Hot Cross Scones

So I was looking at my blog and lamenting the fact that I hadn’t written up any recent baking exploits. I then realised I hadn’t really experimented that much and had been baking things I’ve baked before. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s very comforting to know the outcome and not stress about things. I saw the Hot Cross Bun bread and, with Easter coming up, thought it might be nice to make Hot Cross Buns. Then I remembered that they take a while, what with the rising of the dough etc etc. What to do? 

Hot Cross Scones of course! They don’t need rising, there is no yeast, and scones are super quick to make. I had some peel left over from Christmas so away I went. They have been a success which I can safely say after devouring the one I took a picture of. Well it was already spread with butter. I went with butter as the ‘serve’ but I guess jam and cream would work. Try it.  

I use a small cutter when making scones as I find a large scone off putting. These are very light so you can eat four and feel ok about it, in a way you couldn’t if you attempted to eat two large ones. Not sure how that works but it does.

Ingredients

100g cold butter, cubed

450g plain flour

2 tbsp baking powder

2 heaped tsp mixed spice

4 tbsp caster sugar

100g sultanas

50g mixed peel

2 large eggs, beaten

100ml whole milk

4tbsp plain flour

1. Preheat oven to 220°/GM7.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder and mixed spice and rub in the butter. Use tip of fingers – you know you’re doing it right if the palms of your hands stay clean. (I’m sure you could bung it in a food processor). You want it to go breakcrumby.
3. Add the sultanas, peel and sugar mixing in.
4. Make a well in the centre and add the eggs (keeping a little back to glaze the tops). Add about half the milk and then mix together. Start with a palette knife and then get your hands in. Add more milk if the dough needs it. You’ll probably not need it all.
5. When it’s all come together turn out on a floured surface and knead until smooth. This is an important part so make sure you do it for 2 or 3 minutes.
6. Roll the dough out until it’s about 2.5cm thick. Cut out with a 5cm cutter, rerolling when you run out of space (you can use a larger one). You should get 20-28 scones from it.
7. Place on a baking tray – non-stick is best – but if not grease the tray. Brush the tops with the remaining egg.
8. Take the 4 tbsp of flour and mix with about 5-6 tbsp of cold water to make a batter. I had mine fairly runny but it can be a bit thick. You need it to make the cross on top so put in a piping bag or something with a nozzle (I found some great squeezy bottles in Tiger) and pipe crosses on top. I did them all at once when they were on the tray – see below picture for the mess I made.
9. Cook for about 12-15 minutes (give it another couple if you think they need it). Make sure you eat one while hot just to live up to the name!

Hot Cross Bun Bread

January is a great time for a clear out and my baking cupboard is no different. This came about as I found a nearly full bag of strong bread flour and a load of packets of dried fruit with a little bit left in each. I have a bad habit of forgetting about them, buying new ones and then the vicious cycle starts. I do the same with packets of lentils but there are less opportunities to bake with them.

                                             

Anyway bread is amazing to make because you can whack anything into it. Really – just give it a whirl. I’ve used up nuts, seeds, almost used up brown sugar by shoving them in dough and baking the result. Bread is hard to get wrong. Yes you need to knead it but it really doesn’t take that long and you experience the fabulous result (well not me as I’m off gluten but you go crazy).

Ingredients

20g dried active yeast

1 tsp sugar

850g strong bread flour

5g salt

2 tbsp caster sugar

Dried fruit – sultanas, raisins, candied peel (I think I probably had about 200g in the end but it can take more)

1 tbsp mixed spice

600ml warm water (200ml boiling water and 400ml cold water)

1 egg, beaten

1. Take 200ml of the water and put 1 tsp of sugar in. The sprinkle the yeast on top, mix and leave for about 10 minutes. A massive foamy top will develop which means the yeast is getting excited about making bread.
2. Put the flour, salt, caster sugar, dried fruit and spice in a bowl and mix well.
3. Add the yeast mixture and the rest of the water. Mix well to make your dough and use your favourite kneading method. One here uses dough hooks andthis one takes a while but requires very little labour from you.
4. Once you’re at the second proving stage (the second time you leave it to double in size) either leave the dough as one big loaf or you can make two loaves by proving in loaf tins.
5. Before baking, brush the top with beaten egg and then put in an oven heated to 180°C/GM 4. For one big one about 45 minutes should do, for the smaller loaves about 35 minutes.
6. Obviously, as with all bread, it’s best eaten warm from the oven but it seemed to work well toasted as well.

