sweet – Page 4 – Deja Food

Fruit Pudding Pies

Mary Rooke, 1770

Pudding pies used to be immensely popular in the 18th century, and describe a particular style of dish where a pastry case is filled with a thick, flavoured and sweetened porridge and the two baked together. Obviously, you’re now saying to yourself, ‘Hang on a second, that’s a tart, not a pie’, and you’d be quite right, of course, but only by 21st century semantics. In addition, the ‘pudding’ of the title is to our modern eyes, rather vague, but to those of an 18th century cook, it was curiously specific, and not for the reason you might think.

Look up the word ‘pudding’ in the Oxford English dictionary, and the very first definition is: A stuffed entrail or sausage, and related senses. Yes, no mention of warm, comforting delicacies served at the conclusion of a meal, but innards and stuff in ’em! In the 17th and 18th centuries, pudding could be sweet or savoury. Echoes of these savoury puddings are still visible today in the black and white puddings sold in butchers shops. Sweet puddings included dense mixtures of dried fruits, peel, suet and spices, either stuffed into entrails or wrapped in floured cloths and simmered in water, as the traditional Clootie Dumplings of Scotland are today.

A more accurate description of pudding from these times would be that of a foodstuff of a certain texture, and so it is with pudding pies. The texture is more akin to a baked cheesecake, smooth and dense, but with just a fraction of the richness, they’re practically health food! In this instance, the filling is flavoured with the sharpness of gooseberries. I like the way it cuts through the denseness and really lifts and brightens the filling, but any smooth fruit puree will work well, the best results coming from sharply acidic fruit.

Original Recipe — Source: D/DU 818/1, Essex Record Office

Fruit Pudding Pies

112g ground rice
112g butter
225ml milk
112g sugar
100ml gooseberry pulp
4 large eggs
zest of a lemon
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
4 individual pudding, or deep tart, dishes lined with shortcrust pastry

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas 4.
Stir the ground rice, butter and milk over heat until quite thick, then pour into a basin.
Add the sugar and stir together until cold.
Add the gooseberry pulp, well-beaten eggs, lemon and nutmeg.
Mix thoroughly.
Spoon the mixture into the pastry-lined dishes and smooth over.
Put the tarts onto a baking sheet and cover lightly with a sheet of foil, to prevent the filling darkening too much.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on the size and shape of your pie dishes. Remove the foil after 15 minutes and turn the pie dishes around if they seem to be colouring unevenly.
Cool on a wire rack.
Serve warm or cold with cream or custard.

Oyster Tarts

20th century, Savoury Pastry, Small Cakes

A great little recipe from that classic baking institution: Be-Ro.

Thomas Bell founded his grocery company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1875. Amongst other items, he manufactured and sold baking powder and the world’s first self-raising flour under the brand name Bell’s Royal.

After the death of King Edward VII the use of the word ‘Royal’ in business was prohibited, so Thomas shortened each word to just two letters, and the Be-Ro brand was born.

To encourage the use of self-raising flour, the company staged exhibitions where visitors could taste freshly-baked scones, pastries and cakes. This proved so popular, and requests for the recipes so numerous, the Be-Ro Home Recipes book was created. Now in it’s 40th edition, the company claims that, at over 38 million copies, its recipe booklet “is arguably one of the best-selling cookery books ever.”

I’m not sure which edition my Be-Ro booklet is, as it’s undated, but from the appearance of the smiling lady on the front it definitely has a 1930s feeling; it’s pictured on the Be-Ro website, with a deep red cover.

These little tarts are a beautiful example of how the simplest ingredients can be given a subtle twist and appeal by both their appearance and the ease with which they are whipped up. In essence, these are a Bakewell Tart with cream, but a little tweak turns them into sweet ‘oysters’.

I’m not a fan of almond flavouring, so I’ve used lemon zest to brighten the almond sponge and used a seedless blackcurrant jam inside. Adding the jam after baking (unlike the method for Bakewell Tarts) circumvents cooking the jam for a second time, and so it retains its brightness of flavour as well as colour. The pastry is crisp and dry and a perfect contrast against the moist filling. I’ve opted for an unsweetened pastry, but feel free to use a sweetened one if you prefer.

