The cake that can do anything

A brand new recipe

All images this week: Rachael Pilston

Hello,

It’s been a long week. I just can’t shake the sadness that summer is over. And my cure for that is a refusal to wear covered shoes and this cake. 

In the hope that it will lift us all seamlessly into autumn, I’m sharing this cake recipe with you. It’s a cake I’ve been making a version of for years and years, but it’s always been in my head and not a recipe written down - until now. It takes inspiration from a few people. The Victoria sponges I grew up making that were equal parts egg, flour, butter sugar (though this veers off a little), a blueberry and lemon loaf cake from Ottolenghi that I make all the time, and, in more recent weeks, a nod to Kitty Coles’ new excellent book More with Less - it’s 10/10. 

This is the first newsletter where the recipe is in my ‘extra’ newsletter that is paid for. I am very happy so many of you have already supported me. I will still be sending out my free newsletter bi-monthly, and then if you are able to support me then you’ll also get two more full posts every month. If you do become a paid subscriber, you will be directly supporting my recipes and the behind the scenes work that goes into all my writing, and you will have my never-ending gratitude. This week for paid subscribers, there is the recipe, an exclusive video, and a list of some favourites featured in it, so come and cook with me in my kitchen. I’ll get the teas on. 

Back to cake.

This is the cake recipe I seem to go back to again and again. It's flexible. It's got fruit (if you want fruit), the crumb is 10/10. It's just the right side of sweet and it's got a lot of yoghurt, which I love in a cake. 

Let me tell you why all of these things add up to a good cake:

• It works. Sure there are a million cake recipes in the world and a huge amount of those I would stand by as great cake recipes. But if you are not someone who bakes all the time (I’m not) then a reliable favourite cake recipe is something you need in your life. Think of it as the perfect 501 of baking. If your life is anything like mine then I am usually cramming cake making into a late night or a window between a bit of work while my kids are at school. Sure I have cooked this cake with them and I love to do that but more often I’m making it quickly. A cake is often something you intend to share with others or be the focus of a celebration and I would argue that's when you need a recipe you know will work, and it's not the time to try something new. This is that cake for me.

• Flexibility. This cake can be made in a 23cm round tin (a standard cake tin) as in this video but I have also added cooking times for muffins, tray and a loaf tin as I don’t always want to make a round cake. A big party calls for a sheet cake, a kids’ cake sale, mini muffins. Tea means a loaf tin.

  

• Fruit. I love a cake with fruit in it. Fruit adds natural sweetness to a cake, adds some contrast in texture and will make your cake look amazing. Blackberries staining a cake deep purple, yes. A peach baked into a deep fuchsia and orange custardy layer, yes. Apples softening to a caramelised on poofy on the bottom layer, yes. That said, this cake batter is good with just lemon or vanilla too, it's your cake.

• Underripe fruit. Most fruit (especially stone fruit) is picked unripe and intended to ripen at home so it does not bruise as it travels, but in reality sometimes that takes weeks and the fruit goes soft around the edges and stays hard in the middle. Obviously I would encourage you to buy fruit from shops, farmers, and markets that sell delicious fruit. But that's not always life and we all end up with a hard peach now and again. This cake is where all my lacklustre fruit ends up. It softens and sweetens in the oven and turns what would be underwhelming into something to be proud of.

  

• Just enough sugar. It's been said all over the cooking world that most cakes are too sweet. Unless you have an insatiable sweet tooth then 125g of sugar which is what I add to this 23cm cake is enough to make it just the right side of sweet. You might like a tiny bit more if you like your cakes sweeter, and you could add up to 150g or even 175g. I use light brown sugar here but I’ve made this cake with caster (superfine) and with dark brown muscovado and all work nicely. The reasonably low amount of sugar in this cake makes it something that kids can eat too without going absolutely mental.

• Yoghurt. I’ve been putting yoghurt in my cakes forever and this is why. It adds a bit of acidity which is welcome and balances the sweetness. It reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to give the cake a good rise and it gives a moist (sorry!) and to me a great crumb, soft, light, crumbly but not falling apart. I love a cake with yoghurt in.

So as well as being anything goes cake this is my go to cake, my in a fix cake, my celebration cake.

Recently I have made it for;

• A 90th (happy birthday Pat) - with Hackney blackberries in 9x13in tray

• A cake sale with lemon and vanilla in mini muffins tins

• A trip to see a friend with apples and more blackberries in a 23cm round

• For my family with nectarines in a muffin tins

• For this video with apricots in a 23cm round tin

• To take to a friend who is ill in a 500g loaf tin with frozen blueberries

• This cake can do it all. You don’t have to make this cake forever but I will.

The anything goes cake (the cake that can do anything)

The thing I love the most about this cake is how many different ways you can take it. So I’ve given you cooking times for a round cake, a loaf tin and small muffins tins. The fruit you use is down to you and the season I’ve put a list below. Frozen berries work too. You can skip the fruit but I wouldn’t.