Enthusiasm Flapjacks

Sometimes I need to clear out stuff from my baking shelves so flapjacks are an ideal way to use up ingredients. The quantities below are a guide so feel free to experiment. 

The name comes from the most wonderful Lorna who, when I lived with her, used to make Enthusiasm Soup. So called because you put everything you've got into it.   

Ingredients

250g butter

200g brown sugar (or any sugar)

Good dollop of golden syrup or honey

200-300g mixture of dried fruit, nuts, seeds
400-500g oats 

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM4.

2.    Melt the butter in a large saucepan. While melting add the sugar and syrup/honey. Mix it all together.

3.    Take off the heat and add the fruit/nut/seed mixture and stir well. Then add the oats, stirring again. You don't want a wet mixture at the end just enough to coat everything to create a sticky mess.

4.    Line a large tin and tip the mixture in, smoothing out before putting in the oven for 20 minutes.

5.    Cool and cut into desired sized pieces. Let it cool properly as the butter need to solidify a bit at bind it all together.

 

Upside Down Nectarine Cake

I’m in great pain. My legs hurt but not as much as The Thew’s – probably because he runs faster than me and is officially the fastest Woodrow. I’m the slowest but it’s a role I fill bravely and with style! The Brentwood half marathon felt like a good idea at the time but I did have a couple of glasses of champagne inside me along with a glass of wine when I agreed to do it. Most things start to seem like a good idea at that point. The worrying thing is that I have a harder half marathon in less than two weeks when I go to Ireland to see my family. Once again it seemed like a good idea at the time to combine a boozy family trip to Connemara with a race. Thinking back I was probably drunk. 

However alcohol cannot explain why on Sunday evening, in pain from the half marathon I just ran, I signed up for a 100km walk. That’s explained by friendship which is a much better reason. My good friend Lorna has a friend who has cancer and she’s doing the walk to raise money for research into cancer. Lorna is one of those amazing people who will fight any battle to the maximum that she believes is worth fighting – she’s like a super hero on the side of all that is right and just. If she could shrink into a space ship, like Dennis Quaid in Innerspace, and fight cancer head on inside bodies she’d be doing it. Because she can’t, and because she’s one lady who won’t sit idly by, she’s going to walk 100km. Because she’s my friend, and it’s important to her, I’m walking it too.  

The above has very little to do with my baking this week apart from forgetting about baking because of the run, then realising I had some nectarines to use up and that I had the ingredients for a sponge. I’m awful at turning out upside down cakes so was happy this one worked! You can use any soft fruit here really but I think it’s worth the extra time to do a nice pattern in the top. 

Ingredients

Topping

50g butter

75g caster sugar

5 nectarines, chopped (I did slices – 6 per nectarine – but you could just half them if you prefer) 

Cake

150g butter

150g caster sugar

3 large eggs

60 ml milk

1 tsp vanilla

150g self-raising flour 

1.    Preheat an oven to 180°C/GM4.

2.    Use the 50g of butter to coat the bottom of a tin – I used 23” but you can use any size really. Make sure it’s kind of evenly spread and grease the sides lightly. Sprinkle the 75g of sugar over the butter. Then arrange your fruit on it.

3.    Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs one at a time mixing well.

4.    Put in half the flour, mix, then mix in the milk and vanilla, then mix in the last of the flour.

5.    Cover the fruit with the batter and bake for about 35 minutes, testing to check it’s cooked. If you’ve used a smaller sized tin you may need another few minutes.

6.    You can serve this hot or cold so either cool completely, or if serving hot, leave for about 10 minutes before turning the tin upside down on a plate and hoping it comes out well!

Bread Pudding

I go through phases of thinking I don’t have a certain spice and buying it when I do my shopping four weeks in a row. This means I then have a glut of a particular spice and think of ways to use it. Smoked paprika is currently in abundance and once I managed to use cumin seeds (mainly toasted and then ground down) in every meal for two weeks. I don’t seem to do this for dried herbs as I’m always scrabbling about and using thyme instead of oregano or something else.  

