Blackberry jam cake and being away

This post was done in advance. I’m in Cairns and I will have been instagramming like mad (check here to see all of the photos), but I made sure I wrote up this cake recipe before I left. It is pretty divine. It’s full of spices and sweetness in just the right measures. It’s super moist too – it’s kind of like a really fragrant sticky date pudding.

I bought the blackberry jam when I was away in Mudgee recently. I still haven’t blogged about Mudgee yet, but I loved it.

Mudgee is a region that is passionate about food; in one café that we went to, a young waitress unpretentiously told us that she preferred iron bark honey to the normal honey that her mum buys. People take so much pride in what is served in their cafes, and the locals are really knowledgeable as well.

I loved it! I don’t profess to be a fountain of food knowledge (I’m a professional eater though!), so it’s lovely to talk to people who know their produce and want to have a chat about it. The blackberry jam was from a small stall at the local farmer’s markets – you’ll note that it has no branding or anything. It’s amazing. It definitely contributed to the deliciousness of this cake.

I’ll write more about Mudgee soon, for now, I’ll leave you with this gorgeous cake.

Blackberry jam cake:

• 225g butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp mixed spices
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups plain flour
• ¾ cup sultanas
• 1 cup jam

Preheat your oven to 180C° and line a large sheet cake tin. (I put mine in a 24cm star shaped tin, but I reserved about 1/3 of the mixture for cupcakes so that it would fit in this tin.)

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale. Add in the mixed spices, cinnamon and cocoa and stir to combine.

Add in the eggs and half of the flour and give it a good mix. Add in the rest of the flour, making sure that there are no clumps in the mixture.

Toss in the sultanas and mix gently so as not to squish them too much. They’ll swell up when they’re in the cake and keeping them whole means that they make for a good texture difference in the finished product. Finally, fold the blackberry jam into the mixture. My blackberry jam had chunks of blackberry in it, so my mixture was slightly lumpy, but I liked that!

Pop in the oven for 50-60 minutes, until a cake skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. If the cake browns too much on top, just pop some tin foil over the top of it.

That’s it! This cake is really easy to throw together and gives a really scrumptious result.