West country strawberry cake

This cake looks mighty impressive and your guest will think you're a professional cake-maker! Don't be intimidate by this however, as this gorgeous cake is actually very simple to make.

Serves 8 to 10.

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Ingredients

100g peeled, cored and finely diced bramley apple
finely grated zest and juice 1 lemon
200g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
25g cornflour
110g butter, cut into cubes
110g unrefined caster sugar
125g punnet strawberries, hulled and halved, plus 200g for decorating
1 large egg
150ml milk
3tbsp brown sugar
100g strawberry jam

Method

Grease and line an 8inch round cake tin. Preheat the oven to 190C/ 170C fan/gas mark 5.

Place the apple pieces in a small bowl and sir in the zest and the juice of the lemon.

Sift the self raising flour, cornflour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. Cut up the butter and rub into the flour until it resembles fine bread crumbs (you can do this in a food processor). Fold in the sugar, halved strawberries and the apple and lemon mixture. Beat together the egg and milk and fold this into the mixture.

Pour into the baking tin and dust the surface with brown sugar. Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes. Remove from the oven, and cool on a wire rack. Turn the cake out onto a plate, and then turn it back onto your serving plate so that the sugar crust is on the surface.

In a small pan stir together the jam with 1tbsp water. Dissolve the jam and water over a gently heat until runny. Remove from the heat and cool for a few minutes. Arrange the strawberries on top of the cake, thin end pointing up. Liberally brush strawberries with the jam glaze to serve.

Credit

This recipe has been brought to you by Ed Baines on behalf of www.seasonalberries.co.uk.