Inspired by ‘70s Retro Week’ on The Great British Bake Off, today I’m sharing a great nostalgic recipe for Dundee cake (adapted from ‘The British Baking Book’) that I made only a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes you just can’t improve on perfection…..

Ingredients:
Cake:
150 g unsalted butter, softened
150 g light brown soft sugar
3 eggs
200g plain flour
1 Tbsp sherry
100 g candied orange peel, finely chopped
grated zest of ½ orange
25g ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
175 g raisins
blanched almonds, to garnish

Sugar syrup
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon water

Recipe:

Preheat your oven to 170 fan/180 degrees C and butter and line a 20cm springform cake tin.

Put the butter and brown sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, making sure that each egg is completely incorporated before adding the next one. Add a teaspoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from curdling. Stir in the sherry, candied peel, and grated zest.

Carefully fold the remaining flour, ground almonds, baking powder, and salt into the batter. Stir in the raisins, then spoon the batter into the tin and smooth the top.

Arrange the whole blanched almonds in concentric circles on top of the cake. Lightly brush the top of the cake with a bit of water (this helps to prevent the almonds from sinking into the cake. Don’t push the almonds into the batter – lightly place them on top.

Reduce the oven to 150 fan/160C. and bake the cake in the lower part of the oven for 50-60 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the sugar syrup by mixing the granulated sugar and water in a small saucepan and heating over low heat until the sugar has dissolved.
Cover the hot cake with the sugar syrup. Allow the cake to cool completely in the tin. It tastes best after a few days, stored in an airtight container.

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