You could customise these tarts by swapping the ground almonds for almost any other nut, and matching the jam accordingly. Here are a few that occurred to me.

Almond with orange zest, and orange curd as the filling.
Coconut and lime curd, with a little lime zest in the filling.
Hazelnuts or pecans, with a praline paste or Nutella in the filling.
Walnut and a little coffee icing.

Have fun with them!

Oyster Tarts

Pastry
60g cornflour
225g plain flour
140g butter
ice-cold water

Filling
70g unsalted butter, softened
70g caster sugar
1 large egg
zest of 1 small lemon
85g ground almonds

To serve
200g cream cheese
200ml whipping cream
1tsp vanilla extract
1-2tbs icing sugar, plus more to sprinkle
120g sharp jam

Put all the pastry ingredients except for the water into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Gradually add the water, one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture comes together in a ball.
Knead smooth, then roll out thinly. Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge to relax.
Preheat the oven to 170°C, 150°C Fan.
Beat the butter and sugar for the filling until light and fluffy. This will take about 5 minutes to get as much air into the mix as possible.
Add the egg and whisk in thoroughly.
Fold in the lemon zest and ground almonds.
Grease a 12-hole shallow tart tin.
Remove the pastry from the fridge and cut out 12 circles. Line the prepared tin with the pastry.Add about a tablespoon of filling to each tart. I use a small ice-cream scoop but 2 spoons will also work.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, turning the tin around after 10 minutes to ensure even cooking.
Transfer the cooked tarts onto a wire rack and allow to cool.
Whisk the cream cheese, vanilla and cream together until firm. Gently stir through a little icing sugar to slightly sweeten.
When the tarts have cooled, slice off the top of the filling with a sharp knife and set aside.
Add a teaspoon of jam and either spoon or pipe a little of the cream mixture into each tart.
Set the ‘lids’ back on the tarts at a jaunty angle, so as to appear like a half-opened oyster.
Dust with icing sugar and serve.

Posset Pie

17th century, Pudding, Sweet Pastry

Joseph Cooper, 1654

The surfeted Groomes doe mock their charge With Snores.
I have drugg’d their Possets.

Macbeth, Act II, scene II

The broadest description of a posset that I can think of is that of a hot syllabub: a thickened drink of either milk or cream, sweetened and flavoured with any of a number of alcoholic drinks and/or fruit, served warm.

In the Middle Ages it was seen as a winter warmer and it’s ability to make one feel good meant that over the years it segued into becoming borderline medicinal. It was recommended for insomnia, indigestion, as a purgative and of benefit when fasting.

Recipes abound, and the styles are as numerous as their intended uses: custard posset, cold posset, apple posset, whipped posset, froth posset, sack posset, soap sud posset, posset without milk, posset without wine, posset without milk wine or beer.

Thus far, Joseph Cooper is the only person I have found that turns posset into a dessert. Twenty years later Hannah Woolley would include this same recipe in her own book, adding a few of her own details to the method.

Apples are the recommended fruit, but this would work well with almost any fleshy fruit pulp; apricots in summer, for example, and dark, sharp damsons in autumn.

Posset Pie

Sweet shortcrust pastry
Eggwhite for glazing

500g fruit puree
2 large yolks
200ml double cream
50ml cream sherry
1tsp ginger
1/2tsp cinnamon
1-2tbs icing sugar
4 heaped tablespoons dried white breadcrumbs

To decorate
2cm matchsticks of candied orange, lemon and citron peel
sugar nibs

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6.
Roll out the pastry and line a greased shallow tart tin. My favourite shape is long and rectangular (36 x 12 x 3cm).
Prick the bottom with the tines of a fork to prevent blistering and line with parchment paper and baking beads.
Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the parchment and baking beads and bake for a further five minutes.
Brush the insides of the tart with beaten egg white and bake for a further 3 minutes.
Turn the oven heat to 160°C/140°C fan/gas 3.
Mix the filling ingredients until smooth. Taste and add more sugar if liked.
Pour into the pastry case and smooth over.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until the filling is almost set. It will firm up while it cools.
Arrange your candied peel and sugar nibs on the pie as decoratively as you like.
Serve cold.

