Yo Joe

Mmmmm some peng cake. So soft, so sweet, so buttery, studded with strawberries and blackberries, covered in lime and raspberry jam icing.

I recently started my first job as a baker at an independent cafe in Glasgow called Kelvin Pocket. Lol I’m pretty proud of this fact, brings me a lot of joy. A guy called Paul owns and runs it. I really don’t know how he does it, he’s there 6 days a week and you rarely find him without a smile on his face. He also trusts me to bake things in his kitchen, for his business, which I think is a big deal. Maybe he doesn’t think too much about letting me bake for his customers in his kitchen, but I do.

The idea for this loaf came from a cake we make at the cafe. This cake, is really David’s cake. David works in the kitchen, who, along with Caroline, make producing well over 60 different baked goods a day look like something they could do in their sleep. Icing a cake takes them under 2 mins and putting together sweet bun dough can be done in about 7…. magic. I hope David doesn’t mind me pretty much copping his idea, I hope he finds it flattering instead.

I was a lil bit blown away when I watched Caroline and David put jam in the water icing for this cake in the cafe (hahaha I really am that easily entertained). I bought some back for the girls in the flat. It got squashed in my bag but they all went mad for it – telling, I think. This isn’t some fancy multi layered, french patisserie thing, it’s just really, really good cake.

I messed about with the ratios a lil bit, using David’s recipe as my blueprint, to produce his cake reincarnated cakeonmyface style. ah, the circle of cake life. While I was taking pics of this reincarnated cake I thought it looked like some kind of abstract painting, it was quite beautiful actually (lol, here we bloody go). I wasn’t the only one that thought this. I went past Katie’s flat and threw a bit of this cake at her to try while I was running to work. She sent me a message later saying ‘Emma says it is like gallery cake’. Emma is Katie’s sister, I’ve met her twice, about 2 years ago, but sounds like we see cake the same way.

Ingredients

For The Cake

• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 225g caster sugar
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 140g crème fraîche
• 160g self raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 160g berries of choice, I use strawberries and blackberries

For The Icing

• 210g icing sugar, no need to sift it
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• 3 tablespoons lime juice, or lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons raspberry jam, or any other jam of your choice
• water to reach the right consistency.

Method

Pre heat the oven to 190 / 170 fan oven. Grease and line a 2lb/900g loaf tin with greaseproof paper, letting a bit of paper hang over the sides of the tin so you can lift the cake out later.

Wash and cut the berries into chunks. Halves and quarters is perfect, if you chop them too small the berries will turn to mush and vanish into the cake batter. Set the berries aside.

Using electric beaters, mix the butter, sugar, lemon zest, salt and vanilla extract until it fluffs up and starts to clump at the side of the bowl, about 1 min. Do yourself a solid and don’t tire your arm beating this for ages, you’ll get the exact same fluffy cake with no more than 1 min of mixing.

Beat in one egg at a time, making sure the first is fully incorporated before you add the second.

Tip the crème fraîche, flour and baking powder into the butter mix, beat together for a few seconds just until everything is combined.

Gently fold in the berries and pour the batter into the prepared tin. Bake for about 55mins or until the surface of the cake feels bouncy when pressed gently with your finger tips and a couple of moist crumbs cling to a knife inserted into the cake.

Allow the cake to cool for 15 mins in the tin before lifting it out to cool completely.

When the cake is completely cool, put all the icing ingredients, exept the water in a bowl and mix with a whisk or fork. Add a little (very little) drop of water at a time, mixing between each addition, until you have a thick icing that can be poured over the cake.

Allow the icing to set a little before cutting into the cake (or just, cut into it now.)

Hahahah I had to copy and paste ‘crème fraîche’ from wiki every time it appears in this recipe because I don’t know how to get the accents on my keyboard. I wanted you to have the authentic experience of reading ‘crème fraîche’, Joe, like in a real recepie book. Caitlin x