Eccles cake
By Sarah Cook
A new take on the traditional pastry, this cake will go down well on any occasion
- Prep:40 mins
Cook:1 hrs 25 mins
- Serves 10
- Easy
Nutrition per serving
- kcal 571
- fat 27g
- saturates 16g
- carbs 76g
- sugars 53g
- fibre 2g
- protein 7g
- salt 0.8g
Ingredients
- 250g pack butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
- 250g soft light brown sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 large eggs
- 100g plain flour
- 250g self-raising flour
- 100g buttermilk
- 2 eating apples, peeled, cored and diced to about 1cm pieces
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp mixed spice
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
- zest 1 lemon
- 2 tbsp melted butter
- 2 tbsp soft light brown sugar
- 85g currants
- 85g raisins
- 50g mixed peel
- 85g icing sugar, sifted
- zest and juice 1 lemon
- a few sugar cubes, roughly crushed
Method
Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Grease and line a deep 20cm cake tin with baking parchment. Mix together the filling ingredients and set aside.
Put butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until pale. Beat in the eggs, then fold in the flours, buttermilk and apples. Spoon half the mixture into the tin. Scatter over filling, leaving a 2.5cm clear border all around the edge. Spoon remaining mixture on top, starting by dolloping round the edges, then moving into the middle. Bake for 1 hr 25 mins or until a skewer poked in comes out clean. Cool in the tin.
Mix the icing sugar with enough lemon juice to make a runny-ish icing. Remove cake from the tin, drizzle over the icing, then scatter with crushed sugar cubes and lemon zest.
