Every once in a while my whife asks, nae demands, that I bake her a cake. At times like this it is usually a tea loaf or something else that’s dry and needs some butter or something else to give it a bit of life alongside a cup of tea. Last night she asked me to bake a cake she found on Livejournal.

Ingredients:
150g butter
115g brown sugar
180g golden syrup
200g self raising flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1.5 teaspoons nutmeg
2 beaten eggs
400g icing sugar
1 tablespoon water

1. Start by preheating your oven to gas mark 4. In my case it was about gas mark 4.5 as our oven just doesn’t seem to hit the temperatures it’s supposed to.
2. Put the butter, sugar, syrup and water into a saucepan and heat gently until everything has melted of dissolved. Once that’s done remove from the heat and set aside to cool for 10 minutes.
3. Grease and/or line a tin. I used a large diameter tin as yet again cooking times can vary considerable due to our oven if I use smaller/higher tins.
4. Sift the flour and spices into a bowl and then add the cooled liquid. Using an electric whisk mix this together and them add the eggs. Continue mixing until smooth.
5. Pour the mixture into a greased or lined cake tin.
6. Bake for around 45 minutes to an hour. Or until a knife in the centre comes out clean.
7. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

This is where I stopped following the recipe. We never bothered to ice our sponge as we’ve been getting bored recently of sweet sweet icing but it did allow us to realise that if you let this cake cool enough to be able to cut it cleanly but it still warm and steaming on the inside it fantastic. The next day once it’s cooled down completely though it could probably do with some icing or even some hot custard poured over the top of it.

So with my daughter being ill these last few days Vonnie has found it a little helpful to have me around the house instead of being at work. With Kat coming over to visit I was sent to the darkest depths of the kitchen and told not to come back until I had something to show for it. Actually what really happened was Vonnie sent me a link to a recipe and asked me to go make it so they had something to eat with their tea.

Anyway… Vonnie has been meaning to try this one since she came up  the idea of making it for my birthday and not having the time to finish it. In fact I’ve lost count of the packets of Maltesers I’ve bought for this and ended up eating instead.

Ingrediants for the sponge

• 150g brown sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 175ml milk
• 15g unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons Horlicks powder
• 175g plain flour
• 25g cocoa sieved
• 1 teasp baking powder
• 1/2 teasp bicarbonate soda

Ingredients for the icing and decoration

• 250g icing sugar
• 1 teasp cocoa
• 45g Horlicks
• 125g unsalted softened butter
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 2 x 37g pkt Maltesers

Your wanting everything at room temperature to start with for this one although we don’t keep our eggs in the fridge anyway. You’ll need to soften your butter for the icing but it’s not essential for the cake.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 3/170C and grease/line two 20cm loose-bottomed sandwich cake tins.

Throw together the sugar and the eggs in a bowl and whisk it up until light and frothy. Set that aside and then using a small amount of the milk mix it with the Horlicks until you have a smooth paste. Heat up the milk and butter in a small pan and add your Horlicks paste. Give your pot a stir with a wooden spoon until the butter has melted and the mixture is hot but not boiling.

Slowly beat the milk mixture into the egg/sugar mixture and the fold in the dry ingredients. Once you’ve done this split your batter between your two tins evenly. Going by the book the cakes should take 25 minutes to bake at which time the cakes should have risen and will spring back when pressed gently. I think mine actually took 40 minutes but then my cooker isn’t the most accurate at low temperatures. Once on the rack make sure you let them cool completely. I forgot this last bit and paid the price for it when it came to icing the cake.

Seive the icing sugar, cocoa and Horlicks into a bowl and add the softened butter and beat awy with your wooden spoon. I found I had to add the water fairly early on to get the icing to come together as although by butter was soft it just wasn’t soft enough and the hot water managed to fox that. Use half the icing as alayer between the sponges and spread the rest out on top. Once you’ve done that decorate the top with the maltesers and your done.

Apparently this is supposed to give you 8-10 slices but once you’ve tasted it you’ll probably only slice the next one into 4-6 slices instead.

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

125g Butter

100g Dark Chocolate
150g Caster Sugar
150g Self Raising Flour
2 Large Eggs – Beaten
Pinch of Salt
300g Good Quality marmalade (I’ve found Roses to be best as it doesnt break up and mix in like the cheaper versions and you end up with we blobs of jam through the cake rather than just tasting it.)

1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 and grease and flour a 20-23 cm cake tin.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy based pan and once melted add the chocolate. Just as the chocolate starts to go soft take off the heat and mix until its a ll creamy.
3. Add the sugar, salt, eggs and marmalade and mix well.
4. Fold in the flour and then pour in to the cake tin.
5. Bake for approx 50 mins before letting tin sit on cooling rack for 10 mins before taking the cake out of the tin.

I’ve found that its actually best eaten when its been baked for about 40-45 mins and your testing skewer doesnt quite come out clean. Eaten warm its amazing.

I’ve also found that if you use dark cherry jam instead of marmalade its amazing with some creme fraiche.

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100g All Bran
250ml Milk
180g sultanas/raisins/mixed fruit
180g sugar
125g self-raising flour

Mix the first 4 ingrediants up in a bowl and sit for at least an hour.
Mix in the flour well and put into a 4 x 8 inch loaf time and bake in the oven at gas mark 5/190oC for an hour.