As it’s coming up to Christmas I decided to check what spices I had to aid me in Christmas style baking. Along with the usual – cinnamon, ginger – I discovered that I had two unopened refill packets of mixed spice and a small glass jar of it. I have no idea when I bought these but mixed spice just smells instantly of Christmas to me so I looked into how I could use it. A recipe that calls for tablespoons of spice and not ½ teaspoons. I wasn’t doing well until I remembered I was seeing a friend soon and that she likes bread pudding. I’ve never made it before but looking at recipes I soon discovered a lot of mixed spice was needed. I did a mini trial run last weekend and then went for it last night. 

This tastes good to me but I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten it before! However the test batch went down well at work (although what doesn’t?!) and I’m sure this is what other pictures of it looks like. It’s a good way to use up excess bread you may have and can make use of any dried fruit you have lying around. It’s basically making a bit of a custard style gloop using squished up bread. And if that doesn’t tempt you …. 

Ingredients

500g bread (I used white but I’ve been assured wholemeal will do)

500g dried fruit (sultanas and raisins went in mine but I guess anything dried would do – maybe not apple and pineapple but cranberries, apricots)

75g mixed peel (I know people can be funny about this but you need it)

2 tbsp mixed spice

Good grating of nutmeg (and I mean a good one)

600ml milk

3 large eggs, beaten

150g brown sugar (light or dark or a mixture)

Zest of a lemon (optional)

120g melted butter 

1.    Bread the bread up into pieces and put into a bowl. Add the fruit, peel and spices. Then pour in the milk and get your hand in there. Squish up the bread so it absorbs the milk and makes a batter that takes in the fruit. This doesn’t look attractive but is good fun.

2.    Add the eggs, sugar and zest, stir and leave for 15 minutes.

3.    Preheat the oven the GM4/180°C and line a large tray. Mine was about 35cm x 20cm. You could use something smaller, the final result will just be deeper.

4.    Add the melted butter to the mixture and stir well. Pour into the tin (you can sprinkle with sugar to form a crust if you like) and bake for 1 ½ hours. Check it’s done but it’s meant to be stodgy so don’t worry too much about it.

5.    You can either serve warm with custard or cream, or wait until its cold and cut into chunks.

N.B. Now having 500g of stale/left over bread is quite a lot. This recipe will happily be adapted for the weight of bread you have. I did a trial run with 160g of bread and just did about a third of everything. It worked. Bake for about 40 minutes and check.

Guinness Infused Christmas Mincemeat

It’s bad enough being at the gym without people bugging me the whole time. I appreciate that my many issues with other gym users stem from my dislike of being there but I don’t think that I am totally out of order on all of them. They are mainly changing room based as I think people seem to forget that they are in a public shared space. Overly aggressive moisturising of upper legs when naked is on my list, especially when one leg is on a bench, and unnecessarily bending while naked within main sight lines is another. I do get it; in a gym changing room there is a need for being naked, and I have no issue if someone wants to wander around naked, or dry their hair naked, it just feels like sometimes ladies are pushing genitalia in my face. It bugs me. 

Then there is more passive aggressive behaviour. The leaving open of locker doors, leaving stuff on a bench in front of a locker that isn’t associated with them and moving the hair straighteners to ‘their’ part of the dressing table even though they clearly aren’t going to use them for ten minutes or more. (I don’t use hair straighteners but the pettiness of ‘claiming’ a shared facility, of which there are a substantial number available, when you don’t need them makes me want to). However my completely irrational one (and I admit this as it has no bearing on my life whatsoever so I should get over it) is people who don’t correctly row on the rowing machine. Why this bugs me I don’t know. It doesn’t stop me rowing properly but the sight of someone just using their legs, and then not completing the action by using their arms to pull on the stupid handle, annoys the hell out of me. I try and rationalise it; they could be injured, maybe they have never seen someone row, maybe they are stupid and don’t want to get any better …… I’ll stop there.  

So this all somehow brings me on to mincemeat – the kind in mince pies just to be clear. I don’t mind mince pies but bought mincemeat can be a let-down. Sometimes the fruit is too dry, even though the mixture is moist, or they pimp it with weird things like glace cherries or they add rum to excessive quantities. I also find the sight of shredded suet off putting as it can look like little maggots sometimes. Many irrational personal issues. Therefore I decided to make my own and stop being annoyed by it. I use the principles of the fruit in the Porter Cake I make and apply them to this – so melting everything together, using Guinness and getting the fruit to absorb the moisture. I was happy with the result but there is no reason why you couldn’t pimp it yourself with glace cherries or rum. The whole point of making your own is that it can be exactly how you want it and you can then inflict that on others. 

