This is based on a recipe I tore out of a cooking magazine ages ago. The ingredients are great, but the original methodology was daft – it involved throwing everything into the food processor and whizzing, which didn’t cream the butter and sugar at all. I reworked it using more traditional techniques and it’s become a recipe that I make all the time – simple to put together and easy to eat, without being heavy or cloying. It’s a good keeper too – the buttermilk helps it to stay moist for several days.
Buttermilk freezes very well, which is handy as I rarely get through an entire carton before it expires. I portion it out into ziplock bags and freeze it, usually in one cup serves.
I bake this recipe in a cast aluminium bundt pan and dress it with a simple dusting of icing sugar.
- 1 and 1/3 cups (200g) self raising flour
- 150g almond meal
- 200g caster (superfine) sugar
- 175g unsalted butter, softened
- 150ml buttermilk
- 3 large free-range eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- finely grated zest of 1 lemon (optional)
- jam/lemon curd
1. Cream together butter, sugar and zest, then mix in eggs and vanilla, beat well. Scrape down sides of bowl.
2. Stir together flour and almond meal in a separate bowl.
3. Into the butter/sugar/egg, mix in half the flour/almond, then the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour/almonds, mixing well after each addition.
4. Spoon half the mix into a well-oiled bundt pan, add some jam or lemon curd, then top with remaining mix, and bake in a preheated oven at 175C for 40 – 45mins.
5. Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to cool completely. Dust with icing sugar before serving.
If you’re using a cast aluminium bundt, you’ll need to drop the oven temperature to about 160C. Also, the jam is optional and it may occasionally fall through to the bottom of the pan. The cake should work well unfilled – we just have so much jam that we’re always looking for ways to use it!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 