Tottenham Cake

I love the history bits on the Great British Bake Off. Social history was always my favourite subject at university, but unfortunately we never learned about cake. And they call themselves academics...

Since then I have enjoyed reading about the history of our favourite baked goods, and love to incorporate these little snippets into my own baking.

In the last season of the Bake Off, they went to see the Tottenham Quakers. They had historically made this striking sponge traybake using the juice of mulberries from their garden to make the pretty pink icing.
Quakers would often bake for each other, and share cake at meetings. They lady making the one on the Bake Off said it was an ideal cake because it was 'easily cut up and distributed amongst a large group of people'. This struck a chord: group of people, easily cut up to share... Bundt and cake club sprang to mind!

My bundt version shared all the original characteristics; pink icing, vanilla sponge and easily shared, although mine looks very different to theirs! I used my Nordic Ware Bavaria Bundt tin to get such a beautiful pattern.

Ingredients:

• 225g butter
• 450g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 1 tsp lemon extract
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 350g plain flour
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 250ml low fat vanilla yogurt 
• 500g icing sugar
• Mulberry juice (Ribena will do if you can't find any)
• A little desiccated coconut (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to gas 3/160 C
2. Grease and flour a regular sized bundt tin using cake release spray - 2.4l, 10 cup, 10 inch.
3. Cream the butter and sugars until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. Stir in the extracts.
6. In a separate bowl, measure out the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spice.
7. Pour the yogurt into a jug.
8. Sift in a third of the flour mix followed by half the yogurt. Repeat this until everything is combined. Don't over mix or it'll be as rubbery as a pair of wellies.
9. Give everything a quick mix on a low speed for about 10 seconds.
10. Pour into your prepared tin.
11. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 1 hour 15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. It should be shrinking from the sides of the tin slightly.
12. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin.
13. Allow it to cool fully. Don't even think about icing whist it's warm - and if you do, don't come crying to me... 
14. Mix the icing sugar with a little mulberry juice until it's a runny consistency.
15. Tip it over the cake in whichever cack-handed fashion suits you best. It will naturally run to cover the cake. 
16. Sprinkle with the coconut.

Snippet from the Bake Off.

Bloggers: Please respect the fact I am sharing my own ideas and basic recipe. Blood, sweat and many tears have gone into getting this right, so you may enjoy a perfect bundt. If you wish to re-blog a recipe from these variations, please credit my blog and link to this original post rather than pasting the recipe on your own page.
Please see my Creative Commons Copyright information for more details. Thank you.

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