Dundee Cake is a lovely, fruit-filled cake, topped with blanched almonds. Often eaten around Christmas time instead of a darker, more dense Christmas Cake. I love both types of cake, but Dundee cake is perhaps my preferred one, and it can be eaten at any time of the year. It also keeps well in an airtight tin. Often the advice is to bake it and keep it in an airtight tin for a couple of days before eating, to allow the flavours to intensify.
My recipe is really a combination of several I looked at, so I can’t claim it as traditional, but as there are so many different recipes available it is difficult to know just what is.
I must confess to a slight problem, when I baked mine, I think I did rather too much beating of the mix, before folding in the fruit. With the result that mine rose a little too much, cracking somewhat on the top. However that is not going to affect the flavour one iota.
- 225g plain flour
- 1 level teaspoon baking powder
- 150g softened butter, or margarine
- 150g golden caster sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 2 tsp milk, only if needed
- 175g currants
- 175g sultanas
- 50g glace cherries, rinsed dried and cut into halves
- 50g mixed candied peel, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons ground almonds
- grated zest of 1 orange
Method:
- Heat the oven to 170C, Gas Mark 3
- Sift the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl,
- Add the butter, caster sugar and eggs, and, combine them for about 1–2 minutes until you have a smooth dropping consistency.
- If it seems too dry, add a little milk
- Fold in all the other ingredients: currants, sultanas, cherries, mixed peel, ground almonds and orange
- Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin, spreading it out evenly with the back of the spoon.
- Then, carefully, arrange the whole almonds in concentric circles over the top – but drop them on very lightly. Make sure you do not press them down, as the cake mix will rise and will swallow up the almonds, if you do.
- Place the cake in the centre of the oven and bake for 1¾ hours or until the centre is firm and springy to touch. Allow it to cool before taking it out of the tin.