Shrewsbury Pudding Tart

19th century, Pudding, Sweet Pastry

Georgiana Hill, 1862

Here is something a little different for the adventurous, an unusual dessert in the form of a gloriously vibrant beetroot tart: given an official Thumb’s Up™ by my daughter. I’ve tweaked this recipe slightly and baked it in a pastry case, for ease of serving. The original method was for a buttered-and-breadcrumbed bowl. The cooking times are roughly the same. The flavour is very light and delicate, the lemon counteracting a lot of the beetroot’s sweetness.

1 x 24cm blind-baked pastry shell

225g cooked beetroot
115g unsalted butter – melted
150g icing sugar
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 2 lemons
3 large eggs
60ml brandy
150-200g fresh white breadcrumbs

Preheat the oven to 150°C, 130°C Fan.
Puree the beetroot until smooth.
Add the butter, sugar, lemon, eggs and brandy and whisk thoroughly.
Add in the breadcrumbs BUT not all at once. You want them to absorb a lot of the moisture in the filling, which will vary depending on the freshness of the eggs and the moisture in the beetroot. You might not need all of them. The texture should be similar to a sponge cake mix, but still pourable.
Add the filling to the pie shell and place the tin on a baking sheet.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until the filling has set. Turn the baking sheet around after 15 minutes to ensure even baking.
Cool on a wire rack.

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

20th century, Sweet Pastry

This pastry has been scaled down from a recipe I found in a Victorian/Edwardian commercial bakers’ book. It’s an all-butter (and therefore vegetarian) pastry and includes a small proportion of cornflour. This makes the pastry extra crispy, which isn’t always easy with an all-butter pastry. It also gives it a really smooth, almost silken, dry feel which makes it very easy to handle.

60g cornflour
225g plain flour
140g butter
1 large egg
85g icing sugar
ice-cold water

Put all the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Gradually add the water, one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture comes together in a ball.
Knead smooth, then roll out.
Cover with plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Spiced Strawberry Tart

16th century, 17th century, Pudding, Sweet Pastry

Jane Parker, 1651 adapted from The Good Huswife’s Jewell, 1587

I was drawn to this recipe because it involved spicing strawberries and baking them in pastry, both details being so different from how we tend to use strawberries today. Originally, I was delighted to find the recipe in Jane Parker’s manuscript recipe book¹ but some months later, when I found an earlier version in a cookery book from the previous century, it became at once both more interesting and more delightful. Thomas Dawson’s recipe for strawberry tart², was published in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth I, and is, in all honesty, a little sparse on the level of detail to which our 21^st century eyes are accustomed when it comes to recipes. Indeed, it is so brief I can quote it in full below:

To make a tart of strawberries

Wash your strawberries and put them into your Tarte and season them with sugar, cinnamon, and ginger and put in a little red wine into them.

No quantities, cooking times, or even mention of a pastry recipe. It would appear Jane Parker also thought a little extra detail was required, and her recipe is as follows:

Jane Parker's Recipe — Source: MS3769, Wellcome Library Collection

Whilst there’s still no pastry recipe, we do have more detail in terms of presentation: the tart should be shallow, the pastry lid should have diamond cutouts, baking time of 15 minutes and a sprinkling of spiced sugar over the baked tart. These additional details, to my mind, highlight the fact that, even if she didn’t actually make the tart herself, Jane Parker definitely got the recipe from someone who had, as these details are precisely the kind of personal touches an experienced cook would note down for future reference.

After centuries of refinement, the strawberries we now use are impressively large but much milder in flavour than those that would have been used for this originally Elizabethan tart. If you can find sufficient wild strawberries either to mix with your ordinary strawberries or, decadently, to use on their own, their deep aromatic flavour, together with the wine and spices, will make for a much more robust flavour to this unusual Tudor tart.

