This originally was a Polish recipe featured in an edition of the excellent Sainsbury’s “Bake” magazine that, sadly, appears to be no longer published. The bake itself is straight-forward and reasonably quick. It’s also very moist and tasty with a great texture, due partly to the addition of poppy seeds.
Servings: 10 – 12
Time: Around an hour + cooling
Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients
- 250ml sunflower oil or similar
- 230g caster sugar
- 4 large or medium eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or bean paste
- Grated zest of an orange
- 260g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- A generous pinch of salt
- 3 or 4 tbsp poppy seeds (depending on how “seedy” you want it)
- Up to half a can of peach segments, cut into quarters or smaller
- 4 or 5 plums, stoned and cut the same size as the apricots
- Icing sugar to dust
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 169C/Gas 4. Grease and line a 30cm x 23cm tray bake tin with baking paper. (Try to leave the longer sides sticking up over the tray to enable easy removal of the bake later.) Lightly dust inside the tray with flour.
- Put the caster sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla in a bowl and whisk for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add in the zest and continue mixing for a couple of minutes.
- Sieve the flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt into the wet mixture and fold it in, using a metal spoon. Make sure all the dry ingredients are well incorporated. Now mix in the poppy seeds.
- Pour the mixture into the lined tray and gently place in the fruit. (You might want to alternate the two fruits or create a pattern, but be aware that the mixture may well rise above some or all of them. To avoid this you could try tossing the fruit in flour, but the wet fruit may well soak up lots of flour.)
- Bake for around 40 minutes – until pale gold coloured and/or test with a skewer.
- Leave to cool in the tin. When fully cool, use the long edges of the baking paper to lift it out then cut into pieces. Dust with icing sugar before serving.
Retired Bloke on Food n stuff 