Very Quick Lemon & Sultana Cake

So in need of a Milo and a piece of cake after another busy end-of -term day. All the preparation for the school's Tonga trip has left me rather time poor. I don't normally like making cakes in the food processor, but this one is tasty and ready in a flash. It's a great everyday cake. I adapted the recipe from an Orange cake by Alison Holst.

Food Processor Lemon Cake and Sultana Cake

2 lemons
125g butter - softened
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 cups flour
1 cup sultanas

For the syrup: 2 tablespoons lemon cordial and 2 tablespoons of caster sugar mixed together. 

Preheat the oven to 175deg. C and line a 25cm square tin with baking paper.

Cut the lemons up into small pieces and blend in the food processor until finely chopped. 

Add the softened butter, caster sugar and eggs. Blend for about 30 seconds until well combined. 

Add the baking soda dissolved in the milk, and the flour, vanilla, and sultanas, and pulse briefly until just combined. 

We just got this great Magimix. You need a reasonable sized kitchen wizz to make a cake.

Spread the cake mixture into the lined tin and bake for 40 to 45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Mix the sugar and cordial together. 

The finished cake.












Using a pastry brush spread the sugar mixture onto the cooked cake straight from the oven. 

This ones a great lunch box filler too. Happy Baking xx 

A Baked Fruit Pudding with Friends

We had a lovely dinner with friends last night. With the working week at an end we are always in danger of a quick take out, so it was lovely to be invited out. Our contribution to dinner was the pudding. With a cold breeze blowing and bursts of rain, a lovely homely baked pudding was the perfect dinner choice. I mixed it at home and popped it into the oven at our friend's house. It's a great quick mix and the choice of fruit can be varied depending on what's in the pantry.

Baked Fruit Pudding

1 small cup plain flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 - 3 cups dried fruit - I used golden sultanas, cranberries, standard sultanas and crystallised ginger
3 tablespoons butter
1 small cup milk
1 teaspoon baking soda

Pre-heat the oven to 175deg. C.
Mix the dry ingredients and fruit. Warm the milk and melt the butter. If you do this together ensure the mixture is not too hat as you don't want to cook the flour before it goes in the oven. Add the soda to the milk and butter and stir. It will froth up a bit. Mix the milky mixture into the dry ingredients and fruit and pour into a shallow, greased oven dish.

The dish needs to be quite shallow as the pudding is quite dense and will take too long to cook in a deep dish. 

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until the centre bounces back when pressed and the pudding is golden brown.







We served it with whipped cream and custard. Ice cream is also a good accompaniment.

It was great to catch up with friends and watch our daughters playing. Two little blue ballerina's having a ball! They couldn't have been happier!

Spicy Fruit Loaf

Our Grandmothers knew a thing or two about domestic harmony. Keeping everything and everyone happily ticking along nicely. Seemingly simultaneously attending to the baby, keeping the coal range stoked, cooking the dinner, and mending the children's jerseys.
Many of that generation's recipe books are packed with recipes for loaves of every description. I've never been one for making fruit loaf. It never seemed enough of a challenge, or even technically interesting enough to worry about. But when I dived into my copy of Recipes from Edna's Kitchen in a desperate search for quick Sunday night lunch box bakes, the significance of the good old fashioned loaf all fell into place: made with good pantry staples, melted and stirred up in a flash, and happily left to bake for an hour while more pressing matters are attended to.

I adapted this recipe from Edna Low's Ginger Fruit Loaf recipe.

Cranberry and Sultana Spicy Fruit Loaf

125g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons golden syrup
2 cups flour
50g slivered almonds
2 teaspoons baking soda
pinch salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon mixed spice
200g dried cranberries and golden sultanas

Preheat the oven to 175deg. C.
In a saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, golden syrup and milk. Leave to cool then stir in the dried fruit.
Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Add the nuts.












Make a well in the centre and fold in the butter mixture until smooth.












Pour into a greased and lined loaf tin. I used a silicone tin that doesn't require lining as the sides just peel away.











Bake for approximately 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean.











When cold slice and butter to serve.

And so on a Monday morning domestic harmony has been restored, and Little Miss 3 heads off to her day job with a tasty snack in her lunch box.