Berry Nice!

After the cake for mum's birthday, I feel like I need to get back to baking, just for fun. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been baking for other people and for events, and have thoroughly enjoyed coming up with the concepts and then baking them. However, it has been something like three months since I baked a cake just because I can. For no other reason than for the love and enjoyment of baking.
All of the last few cakes have been round or moulded, and I felt like doing a loaf cake. The next important question was what to bake? I decided to approach this with a considered and thoughtful approach (read, stood staring into the fridge for 5 mins seeing what needed to be used up and what was on its last legs!!) and decided on a summer fruit loaf cake.
Now the only thing with a loaf cake is that when I make them, they always appear to be quite a standard cake. By this I mean that they are just what it says on the tin. A cake in a loaf shape. Nothing more, nothing less. Delicious, but not very sexy. I needed to think of a way to "jazz it up" as my hubby would say. I did not want to start heading towards doing sugar paster flowers or candied fruit, but definitively wanted something simple yet effective. The answer was simple. Crumble! So the summer fruit crumble cake was born!

Recipe:

110g butter
90g dark muscovado/demerara sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
125g self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
210g summer berries ( if you want to use frozen then do, though you don't need to defrost them before using)

Crumble:
15g butter
15g flour
15g demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 150C fan/160C/ gas 4.
Line a loaf run.
Beat together the butter and sugar and add the eggs one at a time.
Add the vanilla extract/paste.
Add the sifted flour and baking powder and fold in.
Spoon half of the batter into the tin.
Add half of the berries.
Spoon the rest of the batter on top of the berries.
Add the rest of the berries onto the top of the cake.
Mix the crumble four and butter by running together until the mix resembles bread crumbs and add the sugar.
Sprinkle the crumble mix on top of the cake and place in the oven for around 50 mins until cooked.
Cool the cake in the tin.

This is not a pretty cake and has a certain tartness to it, which always goes down well in our house. But it is delicious and goes down well with a cup of tea in the afternoon when your fingers start to wander towards the biscuit tin!
Enjoy! X