Morrisons Tunis Cake, 200g

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Start your day with a croissant, and enjoy the flaky, buttery pastry as it falls into your mouth, and down your shirt. Then, in the afternoon, revel in the spongy goodness of a madeira cake, for a day’s worth of sweet enjoyment. Cookbooks● Diary● Index● Magic Menu● Random● Really English?● Timeline● Donate● English Service● Food Map of England● Lost Foods● Accompaniments● Biscuits● Breads● Cakes and Scones● Cheeses● Classic Meals● Curry Dishes● Dairy● Drinks● Egg Dishes● Fish● Fruit● Fruits & Vegetables● Game & Offal● Meat & Meat Dishes● Pastries and Pies● Pot Meals● Poultry● Preserves & Jams● Puddings & Sweets● Sauces and Spicery● Sausages● Scones● Soups● Sweets and Toffee● About ...● Bookshop● Make the cake: cream butter and sugar together until light and pale, then add the eggs one by one, adding a little flour with each addition. Finally add the rest of the flour, ground almonds and cinnamon along with the orange zest and juice. Beat together until entirely light and smooth. Tip into the tin, smooth the surface and bake in the centre of the oven for about 40 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin until totally cold.

A quarter-pound of dates, figs, and prunes, half-a-pound of flour, three ounces Demerara sugar, three ounces of butter, one ounce of shelled walnuts, one level teaspoonful of mixed spice, two eggs, half-a-teaspoonful of bi-carbonate of soda, three ounces golden syrup, milk. According to The Internet, Tunis cake is Christmas cake from the Edwardian period – however some claim it was invented by McVities, so who knows. The basic premise is that you make a madeira sponge flavoured with lemon zest, then top it with chocolate before decorating with marzipan fruits. If you want to be extra fancy, you can make half of the buttercream pink using red food coloring and have the inner circle yellow and the outer circle pink!Mode, — Sieve the baking-powder well with the flour; break the volatile down in a mortar with a little milk; cream up the butter and sugar, adding the volatile and eggs in the usual manner. Then mix in the flour with milk to a nice free cake-batter consistency; grease a clean flat tin, and lay the batter out in gieces weighing about 2 1/2 ozs. each; wash them carefully over with egg, brush-ing them up to the centre, and bake in a warm oven. Sell at 1d. each. Cool cake for a minimum of 10 minutes before removing it from the tin and cool completely for a minimum of 10 hours. Chocolate Topping Pour the cooked chocolate over the top of the cake; smoothing it very carefully (don't rush this) and leave to set for at least 12 hours.

The origins of the cake are Edwardian. Scottish bakery Macfarlane Langs produced commercial Tunis Cakes in the 1930s, and when they merged with McVitie & Price in 1948 to form a company called United Biscuits (which still owns the McVitie’s brand) the recipe passed to the new company. McVitie’s produced a Tunis cake until the mid 1980s. Members of my family can remember when they stopped producing these at the start of the second wold war and how pleased they were to see one again after the war. Bake at 170C (please note that if using a Fan Oven reduce temperature to between 140C and 150C) for one-and-a-half hours until golden in color and a skewer test comes out clean.

Tunis cakes also originally had a small apple, orange and banana made of marizpan in the center of the decoration instead of the circle of buttercream. Christmas Fun and Activities Fold in using a metal spoon the remaining flours, salt and orange rind and juice. Pour the mixture in to a buttered and baking parchment lined deep 20cm cake tin. Smooth the top carefully.

Melt the chocolate, which should be broken into small pieces, with the Butter and water by placing it all in a bowl over a pan of very hot water (make sure the bowl doesn't touch the hot/boiling water in the pan below or it will go lumpy!) Leave for about 10 minutes, beat and stir until smooth. Using a piping bag with a small star nozzle, pipe a small circle of buttercream in the middle of the cake, then two more circles equally spaced around it. Add the Eggs individually and with each Egg add one tablespoon of each kind of Flour, and beat well.I fancied a little more aroma to my cake so subbed the lemon for orange zest, and also added ground cinnamon to the mix. I have no interest in marzipan flowers so kept the citrus theme going by decorating with crystallised peel.