Hedgerow Bundt Cake with Ribena Icing

On Saturday we had a wonderful Clandestine Cake Club meeting in a beautiful rural hideaway. My friend Chris from the Horwich WI kindly loaned us her garden, for what turned out to be an utterly delightful afternoon. Our theme was 'England's Green and Pleasant Land', which I borrowed from a line in the WI's hymn, Jerusalem.

I wanted to make something which reminded me of tart English apples in rambling cottage gardens, picking wild blackberries in the hills of Rivington as a child, and the stained fingers that were part and parcel of pulling hundreds of blackcurrents of the bushes in my grandparents' garden. A hedgerow bundt would tick all of these boxes wonderfully.

My cake was an ode to a childhood filled with home grown fruit, teamed with a cheeky twist. I used blackcurrent yogurt, little pieces of candied apple, blackcurrent and rhubarb jam, and finished it off with a splash of Ribena icing!

Ingredients:

• 230g butter
• 450g golden caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 1 tsp lemon extract
• 350g plain flour
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 250ml low fat blackcurrent yogurt 
• 50g finely chopped candied apple (optional)
• 5 tbsp blackcurrent and rhubarb jam (or similar). I used locally made stuff from I Heart Jam.
• 300g icing sugar
• A splash of Ribena

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to gas 3/160 C
2. Grease and flour a regular sized bundt tin - 2.4l, 10 cup, 10 inch. 
3. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
5. Add the extract.
6. In a separate bowl, measure out the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, ginger and candied apple.
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.
9. Yes - the candied apple will get trapped in your sieve! This is ok... it gets a nice dusting of flour meaning the bits are less likely to sink... Now stir these into the mix.
10. Give everything a quick mix on a low speed for about 10 seconds.
11. Pour 3/4 of the mix into the prepared tin. 
12. Smear over a layer of jam, avoiding the edges.
13. Cover with the remaining mix.
14. 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.
15. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin. 
16. Allow it to cool fully. I mean it. 
17. Mix the icing sugar with enough Ribena to make a fairly runny icing and tip it over the unsuspecting cake. Garnish with berries. 

And there we have it folks. A regal looking cake suitable for garden parties, cake clubs or a brew in front of the telly. 

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.

Join me on Facebook

Tweet me @dollybakes
Have a nosy at my pics on Pinterest