Ingredients

280g sultanas and raisins (aim for half and half but I only had 100g of raisins so used more sultanas)

70g mixed peel

100g light brown sugar

125g suet (I used vegetarian as I think it’s weird having a dessert item that is non-vegetarian)

200ml Guinness

1 eating apple, finely chopped

Zest of one lemon

Zest of one orange

2 tsp ground mixed spice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Good grating of nutmeg 

1.    Put the sultanas, raisins, peel, sugar and suet into a saucepan. Heat until sort of simmering mixing every now and again. The mixture is fairly thick so you want to make sure it doesn't burn.

2.    Turn off the heat and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and leave to cool.

3.    Once cool give it a good stir and save until you need it. If you want to keep it for a while then store in sterilised jars but if you're using within a couple of weeks I think an air tight tub in the fridge will do.

 

Granola Bars

I may have a slight allergy to gluten. Obviously this is a nightmare for someone who bakes but I can't really deny anymore that I feel much better by cutting gluten out. Damn you gluten!!!!! The Thew is going to be beside himself with the news as he eats ridiculously well and avoids gluten whenever possible, telling me to do the same so I will feel better. He has this annoying habit of being right about things that I don't want him to be right about. Of course sometimes I'm right but have promised not to gloat about that latest incident so putting on my blog would contravene that. 

The Thew used to love the Pret Power Bars they used to do years ago and for some reason I thought I would take it upon myself to recreate them at home rather than just let him buy them. They turned out really well but I didn’t make them for a while (I think because he gave up gluten and this was before gluten free oats were widely available) and lost my recipe. So this week I decided to give it another go. I have used gluten free oats so these bad boys are 'healthy' for a given value when you consider the sugar and butter content. Oh yes! 

The ingredients below are a bit of a guide. The moisture adding ingreidents are needed but you can up the honey or syrup depending on what you like, the same goes for additional fruit and seeds (or nuts if you like those – I’m funny about the food I like nuts to infiltrate). Use what you like best. I always found this a great way to use up any leftover packets of random ingredients. If you have some nuts or odds and sods of dried fruit just whack them in. You can add desiccated coconut, flaked almonds - whatever. Up the oats and reduce the fruit if you want something more flap jack like and less granola bar. The oats are the base for you to customise – just make sure the mixture remains damp. 

Ingredients

250g butter

100g sugar (I use dark or light brown but use what you have)

100g golden syrup

100g honey

300g oats

100g seeds (I had pumpkin, sesame and sunflower but whatever you like. You could use nuts instead)

100g raisins or sultanas

200g other dried fruit (I used cranberries and blueberries but apricots, apple, whatever) 

1.    Preheat oven to 180°C/GM 4 and line a large tin with baking paper. I use a big roasting tin.

2.    Put the butter, sugar, syrup and honey in a saucepan. Heat gently until it's all melted and mixed together.

3.    Chuck all the other ingredients in and mix well.

4.    Turn out into the tin, even out and cook for 20 to 25 minutes (be careful as the fruit can burn on top).

5.    Cool and cut into pieces.

Chelsea Buns or Why I Can't be Bothered

Oh I can’t be bothered. It’s been that kind of week really. Everything has been an effort and a pain. I think part of it was that I was sort of ill for a few days. Nothing bad enough for me to stay in bed and watch my box set of Mad Men but enough to make everything a chore. I’ve also pulled something in my leg and am having to actively try and fix it in time for my 10km run on Saturday (tomorrow). What feels like hours of rolling on a roller and tennis ball haven’t helped my general feelings of botheredness.  

However the weekend is upon me and I’m very much looking forward to it (apart from the 10km run). I’ll be making cake pops for my wondrous and beautiful Goddaughter’s 7^th birthday and then, pampering her and some of her friends alongside her Godmother of Fabulousness (she has two the lucky thing!) There are going to be four of us acting as beauticians and it’s going to be lots of fun.

So in the general theme of this week I can’t be bothered to write up the recipe for these Chelsea Buns. I wasn’t 100% happy and it all seems like too much of a chore. I’m going trashy next week which I think will be more exciting.

