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Redcurrant Cake

Due to their extraordinarily high nutrient content, more blackcurrants are grown in Britain than their relatives, red or white currants. Both have a more subtle, elegant flavour – especially redcurrants, which are delicious used in fools, ice cream and also in this pudding, which I like to call a biscuit that becomes a cake after it has sat for a while. It is quite easy to make, needing patience more than anything, but the end result will look like the work of a master pâtissier. Eat it with clotted cream or thin, creamy vanilla custard.

Serves 8

225g/8oz softened unsalted butter

70g/2½oz light brown muscovado sugar

175g/6oz ground almonds

225g/8oz superfine plain flour or Italian ‘00’ flour, plus extra for dusting

a few drops of vanilla extract, or the seeds scraped out from ‘A vanilla pod

approximately 450g/1lb redcurrants, pulled off the stalks with a fork (you can use previously frozen fruit)

caster sugar

Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer or using an electric beater until light and fluffy. Fold in the ground almonds, followed by the flour and vanilla, and mix to form a dough. Wrap the dough in a plastic bag and put in the fridge to rest for about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F/Gas Mark 2. Divide the dough into quarters. Roll out each on a piece of baking parchment dusted with a small scattering of flour. Use a 23cm/9 inch plate as a template and cut around it, discarding the pastry trimmings to leave a neat round. Transfer each sheet of pastry to a baking sheet and bake for 12–15 minutes, until golden. The colour of the biscuit is important; it should be reasonably ‘high baked’ – so a good golden colour without being burnt. Leave to cool on the baking sheets.

To build the cake, transfer the least perfect biscuit round to a flat plate. Scatter a third of the redcurrants over the whole surface in an even layer. Sprinkle just a little caster sugar over them before lowering the second biscuit on top. Repeat with the remaining layers, using all the redcurrants so the top of the cake is biscuit, not fruit. It really does not matter if layer 1, 2 or 3 breaks (the biscuit is necessarily fragile) but try to keep number 4 intact for looks purposes.

Leave the cake to sit for at least 2 hours – the juice from the redcurrants will seep into the biscuit and the whole thing should amalgamate nicely into a crumbly cake you can cut (using a very sharp knife) into slices and serve with cream or custard.