Spiced Strawberry Tart

1 batch of Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

600g fresh strawberries
3 tbs caster sugar
1tbs cornflour
1tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp coarse ground black pepper
60ml red wine or port
Milk for glazing
1tbs caster sugar
1tsb ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6.
Roll out the shortcrust pastry thinly. The thinner the pastry, the less time it will need in the oven and the freshness of the strawberries will be all the better for it.
Cut out four lids for your tarts. Cut them generously so that there is sufficient pastry to form a seal with the pastry lining the tins. Use a small diamond cutter or any small shape, to cut a lattice into the lids. Be careful not to cut too close to the edge, otherwise they will be tricky to attach to the rest of the pastry.
Gather the trimmings and re-roll the pastry.
Grease and line four individual pie tins with the pastry. Let any excess pastry hang over the sides for now.
Prepare the strawberries: Remove the stalks and cut into small pieces, either 4 or 8, depending on the size of the strawberries.
Put the cut strawberries into a bowl and sprinkle over the red wine. Toss gently to coat.
Mix the sugar, cornflour and spices together. Sprinkle over the strawberries and toss gently to mix.
Divide the strawberry filling amongst the tins and smooth over.
Moisten the edges of the pastry and place the lids over each tart. Press firmly to seal, then trim and crimp the edges
Brush the tops with milk and bake for 12-15 minutes until the pastry is cooked and lightly golden.
Mix the remaining caster sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle over the hot pies.
Cool on a wire rack.

¹ MS3769, Wellcome Library.
² The Good Huswife’s Jewell, 1587

Old English Bread Pudding

17th century, Pudding

Mary Bent, circa 1670

I adore everything about this recipe. For a start, it epitomises the very British traits of not only being a hot pudding, but also having been created from almost nothing. The ingredients are modest, the flavouring minimal, yet these simple, little puddings are a real delight. Even more so when you realise that these were already being looked upon with nostalgic fondness when Mary Bent recorded this recipe in the middle of the seventeenth century. Where modern bread puddings tend towards the solid and the fruited, this 350 year old recipe is light and delicate as a souffle.

Old English Bread Pudding

125g fresh breadcrumbs
300ml milk
2 large yolks
1 large egg
2tbs caster sugar
1/4tsp salt
freshly grated nutmeg

Warm the milk until just below boiling then pour over the breadcrumbs and allow to soak for 15 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 160°C/140°C fan/gas 3.
Whisk the egg and yolks and pour into the breadcrumb mixture. Add the sugar, salt and grate the nutmeg.
Stir everything together until a smooth mixture.
Generously butter four pudding basins and pour the breadcrumb mixture evenly amongst them.
Arrange the basins on a lipped baking sheet.
Bake for 45 minutes, turning the baking sheet around after 20 minutes to ensure even browning.
When cooked, allow the puddings to rest for a couple of minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the pudding bowls and turn out.
Serve with a few fresh berries and whipped cream or Hard Sauce .

Fudge

20th century, Sweeties

Confession: This is not my recipe.

It is the original fudge recipe that used to be posted on the Carnation website and for some reason was taken down a few years ago.

Luckily for me – and you – I have it ingrained on my brain as it is the best, no-fail recipe I have ever used, and I am posting it here so I can be lazy and just point everyone who asks for the recipe here, instead of writing it out again and again.

It makes the kind of fudge that has texture: when cooled, it is hard to bite into – yet it melts in the mouth. Very similar to the confection known in Scotland as Tablet.

The secret is two-fold: boiling the mixture to the correct temperature, and beating it as it cools to ‘grain’ the sugar.

You CAN make this the Old School way, testing for the Firm Ball stage by doing the drop test in water, and by beating the cooling mixture hard with a wooden spoon. However, I’m all for using gadgets wherever possible, so a thermapen or similar thermometer and an electric whisk or stand mixer are my recommendations.

Each batch makes a 1.2kg slab large enough to last over the festive season. Alternatively, you can make a batch and divide it up into small batches in clear plastic bags and use it for presents, or make two batches of contrasting flavours and make it go even further.

You can use the basic recipe to make a number of equally delicious variations, and I’ve thrown in an extra one by Nell Heaton – a favourite author of mine from the 1940s/1950s, who deserves greater recognition for her delicious, trustworthy recipes – which is a real explosion of flavour when made with home-made candied peel, fruit and nuts.

