Lardy Cake

It's has been a while, I did actually bake a hazelnut and chocolate cake last weekend, but forgot to take any pictures!

This recipe is taken from my 'Great British Bake Off' book, as soon as I saw I knew I had to try making it. Lardy cake reminds me of camping as a child, eating large slices of oozing cake and picking out the currents. This was a very time consuming recipe but enjoyable neither the less. It is best eaten nop later than three days after baking as it does go stale.

Ingredients

500g strong white bread flour

1 tsp salt

1 sachet of yeast

250ml warm milk

1 med egg

100g lard, room temp, small pieces

100g butter, room temp, small pieces.

200g caster sugar

150g mixed dried fruit

Method

Mix flour, salt and yeast in a bowl. Make a hole in the centre and add milk and beaten egg. Gradually mix flour into the wet ingredients with either fingers or a dough hook until it forms a soft dough.

Turn out dough and knead for 10 minutes. Return dough to the bowl, cover with a damp cloth and allow to rise in a warm place for an hour.

After the dough has doubled in size, punch to deflate and turn out onto a floured surface. Cut in half, returning half the dough to the bowl, cover and set aside. Also set aside half of the lard, butter, sugar and fruit.

Roll out the uncovered portion into a rectangle 30x 15 cm. Dot 2/3 of the dough with 1/3 of the remaining lard and butter, sprinkle over 1/3 of remaining sugar and fruit. Fold bottom third over the filled portion, and fold top third down. Seal all edges by pushing down with fingertips.

Turn the dough and roll out. Repeat the above process twice and put the rolled portion aside.

Repeat with second half of the dough and leave to rest for 10 minutes. After resting roll out both portions of dough to fit into two 20cm sandwich tins.  Allow to rise at room temperature for 1 hour.

After dough has risen place in the fridge for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 220C.

Lightly score the top of the cakes and back for 25 minutes until golden. Remove cakes from tins and turn the upside down. Place back in the oven for 5 minutes to brown the bottoms.

Allow to cool.