Week one is back and it didn’t disappoint. Here is what happened this week. Take a seat…

CAKE WEEK

I love cake week. It starts off slow show casing the new contestants. There is skill involved but they do go easy on them, but sometimes thats where people fall short, the pressure of the first week - making an impression. It allows me to get in to the groove of making a bake once a week and realising summer is over.

Signature: Complex fruit cake

Technical: Angel cake slices

Showstopper: Childhood birthday cake

Dense vegan chocolate dried fruit celebration cake

with non-vegan salted caramel frosting

Pre baking information - Start by soaking your fruit overnight in the water. Mixing together well and cover and leave out in room temperature. You can use any tin for the cakes depending if you want a big cake, layered cake, loaf cake… the choice is yours. Recipe from Southern in law. Link in the title.

Cake Ingredients

• 1 kg of dried fruit. You can decide which fruit you would like. I used a combination of what I had in the house - dates, figs, raisins, craisins (ocean spray), apricots, citrus peel. I get all of my dried fruit from Sainsbury’s - it is a bit risky but I have been doing it for ages.

• 705ml (3 cups) boiling water

• 300g self raising flour

• 40g cocoa powder

• Chocolate chips (I use Plamil dairy free drops)

• Mixed spice

Method

• Grease or line your baking tins and preheat your oven to 125ºc/250ºf/gas mark 2

• Chop up the fruit into bitesize chunks, add to a mixing bowl.

• Add the boiling water to the fruit and stir the fruit around so it is even.

• Leave overnight.

• After the fruit has soaked, do not drain the water - simply add your flour, cocoa, and chocolate chips to the fruit and mix it all together so the dry ingredients throughly coat the fruit.

• Pour the mix in to your tins, smoothing down and spreading.

• Small bakes 1 hour , larger ones 2-3 hours. Bakes should be a crisp golden colour. Luckily there is no egg in this so it will be edible however, make sure you put a skewer to see if it comes out wet or dry. The cake should be very dense.

• Leave the cakes to cool for a bout an hour before putting on the frosting.

Salted caramel frosting

unfortunately I couldn’t find a recipe for this that i like that was vegan, but if you do have a recipe please go ahead and use PLUS let me know about it in the comments. I need a vegan slated caramel recipe that doesn’t taste awful. This recipe was very simple and adapted from Recipe from Sugar & Sparrow Link in the title.

Frosting ingredients

• 226g unsalted butter, softened

• 480g icing sugar

• 2tsp vanilla extract

• a jar of salted caramel sauce - the best is Waitrose salted caramel dipping sauce (which if you haven’t had you need to get on that, it beats anything else)

• salt to taste

Method

• In a mixing bowl add the butter and mix with an electric mixer (or fork) until the butter is whipped (looks like strong whipped cream)

• Add in the icing sugar little bits at a time (usually mix with a spoon before I use the mixers to prevent powder going everywhere)

• Once the icing is all mixed in add vanilla, salted caramel sauce and salt.

• Mix on high so that everything is even and you like the consistency (thick and spreadable).

• Add on to the cool cake - if you are layering spread a thin layer on on top and spread the majority of the frosting coating the cake!

All cake can stay at room temperature for up to two weeks but I put it in the fridge so I can eat it for longer at coffee time!

Biscuit week is next…

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