Vinegar Cake

Ros chose V for Alpha Bakes this month, oh my goodness! Other than Vanilla and Victoria sandwich, I wasn't having many ideas and although vanilla is fantastic, it's such a common ingredient in cakes, I wanted something a little different. I've seen Viennese whirls popping up all over the place which is a great idea, but again not quite what I was looking for. So I turned to trusty Pam Corbin in her wonderful book Cakes and there it was at the bottom of the V list, Vinegar Cake. Traditionally made when hens were off lay, this is an eggless fruit cake from East Anglia. I added a few ingredients not mentioned in Pam's recipe.

This is how I made it:

• Placed 1 tbsp mesquite powder and 1 tbsp maca powder onto the scales than added white flour to make the weight up to 250g.
• Sifted into a bowl along with 250g wholemeal flour and a pinch of salt.
• Rubbed in 200g unsalted butter cut into bits, until the mixture resembled breadcrumbs.
• Stirred in 500g dried fruit made up of sultanas, raisins, chopped dried apples, goji berries and crystallised orange peel (homemade).
• Stirred in 50g chopped Maya Gold chocolate (G&B dark orange spiced).
• Poured 300ml milk into a large bowl (didn't have a jug big enough) and added 50ml cider vinegar.
• Stirred 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda into 1 tbsp milk.
• Added this to the milk and watched in amazement as it frothed up and up and up!
• Poured this onto the dry ingredients together with 2 tbsp golden syrup and mixed until just incorporated.
• Spooned into a 23cm cake mould and smoothed the top.
• Sprinkled 1 tbsp demerara sugar over the top and baked at 170C for 50 minutes.
• Left to cool in mould for 20 minutes then turned out onto a wire rack to cool almost completely - couldn't wait any longer!

Watching the milk and vinegar mixture whoosh up when the bicarb was added was impressive. It reminded me of one those school science lessons which probably no longer occur due to health and safety reasons. Whatever the underlying chemistry of it all, it seemed to work: the cake rose really well. Unfortunately, I took it out a little too soon, so it sank in the middle. Surprisingly, the taste of vinegar was noticeable by its absence. It had a lovely  crunchy top and would have been great served warm with clotted cream or ice-cream. I'm not a fan of heavy fruit cakes, but this was just about right, plenty of fruit but plenty of cake too. CT is also not a fan of heavy fruitcakes, which he associates with being dense, dry &amp and desiccated with bucket loads of horrible mixed peel. This one, he opined, was pleasantly fruity with an unexpected sort of spritliness about it. It had a nice soft crumb and tasted slightly malty which I put down to the mesquite I added. We both felt thoroughly virtuous eating this because of the healthful properties of the maca I had included.

Alpha Bakes is a monthly blogging challenge where a random letter is picked from the alphabet which then inspires the theme of the bake. It's hosted alternately by Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes.