Recipe: Sultana Cake

Embrace nostalgia and reach for the dried fruit: this is a very good "make do" cake if, like me, you somehow always have a half-packet of sultanas lurking the pantry, if little else. A slice of this cake and a cup of tea will, I promise, put your world to rights even if just for a moment.

Sultana cake

Makes 1 22cm cake
Prep: 20 minutes
Cook: 45-55 minutes

Ingredients
400g sultanas
Zest of 1 lemon
200g butter, diced
Enough water to cover sultanas
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch salt

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 22cm springform cake tin.

2. Put sultanas and lemon zest in a medium saucepan, cover with water and bring to boil over high heat on stove top. Turn heat down to a slow boil and cook for 8 minutes or so, until some of the liquid has cooked off and the sultanas are nice and soft.

3. Carefully drain off the water (you'll lose a bit of the lemon zest but it's already done some good work imparting flavour). Place butter in to melt with residual heat.

4. In a mixing bowl, beat sugar and eggs until light and frothy, then beat in vanilla. Sift in flour, baking powder, and salt and fold to combine. Fold in drained fruit-and-butter mix until evenly combined.

5. Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for 45-55 minutes, until cake is golden on top and there's no wobble. Cool in tin for 10 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to continue cooling. This cake is superb when still slightly warm. It keeps for days and freezes well, too.

TIP:
You can make this in a loaf tin if preferred; you may need to reduce the cooking time by 5 or so minutes, just see how you go.