Recipe 178 – Treacle Spice Traybake

I baked this recipe more than a week ago now, but due to the fact that our daft Labrador had decided to eat a stone at some point in his life, he had to be taken to the vet’s late Tuesday evening for emergency surgery due to a blocked intestine (I won’t go into details!), hence the reason I haven’t had time to write this up, let alone bake anything else.  The house was certainly a very empty space without him, but he’s back now, albeit feeling very sorry for himself and very sore too I should think, so whilst I’m sat watching that he takes it easy I thought I’d take the chance and write this bake up.

You all know I’m not too keen on dark treacle so have put off baking quite a few of the recipes which include this ingredient, but I’ve got to bake them at some point, so thought I’d cross another one off the list!  I did in fact halve the recipe as it’s only my husband who really likes the treacle style cakes, this worked out perfectly, everything was easy to halve!  If you too decide to halve it, then the tin I used was a 23cm square tin.

However, I will give the ingredients for the bake as in the book which requires a 30cm x 23cm (12″ x 9″) traybake tin.  The first thing to do was to put the oven on to preheat at Fan 160°C and to grease and line the base of the tin with parchment.

This was a quick and easy recipe as it was one of Mary’s all in one recipes.

Into a large bowl I weighed out 225g softened butter, 175g caster sugar, 225g black treacle, 275g self-raising flour, 2 level tsp baking powder, 2 level tsp ground mixed spice, 4 large eggs (lightly beaten) and 4 tablespoons milk.  These were beaten together for approximately 2 minutes using my electric whisk.  I had intended to use a wooden spoon, but thought I’d struggle with the amount.  Once the mixture was well blended it was turned into the prepared tin and the top was levelled.

Into the oven it went for 35-40 minutes (if you  halve the ingredients then the cake should take about 30 minutes to bake).  After this time the cake had begun to shrink away from the sides and was springy on top.

The cake was removed from the oven and left to cool in the tin.  Mary says to cut the cake into 21 pieces and dust with sieved icing sugar just before serving.  I didn’t dust the cake with icing sugar as I knew my husband wouldn’t be too fussed about this as he would be the only one to eat it.

I did make myself tray a piece of the cake.  It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  I think the mixed spice certainly came through flavour wise.  I’m glad I halved the ingredients though.  My husband, however, thought the cake was lovely and I must admit it didn’t take him long to eat all the pieces.

A note from Mary at the top of the page states not to worry if your cake dips in the centre – it means you were a little generous with the treacle.  I don’t think there was any chance of that happening in this house!!