flour? I found the mould tended to sag out due to the weight of the batter, which a tin wouldn't do. This had the benefit that, despite the cake might be a bit "fat", it doesn't all spill out over the top and look super ugly. It retains a fairly flat top, which I like. The cake was cooked through really well, and was faster in time than my normal tins. With my normal tins, which are much smaller, a butter cake would take about 60-75 minutes in my oven. This cake took about 55 minutes to cook all the way through, maybe even slightly overcooked. That in part was my fault, as I found I had the oven temperature too high (must always look at the oven thermometer rather than trust the oven setting) and then dropped the temperature down for the last 30 minutes. Flipping the cake out was super easy, as was cleaning the mould as I didn't need to be careful not to scratch it. The lightweight is actually handy, much easier to store. Trust me, once you have accumulated about 40 cake tins (all very large), weight and storage start to become issues.

As for this Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe, it was good. I'm not a fan of lemon desserts at all. I don't understand lemon tarts, lemon meringues, lemon slices or lemon butter cakes. So don't let my view on this cake taint your views. Others who I gave the cake to liked it. I will say that this cake didn't have a fine crumb and was a bit coarser. What I did love though was the syrup that went over it. Something about that kept making me go back for more cake. The golden syrup mixed with the lemon juice turned this cake from something I wouldn't eat much of, to something I did like. The recipe is super easy, although I think the magazine is a bit generous with it's preparation time estimates. The recipe estimated 15 minutes of prep time. I think I used up my 15 minutes to get out the equipment, measure out the ingredients and zest and juice my lemons. My final measured preparation time was 45 minutes, which is typical for a cake like this. If only I had sous chefs to grab and measure everything for me and then also clean up *sigh* :-)


Overall, I did like the silicone mould and think the magazine has nice and simple recipes that I would attempt. Hence, I am happy to recommend this magazine for you to try. It will be fun to try out the various moulds from each issue and the recipes that use them. Below, I have a giveaway for one reader to win a subscription to the Baked and Delicious magazine. If you don't happen to win, you can subscribe to get your hands on the magazine.

GIVEAWAY

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Thank you to everyone for entering the competition. So many great cake experiences. After much consideration, I have decided to award Elisa the winner. It was such a wonderful story and I have a soft spot for Gâteau aux framboises and learning French.
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I have to give away to 1 reader, a full Subscription to Baked and Delicious magazine, which includes 60 issues of Baked and Delicious (each comes with a silicone mould) and 4 exclusive secret gifts, the total worth being $1,105.

HOW TO ENTER

I ask you to do two simple things

1) "Like" my Facebook Page

2) Leave a comment and answer the following:

What is your most memorable cake experience.

Make sure there is a way for me to contact you, either via Twitter, a blog or an email. If you don't want to publish your email in the comments, please email me at ieatblog[at]yahoo[dot]com and let me know which comment was yours. If I do not hear back from you after 2 days upon contacting you, I will redraw the prize.

Conditions of Entry
- One entry per person.
- Australian readers only.
- Competition closes Monday September 19th 8pm AEST. The winners will be announced on Monday 19th and published on this same post.
- The best answer as deemed by myself will be chosen as the winner. I will contact the winner directly to inform if you have won.

Thanks to The Defectors for organising the prizes.

15 comments:

  1. Your cake looks really like the one in the magazine!

    For some reason, when you say most memorable cake experience, my parents' chiffon cake was the first thing that popped into my mind. It's just so good! Sigh.

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  2. My most memorable cake experience was attempting to make chocolate fudge cake with my best friend when we were about 8 years old. We made up the recipe. The whole 'cake' shrunk down to the size of a pancake. We were very proud. Also high on sugar for days as we ate the whole thing in 5 minutes. My baking skills have improved slightly since then..

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  3. My most memorable cake experience was making the pancake layered cake from the Delicious magazine. I spread nutella and grated walnuts on each of the pancakes as I stacked them. I poured chocolate sauce over the whole thing and served it with cream. I took it as my contribution to dinner with my neighbour at the time Roger who was the manager at the Stokehouse and a fabulous chef, pretty daring of me but Roger loved it!

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  4. I want cakeeeee!! CAKEEEE!!! Hahahaha, this is so not making into the competition.. but I WANT CAKE!

