On Saturday I had my Mum & Dad over for the afternoon, Mum is diabetic now but absolutely loves my cakes, so I know I shouldn’t but I couldn’t resist baking for her, well it is Christmas!

I found this lovely recipe for the Eccles Sponge Cake in the January edition of Good Food Magazine and love that it uses up some of the ingredients that I have laying around after making my Christmas cake and mincemeat. It is also great for those that don’t like the traditional Christmas cake but still enjoy a nice seasonal cake.

This cake is simple to make and the smell from the spices gives that lovely nostalgic feeling of Christmas as it cooks.

Don’t worry if you don’t have all the right ingredients for the filling, I didn’t have raisins and if you follow my blog you will know that I absolutely hate with a passion, mixed peel, so I substituted these with glace cherries and crystallised pineapple, both loved by myself and my Mum.

I must admit that my finished result did look a little different to the one in the magazine, but this is because my lovely parents decided to turn up about an hour and a half early, the cake was still cooling and I had to put it in the garden to cool it down and it was still slightly warm when I rushed and iced it, but it still tasted delicious, which is all that counts really.

Mum loved it and I packed her off home with a quarter of the cake to enjoy.

Happy Christmas to my Mum & Dad, Buon appetito.



Serves 8 – 10


For the sponge:-
250g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
250g soft light brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 large eggs
100g plain flour
250g self raising flour
100g buttermilk
2 eating apples, peeled, cored and chopped into 1cm pieces, my lovely Hubby did this for me 🙂

Fot the filling:-
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (which I left out, vile stuff!!)
zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons soft light brown sugar
85g currants
85g raisins
50g mixed peel – YUK !

To decorate:-
85g icing sugar, sifted
zest and juice of 1 lemon
a few sugar cubes, roughly crushed

Heat the oven to 160c/ 140c fan/ gas 3.

Grease and line a deep 20cm cake tin with baking parchment. Mix together the filling ingredients and set aside.

Put butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until pale. Beat in the eggs (I always crack the eggs into a cup and give them a light beating before adding them, I just find they mix better then), then fold in the flours, buttermilk and apples. Spoon half the mixture into the tin. Scatter over the filling, leaving a 2.5cm clear border all around the edge. Spoon the remaining mixture on top, start by dolloping round the edges, then moving into the middle. Bake for 1hr 25 mins, it took a little longer in my oven, so just keep checking with a skewer, until the skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin.

Mix the icing sugar with enough lemon juice to make a runny-ish icing. Remove cake from the tin, drizzle over the icing, then scatter with the crushed sugar cubes and lemon zest.