GBBO Bake Along: Maple Pecan Cake
Maple pecan cake – easy to make, perfect for autumn and a perfect start to the Great British Bake Along!
Let’s be honest: did you really think I would be doing the Great British Bake Along again in 2026? Because I didn’t. I was fully prepared to just sit and enjoy the show this year but then I couldn’t help myself. I love trying to complete this challenge every year and it gives me an excuse to consume a ridiculous amount of sugar and carbs for the next 10 weeks! I’ll be documenting my bake along journey every week on the blog so make sure you follow me on my socials so you don’t miss out when a new post is published.
The first week as always is Cake Week.
The signature bake was Nigella Lawson’s chocolate stout cake which, funnily enough, I have made before! It did not go well, ha ha. I must have been 15 or 16 years old when I first made this cake and I substituted the stout for Nigerian Supermalt. I don’t drink and the closest thing at the time that reminded me of stout or Guinness was Supermalt. The cake itself tasted okay but Supermalt has an iron-y aftertaste almost became aniseed like once it was baked. I didn’t find it too pleasant so I have never return to Nigella’s recipe. And to be honest, I still wasn’t tempted to try again. I didn’t want to buy alcohol free stout and I am quite attached to the cake recipe I discovered from Claire Saffitz so I decided I could tackle the tactical instead.
Then I find out the technical is a coffee and walnut cake – one of the few cakes I really dislike. For all you coffee cake lovers, please don’t hate me, my dislike is more to do with walnuts than it is to do with coffee. I’m very particular about the type of nuts that I can tolerate and walnuts are not one of them. However, it did give me the opportunity to try out a key combination that I have been thinking about for a while – maple and pecans. I wanted a cake that reminded me of the maple pecan pastries my brother used to buy from the supermarket. Just with a lot more nuts and real maple syrup.
The recipe for this cake is actually a riff off a basic Victoria sponge – very similar to the method used in Bake Off. All I really had to do was adjust the level of sugar as I was adding in maple syrup and adjust my baking time because adding maple syrup makes the batter very wet which means a longer bake at a lower temp.
The cake came out so good. The texture is very similar to banana bread where the cake is very moist but slightly dense. It is also not extremely sweet. It’s important to balance the level of salt to keep everything in balance so remember to add salt in every element. We were eating it with a cup of tea but I promise you it will taste so good slathered in some custard.
If you do make this recipe, please let me know! I love hearing when you guys are making something that I recommended – it gives me all the warm fuzzies.
The recipe is below and I’ll see you next week for biscuits! (I just bought some really cool biscuit cutters and I am SO excited!)
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