Bread and Butter Pudding with Hot Cross Buns

I've never made bread and butter pudding but thought that an Easter twist on it would be a nice dessert when The Thew’s family came around on Easter Sunday. I would recommend buying the hot cross buns as you want ones that are fairly robust to absorb the custard.
 
Ingredients
8 hot cross buns
Butter
450ml double cream
450ml full fat milk
4 egg yolks
1 full egg
Nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp caster sugar
Sultanas
Zest of an orange
Demerara sugar to top

1.    Preheat the oven to 160°C/GM 3.

2.    Slice the buns in half and spread with butter. Then arrange them in a dish slightly overlapping.

3.    Sprinkle with some sultanas and orange zest. I didn't weigh the sultanas as it was just a scattering to boost the fruit content.

4.    To make the custard heat the cream and milk together in a pan to just below boiling point.

5.    While that is going on whisk the egg yolks and egg together with the caster sugar. Then add the vanilla extract and a grating of nutmeg.

6.    Once the milk is hot pour into the egg mixture while constantly whisking. It will be a thin custard so don't panic that it’s not thick. Then pour the custard over the buns and leave for 20 minutes or so to soak in.

7.    Sprinkle Demerara sugar over the top and pop into the oven for 45 minutes.

8.    Serve with more custard!

Hot Cross Buns

Sometimes making an effort is worth it. Sometimes it’s not. A specific example would be taking time over making your fringe look nice just before going outside into gale force winds. Not worth it. Training in the gym for weeks so you can keep some dignity during a brutal 10km course (that actually was 11.2km) is. Well kind of. It’s all a matter of balance and what is important to you.

 

Baking falls into this. It’s one of those things where the end product takes longer to make than to be consumed. I’m basically a feeder (I blame my Irish heritage and the compulsion this gives me to force food on people) so I don’t mind that everything disappears. In fact I’d panic if it didn’t! An interesting take on this time to make vs. time to consume was in ‘Rant’ by Chuck Palahnuik (well worth a read but prepared to have to read it about three times and then go on forums to work out what the hell just happened). The main characters mother is annoyed by how quickly her food is demolished without full appreciation of the taste, so she starts putting thumb taks, balls of tin foil and cherry pips in her food. People learn to chew carefully, take their time and ultimate appreciate the taste more. Now it’s not something I’m going to start doing but it makes you think about how all the traditions around those cakes that have a ‘prize’ baked in for the ‘lucky’ person who finds it in their piece got started.

 

Baking is full of tradition and the ones surrounding hot cross buns are huge. Take one on a ship to stop a shipwreck and hang one in your kitchen to stop fires. There are lots more but you can go on Wikipedia for that, let’s get on to the recipe. These are great and so light compared to the ones in the supermarket. I’m going to be honest though. They can feel like a lot of effort because of the crosses. Don’t ask me why but that extra step feels like forever to me. I think it’s because I don’t like piping bags so I use short crust pastry instead. However over the years I have found it to be less stressful and messy and the end result is pretty much the same – a cross on top of a bun! So these are more effort than picking them up on your weekly shop but the lightly spiced soft buns make up for it as far as I’m concerned.

Ingredients

Buns

250ml milk

75g butter

100g caster sugar

2 x 7g sachets fast acting yeast

2 large eggs

450g strong white flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

2 tsp mixed spice

Pinch of salt

150g mixed dried fruit

1 egg, beaten (in addition to the ones above)

Short crust

200g plain flour

100g butter

Pinch salt

1 egg

1.    Put the butter and milk in a saucepan and gently heat. You just want it warm so don't boil. I haven't put these down as ingredients but you can chuck a couple if cardamom pods and a clove in to infuse in the milk mix. I'm not certain it makes a difference but you feel fairly smug. Try some orange peel as well.

2.    Take out anything you added to the milk mixture and measure out 60ml. Add a 1 tbsp of caster sugar and the yeast to it, then just to one side.

3.    Add the flour, rest of the sugar, spices and salt to a bowl and mix well. Make a well in the middle.

4.    Beat the 2 large eggs into the left over milk mixture then mix in the yeast mixture. Add most of it into the flour mix. Now this is where you get your dough hooks out. (You can knead by hand but I really can’t ever be bothered). Mix for about a minute. It is a damp-ish dough but don't over add on the liquid.

