Saffron Sultana Cake

For this month's Random Recipes, Dom at Belleau Kitchen challenged us to make a recipe from the first or last page from a randomly chosen book from our shelf. The book I pulled out was Food of the Sun by Alastair Little and Richard Whittington.  Tucked away on the last page was this recipe for a very simple Saffron Sultana Cake. 


The recipe called for saffron powder which I didn't have so I used saffron stems instead. Mine didn't come out quite as yellow as the one in the book. I also added some grated orange zest to the recipe. It's a bit of a weird cake - it really reminded me of a trifle sponge. I felt it was a little dry so made an orange syrup which I poured over the whole cake.  It would be nice served alongside something like caramelised oranges. I've actually frozen it and do intend using it in a trifle sometime in the near future.


I've included the recipe below as as far as I can see this book is now out of print.


The Recipe


55g unsalted butter, diced
125g plain flour
pinch of salt
2 tspn saffron powder or a pinch of saffron stems
55g sultanas soaked for as long as possible in brandy. Drained and tossed in flour (mine still sunk!)
4 eggs
125 caster sugar
orange zest
orange juice and caster sugar melted together to make syrup (optional)


1. Preheat the oven to 180c/gas 4 and line a swallow square tin or swiss roll tin. 
2. Place a heatproof bowl over a bowl of barely simmering water. Add the eggs and sugar to the bowl and  whisk for about 10 minutes until the mixture is thick.  Remove the bowl from the heat.
3.  Add about half or a third of the flour and butter and fold in.  Repeat until it is all mixed in and the butter is melted.  Finally fold in the sultanas and pour into the prepared tin.
4. Bake for around 15 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.  Turn out on a rack to cool. Pour over syrup if you wish (if you do make holes all over the cake before you do so).