Fudge

1 x 397ml tin of sweetened, condensed milk
150ml milk
125g butter
450g Demerera sugar

Line a baking pan with parchment. The size of the pan doesn’t really matter, but I recommend a rectangular pan, for ease of cutting the fudge into cubes once cooled. The original recipe suggested a pan 18cm square, which will make for a small, very thick slab. Personally, I use a pan 30cm by 24cm
Put all of the ingredients into a pan and stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved.
Bring to the boil and stir continuously until it registers between 116°C and 120°C on a thermometer dipped into the centre of the pan. Make sure the tip of the thermometer doesn’t touch the bottom of the pan, as this will be much hotter and the thermometer will thus give a false reading.
When your fudge reaches temperature, remove from the heat and allow the bubbles to settle. Pour into your stand mixer and use the beating paddle (not the whisk) to beat slowly until the mixture thickens. Alternatively, use your electric hand mixer directly into the pan, also whisking until the mixture has thickened.
When it is thick and still just pour-able, tip it into your parchment-lined tin and smooth over. I tested the most recent batch I made and when sufficiently thickened and cooled, it registered 80°C.
Leave to cool completely.
When cold, cut into cubes with a sharp knife and store in an airtight box.

Variations

Rum and Raisin Fudge: Warm 115g raisins in 3-4tbs dark rum and leave to plump. Add just before beating.
Chocolate Fudge: Melt 170g dark, 60% chocolate and add just before beating.
Fruit and nut fudge: Stir in 85g mixed dried fruit and chopped nuts.
Nell Heaton’s Tutti Frutti Fudge (my favourite) Add 350g – yes, a whopping 12 ounces in old money – of mixed chopped nuts, dried fruit and candied peel sliced or diced small. I suggest about 90g mixed candied peel, 130g flaked or slivered almonds and chopped walnuts, and 130g mixed raisins, sultanas, cranberries and chopped apricots.

Cream Cakes

20th century, Small Cakes

I spend a lot of our holidays in southwest France prowling around patisseries and artisan boulangeries with eyes like saucers, admiring the delicate and stylish combinations of cream and fruit and chocolate and truffle and glaze and, and, and….

However, in order to get there, it is rather a mammoth road trip, so I generally make sure I’ve got a handful of recipe books with me in the car to while away the hours. With no other reading matter to hand, I find it’s a good way to make sure I actually READ some of the hundreds of books on my shelves and I invariably discover something I’ve overlooked before. Sure enough, this year, yet again, I have re-discovered a recipe in a dusty housewives’ pamphlet from umpty-plonk years ago that reveals itself to be a real gem and, despite my hopeless and complete admiration for the exotic and awe-inspiring patisserie creations of France, I am enchanted all over again by British simplicity.

The recipe for these cakes was so brief I almost passed it by, yet curiosity caused me to pause and read it over, wondering what ‘trick’ there was; surely the small paragraph didn’t contain making, baking AND decorating instructions for cream cakes?

Sure enough, it didn’t, because the recipe was for cakes MADE with cream. Specifically, substituting cream into the mix instead of butter.

So simple – flour, sugar, eggs, cream, baking powder. I just had to try them.

And they were delicious, and a complete breeze to make; no fretting over whether the butter is soft enough, or whether the sugar is dissolved sufficiently. They rose, magnificently domed, in the oven and are light and tender of crumb.

If I had just one niggle, it was that they were sweet. Tooth-achingly so. I couldn’t resist tweaking them a little. Even the sugar-pop posing as my daughter prefers this version. Of course she ate the sweet batch too, but she prefers these.

There’s no added flavouring – you could add some if you like, but I urge you to try the recipe just once, with farm-fresh eggs and rich double – or even clotted – cream.

The simplicity, lightness and flavour will be a delight.

Promise.

Cream Cakes

The cakes in the photo are made in mini layer tins I bought in my local The Range, 4 x 10cm diameter pans for £2.50 (also fab for Yorkshire Puddings – I bought 2 sets) and I put 100g of batter per pan and made six. If you’re using large cupcake/muffin tins, I suggest just 50g of batter per ‘hole’, and thus twelve cakes. Cooking time is the same for both sizes.