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  5. Your lemon cake looks amazing! I love the zesty flavours of citrus and have baked many cakes using them, but I think the most memorable cake experience for me would have to be making the moist chocolate and ferrero rocher buttercream tenpin bowling cake for a little boy's 8th birthday last year.

    I made 2 pins and a bowl, complete with blue pearly coloured royal icing and three black holes for the fingers. It looked great, I even got asked if I was a professional! Haha It took me over 8 hours to make - I completely underestimated how big a job it was! But it was all very worth it!

    Having said that I went with the simpler Rainbow Doodle cake this year. Effective and fun!

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  6. When I was young, a new girl started at our school. She was French and her dad was a famous chef. I was in charge of teaching her English and in return, she tried to teach me French!

    Of course all the words she taught me were about food: cake, raspberries, banana, pineapple...

    I was soon invited to her house and her dad (the famous chef) was so impressed that I had been trying to learn French that he made the most amazing raspberry French gateau! It was amazing.

    When they brought it out they were all saying: "What is it Elisa, what is it!?"

    "Gâteau aux framboises! Gâteau aux framboises!!" I replied.

    It was very memorable...even 20 years later ;)

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  7. My most memorable cake experience would be my first time making a fruit cake, which baked for about 6hrs and was hard as a rock. But the amazing (look of the) icing on top (a lotus flower in a pond, drawn on by something of a edible chalk and water colour pb) balanced it out.

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  8. This looks excellent. Butter or no butter in the mold, I think you did an fantastic job and I could easily devour something like that right now. yum
    Laura @ A Healthy Jalapeño

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  9. I had the best intentions. I was going to update my blog and link the entry etc. But bugger that now, work is killing me.

    My most memorable cake experience would definitely have to making the opera cake. I'm not sure if you saw that entry, but the photos are missing now, annoyingly enough.

    But making that cake took something like 5 hours. There were so many steps, and everything was so fiddly. Some of the ingredients I've never worked with before and some of them, I've never even heard of before.

    And when you had built the whole thing up, it was this tiny little thing that seemed hardly worth the effort. But it took all but one bite to realise that it was definitely worth the effort. It was all kinds of divine and to this day, I've not eaten a cake I've loved quite as much.

    I love to bake and I love mags. Winning this subscription would mean so much to me!

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  10. The most memorable cake experience for me would be making of Indonesian Kueh Lapis. Patiently waiting for each layer to be baked while the aroma of the cake filled the whole house. Is very time consuming but well paid off by its taste and aroma. Can't forget that moment!

    Regards,
    Hawk (@hawkadel)

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  11. Your cake looks tasty. I want some! Yum!

    Regards,
    Hawk (@hawkadel)

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  12. My most memorable cake experience is the birthday cake I made for Deanna'a first birthday. It was my first cake that I decorated with fondant. It was not perfect but I was proud to have made it for her. That cake was the start of me making all birthday cakes for both Deanna and Thomas.

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  13. My most memorable cake experience was back when I first started baking: I wanted to try out an apple crumble cake recipe, but since no one in our family was really big on baking, we only had one small cake tin, which I filled completely before putting it in the oven. Rookie mistake. Of course, it didn't take long for the batter to overflow out of the tin, and when I opened the oven door to check on my cake, only to find most of it stuck to the bottom of the oven, in my haste to remove the tin from the oven I forgot to put on oven mitts!
    Needless to say, pain and a lot of mess ensued :(:(
    But after my hands had healed, I tried out the recipe again, and let's just say I nailed it ;)

    And I really think since then my hands have been a lot more resistant to heat. A blessing hidden in a tough lesson :)

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  14. My most memorable cake experience was attempting to make a heart in a cake for Mother's Day as my mother is my biggest inspiration in my cooking and baking! It was a project that took 2 full days! Let me tell you, it's difficult to keep it a secret across the 2 days especially when my kitchen is an open concept! But the hard work was all worth it when my mum cut into the cake and the heart was revealed. Her smile can never be replaced! (:

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  15. Your cake looks awesome! Love your styling.

    My most memorable cake is a cherry and brown sugar cake - my mom's recipe. It's super simple but tastes like home, and she always used to make it for special occasions, like when I'd come home from college, when I scored a winning goal in soccer, etc.

    Years later, and living abroad in Holland, I made that cake for my sister when her son was born. I made it again for my boyfriend when we moved in together in Australia. And sometimes I bake it just because I miss my mom.

    Amazing how food can play such an incredible emotional role, isn't it...

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