5.    Add the dried fruit and knead with your dough hooks for about 5 minutes. You want the dough shiny and pulling away from the side of the bowl.

6.    Cover with cling film double size in a warm place (I can’t tell you the joy I had when I saw our flat for the first time and saw it had an airing cupboard).

7.    Then make the short crust or look up a recipe for the flour paste version. Flour, salt and butter in a food processor until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add most of the egg, pulse, add more egg if it needs it but you want it to just come together. Put in the fridge for about 15 minutes and then roll out thin and cut out strips. Done! (You’ll only need about a 1/3 of this so save the rest for making jam tarts or just freeze until you need).

8.    Take your doubled in size dough and knead for 2 minutes. Then divide into buns about 45g in weight (I do weigh them but I’m weird). Put them on an oiled baking tray leaving space between them and wash with beaten egg, placing a short crust pastry cross on top.

9.    Leave to rise somewhere warm for about an hour and pre-heat the oven to 190°C/GM5.

10.  Once they’ve risen again put in the oven. After 5 minutes turn the heat to 180°C/GM4 for another 10. I find that these like to burn quickly so just watch them. Then let them cool and eat with butter.

Porter Cake (Fruit Cake with Guinness)

Family recipes are a gift and something to treasure. Mostly they are handed down with care and attention, including amendments or improvements so the next generation can continue to evolve and make the recipes their own. Not so with my mum. Ingredients such as ‘a lump of butter’ appear in her recipes and when questioned on what size a lump is all you get is, “Oh you know. A lump.” I spend my time trying to decipher them and keeping my fingers crossed that it will all turn out ok.

One recipe which is a Christmas staple is my family’s ‘Porter Cake’. Basically a boiled fruit cake with Guinness which tastes amazing. There is something about soaking the fruit in lots of butter and Guinness that not only creates a fantastic smell but also a wonderful liquor that the rest of the ingredients get mixed into. My husband thinks the sound it makes when stirred is great!

I was talking to my mum about it, as I was due to make it, and mentioned that the fruit drops in the cake most of the time on me. She then proceeded to ask me some questions about how I make it and I confirmed that I follow the recipe she gave me. Then the bombshell – the recipe was more a guideline than an actual representation of how she makes it! So I put too much Guinness in and not enough flour. WTF?! It’s already bad enough that the recipe calls for 4 or 5 eggs. She found this all rather amusing needless to say.

So I’ve experimented a little bit, not too much as following the original recipe made a pretty good cake, and below should mean you won’t fall foul of dropping fruit. I’ve left in the 4 or 5 eggs though as it wouldn’t be a family recipe for me without something a little vague, with the same going for the cake tins you need. I urge you to make this as it can all be done in one large saucepan and makes a welcome Christmas gift.

Ingredients

330ml Guinness (roughly)

350g raisins

350g sultanas

75g candied peel

75g glace cherries, chopped (I use the natural colour glace cherries as I don't like the lurid red of the other ones contrasting with the darker fruit in this cake but up to you)

200g brown sugar (I use whatever I have - light or dark or a mixture of the two)

250g butter

450g plain flour

2 tsp bicarb of soda

4 or 5 large eggs

1.   Get a large saucepan.

2.   Put the butter, sugar, raisins and candied peel in. Turn the heat on low and bring to a simmer.

3.   Turn off the heat and let the mixture cool. This allows the fruit to soak up the moisture and absorb the flavours. It needs to be left at least a couple of hours.

4.   Preheat the oven to 150°/GM1.

5.   Add the chopped cherries (I just cut them in with kitchen scissors) and then the eggs. Add the plain flour and bicarb. Mix well. Now this mixture might need a bit more flour, a bit less, depends on how much moisture the fruit has soaked up and if you used 4 eggs or 5.

6.   The difficulty with the recipe is that it was clearly put together for a random mammoth sized cake tin that is now lost in the midst of time. I sometimes make one round cake and one loaf cake, or 3 loaf cakes. Sorry – it’s another issue with this recipe – no set tin size. Just shove it in and I’m sure it will be ok. It always is for me.

7.   Cook for anything from 1 hour to 2 hours. If it's a loaf cake test after 45 minutes but if you have a mammoth cake tin you’ve put the whole mixture in then you’ll need about 2.