150g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125ml cream – double or clotted
150g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan.
Crack the eggs into a bowl and add the sugar. Beat with a balloon whisk (or by hand or stand mixer) until the eggs are frothy and the sugar dissolved – about 5 minutes.
Add the cream and whisk in.
Sift the flour and baking powder together and stir into the rest of the ingredients – the balloon whisk/attachment is best for this, less washing up too!
Grease and line your tins, or use cupcake cases.
Spoon your mixture into your tins. Spread the batter to the sides, leaving a hollow in the middle. They will still dome up during cooking, but this way it should be a little more controlled.
Bake for 15 minutes until risen and golden brown.
Cool on a wire rack.
I think these are delicious served warm, lightly dusted with icing sugar and with a drizzle of cold cream poured over and a few fresh berries on the side. You can also split them and fill with whipped cream and berries or jam, or indeed any way that takes your fancy!

Dundee Cake

19th century, Large Cakes

This recipe is fabulous – and this recommendation is coming from an until-recently Dundee-Cake-Disliker. The crust is crisp but delicately thin, the insides delicately moist and buttery, rich with the sweetness of sultanas and the tang of candied orange peel.

The modern Dundee Cake has an iconic appearance: the carefully laid-out pattern of whole, blanched almonds immediately distinguishes it from other fruit cakes. For many years I’ve not been a fan, based on the Dundee Cakes I’d been served as a child: dry, crumbly, tasteless, overly-fruited masses with burnt nuts on the top and, horror of horrors, glacé cherries studding their depths.

After a bit of digging around in the cake history books, it turns out that the Dundee Cake known today is quite a few steps removed from the original. So I had high hopes that with a little experimentation I could, as with other recipes I’ve managed to rehabilitate from childhood dislikes, bring Dundee Cake back to its former glory and once again make it a teatime favourite.

Dundee Cake was first made by the Dundee-based Keiller company, as an off-season sideline to their marmalade business, as a way of using up excess peel generated by the marmalade manufacturing process. By gentleman’s agreement, no other bakers in the city made the cake. Keiller’s were also responsible for popularising their creation under the name Dundee Cake, described by Alan Davidson in the Oxford Companion to Food as light, buttery delicacy stuffed with sultanas, almonds and candied orange peel.

Quite when the cake was first made is a bit of a mystery, but it is mentioned in stories and novels of the mid-nineteenth century. An 1853 edition of The Lancet carries an advertisement for a Regent Street caterer, which includes Dundee Cake in its list of available cakes. This recipe is based on Madam Marie de Joncourt’s 1882 recipe, but tweaked to conform to the description of the original delicate and rich cake: more butter, almonds, sultanas and peel, no currants, no almonds on top. I’ve left off the distinguishing almonds, because they’re not mentioned in the original recipe, but you can make your own decision on that.

Dundee Cake

180g butter – softened
112g caster sugar
4 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
180g flour
150g sultanas
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 grated nutmeg
100g ground almonds
125g candied peel, cut into thin, 2cm slivers

Preheat the oven to 170°C, 150°C Fan.
Grease a 20cm, deep (at least 10cm) loose-bottomed cake tin.
Line the base with a circle of parchment.
Tear off a long strip of parchment, long enough to wrap around the whole tin.
Fold the strip of parchment in half lengthwise.
Unfold, then fold in each long edge towards the centre fold.
Fold both halves together, making for four layers of parchment.
Line the tin with this 4-ply strip of parchment. Any fruit-filled cake needs protecting from the high temperatures that baking in a tin will generate.
Grease the parchment on the sides and base of the tin.
Put the softened butter into a bowl and whisk until light and creamy.
Add the sugar and whisk until pale and fluffy.
Whisk in the eggs one at a time. Whisk for a good 3-4 minutes before adding the next egg.
Stir in the vanilla.
Gently stir the remaining ingredients together, then fold into the wet ingredients. Don’t over-mix, or you run the risk of deflating all the air you’ve just whisked into it.
Spread the mixture into the tin and level the top.
Bake for one hour, gently turning the tin around 180 degrees after 40 minutes.
Check for done-ness by inserting a wooden toothpick deep into the centre of the cake. If no liquid batter is clinging to it when removed, the cake is done.
Cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Store, wrapped in foil, in an airtight tin.