Where do you find your recipes these days? Online, in books? When I was very young the radio was the equivalent to the web for information sharing and many of Mum’s recipes were quickly jotted down as she was working in the kitchen and listening to her favourite radio programs.
This tea cake recipe was one of those radio recipes. It was actually from an advertisement for Sunshine Powdered Milk. In those days many people used powdered milk in their cooking. It was convenient to do this, especially if you were running low on milk for the day. Don’t forget back then milk was delivered by the milkman everyday and we couldn’t just nip out to the local supermarket if we ran out. Mum couldn’t drive and didn’t have access to a car anyway and the nearest shop was miles away.
Anyway, the Sunshine milk recipe for tea cake included, not surprisingly, ‘Sunshine Milk Powder’ as an ingredient. Today I don’t bother with this – I just use fresh milk. But regardless of the type of milk you use you will find this recipe to be one of the easiest and tastiest tea cakes that you could ever make!! It has been a go-to cake for me for years.
Here it is as written out by Mum so many years ago (with a slight change for the type of milk!).
Melt 2 level tablespoons of butter in a cup. Break one egg into the cup and fill the cup with milk. Beat slightly with a fork.
Sift 1&1/4 cups SR Flour into a bowl and add in 3/4 cup sugar. Add a dash of vanilla and the egg/milk mixture and beat with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes.
Stir in 1 teaspoon of baking powder.
Pour into a 7 inch (18 cm) cake tin and bake in a moderate oven for about half an hour. (You can also make small cakes – sometimes I do small round cakes or tiny loaf shapes. Reduce the cooking time to approximately 15-20 minutes if you cook smaller cakes.)
Remove from tin(s) when cooked and place onto a cooling rack covered with a layer of baking paper. Quickly cover the top of the cake with butter (spread on with a knife). Sprinkle a sugar + cinnamon mix over the butter. (Mix 3 teaspoons of sugar with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon for this.)
Enjoy with your favourite tea or chai!
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Until next time,
Gillian (and Andrew)
