Bake-A-Long #4: Catalan Salt Pinch Cake

I told the girls I was bring this cake to Sangria Night a few weeks back. But, after my recent sponge cake embarrassment I was kinda afraid to bring it somewhere untested. But since I already said that's what I'm bringing, I went ahead and made it.

I used whole almonds and toasted them for about 10 minutes.

I had already started the food processor when I remembered that I was supposed to grate them before processing to avoid oil seepage. Therefore, my almonds ended up more coarsely ground than what they were supposed to be. But texture is good in a cake, right?

No problems with the cake mixing. I ended up estimating the 2 tablespoons of egg per 2 minutes and realized about half way through that I was going to fast so slowed down to achieve a total mixing time of 20 minutes.

Since I was still worried about the flavor, I decided to go ahead and make a sweetened blueberry syrup and whipped cream to go on top.

And voila! There's the finished product. Like the last sponge cake, it looked fine, so, off to Sangria Night I went with the pinch cake, blueberries, and whipped cream. I of course had to taste it right when I got there to make sure it was serve-able. I cut a piece, warmed up the blueberries and put a dollop of whipped cream on top. My first bite was sans topping to get the full appreciation of the cake itself. It was much better than the chocolate genoise. The almonds and zest gave it nice flavor. I found it to be a pleasant, light cake good when for when you don't want anything to heavy. I even ate a piece for breakfast this morning. I mean, it's mostly almonds and eggs, those are breakfast foods to me.

Some of the comments I got from the girls were:

"It didn't even need the blueberries and whipped cream" and

"It's a hearty cake, it's good"

So, moral of the story is maybe sponge cakes aren't so bad after all.