Louisa’s mother’s breakfast cake
one of the oldest recipes in the book, this cake comes from the cooking notes of louisa’s mother, georgina boustred, who had started to compile a collection of recipes while bringing up her children in india. it is thought she began the cookbook to mark the commemoration of the golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, who had been declared empress of india in 1876. i baked georgina’s 130-year-old original recipe verbatim and it came out alarmingly solid and rather too big! so i have adapted it to make a spongier breakfast loaf. 250g unsalted butter
1 tbspn vegetable oil pinch of salt
250g Billington’s golden caster sugar 3 large eggs
2 tbspn whole milk
260g self-raising flour
150g currants
2 capfuls sicilian lemon essence handful grapes (optional)
1 tbspn icing sugar, for dusting
Preheat the oven to 180c/gas Mark 4. grease and flour a deep baking tin. cream the butter, oil, salt and sugar until light and fluffy. beat in the eggs and milk, then stir in the flour, currants, lemon essence and gently drop in the grapes, if using. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. during cooking the grapes will mostly sink to the bottom, creating sticky jam-like pockets.
bake for 30 mins, then reduce oven to 150c/gas Mark 2, cover with foil and cook for another 1 hr 30 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.
(the deeper the tin, the longer the cooking). allow to cool, turn out, dust with icing sugar and serve with english breakfast tea. serves 6
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