Spring Recipes

There really is nothing to match proper home made cake and it makes you wonder why so many people buy the factory manufactured, often tasteless and very expensive cakes sold by supermarkets. Buying from a local bakery we will forgive as the chances are you’ll be getting a better quality “baked on the premises” cake but even then not all bakeries are equal and not all are particularly generous with the dried fruits and nuts, might use bakers’ fat which is not the healthiest of shortenings, and some don’t use the same quality of ingredients which you would choose in your home baking. So why not set aside an hour or two to make your own traditional cake to share with the family and friends or serve at a special tea. With Easter just around the corner here is a traditional spring time favourite:

Saffron cake

Ingredients

1lb plain organic white flour
6oz of organic butter or 6oz of a good quality sunflower or soya margarine
6oz of organic unrefined sugar
8oz of organic mixed dried fruits & peel
1oz of fresh yeast or 1 sachet of dried yeast
a pinch or a dram of saffron (the volume it is usually sold in)
1⁄2 cup boiling water
tiny pinch of salt

With this recipe you start the night before by simply snipping the saffron into half a teacup of boiling water and add a tiny pinch of salt. Cover it and by the next day the saffron will have coloured the water and released its flavour. Put the yeast and a teaspoon of sugar into half a cup of luke warm milk and water, mix a little and put to one side. Take a good sized mixing bowl and sieve the flour into it, cut the butter or margarine into walnut sized knobs and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the mixtures resembles fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar. Make a well in the centre and then pour the frothing yeast mixture into the well and top it with a light dusting flour. Cover with a cloth for half an hour or so until the yeast mixtures has frothed through the flour. Now it is time to gently warm the saffron mixture and add it to the dried fruit and peel, then combine all the ingredients together to make a soft dough.

Pop it into a buttered or lined bread tin and leave for around 45 minutes in the warmth of the kitchen to rise - then bake at 180 centigrade for around 45-50 minutes. Turn out of the tin and leave to cool.

Note: many of the older handed down recipes call for lard rather than butter and some also call for the addition of an egg – the above recipe however if you choose to use margarine is both vegetarian and vegan friendly and has no hidden nasties.