Eccles cake

600 kcal or less apple apples birthday christmas currant cake dessert for a crowd fruit cake iced cake lancashire make ahead over an hour teacake traditional cake yorkshire

N/A

Source

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 currant

85g raisin

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.