Aunty Hilda’s Tea-Soaked Currant Cake: The taste of nostalgia and delight!
Aunty Hilda’s Currant Cake is very easy to make and is a great option for morning teas, snacks and lunchboxes.
Homesteading Column
by Racheal Pascoe
I have opened the Family Recipe Vault and I am very excited to share this old favourite with you all. Now before you go and turn your nose up at a fruit cake, you absolutely need to give this one a try! It is very easy to make and is a great option for morning teas, snacks and lunchboxes. (Yes, my kids love it!)
Ingredients
• 1 cup Aussie currants
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 cup cold black tea
• 1 ½ cups SR flour
• 1 tsp vanilla
Method
The night before you intend to make this cake you will need to make a cup of black tea and soak the currants in the tea overnight in a large bowl. Just the mere sight of soaking currants sends my crew into an excited frenzy, knowing a currant cake is going to be baked in the near future!
Leave the currants to soak overnight, covering the bowl with gladwrap or similar. You need time for the currants to soak in the flavour of the tea and swell up. You cannot short cut this step! Trust me, I know. “Mum, this cake doesn’t taste as good as normal?”
In the morning, discard the tea bags and mix the self-raising flour, sugar and vanilla into the currant mix and put in a loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees for 45 mins. Make sure it has shrunk away from the edges of the loaf tin and is a golden brown on top when you take it out of the oven.
Serve warm out of the oven, sliced with butter.
Now this is where you can get into trouble, because there are only 2 ends to the cake and we race at our house to get a crust! The cake has a slightly chewy outside and a sweet fruity taste inside.
It really is heavenly. Serve warm out of the oven, sliced with butter. The cake will keep for a few days on the bench apparently, but that hasn’t ever happened at our house!
I hope you enjoy this deliciously simple cake featuring Australian-grown currants.
Aunty Hilda was the strong pioneering sort of woman, 5 ft nothing, who immigrated from England in the 1960s and embraced all Australia had to offer.
She raised three children with her darling husband Uncle Jim in country Victoria.
Any recipe that was good enough for Aunty Hilda is certainly welcome in my kitchen. My dear Aunty Hilda has since passed but she would be tickled pink to think I have shared the recipe with you all.
Happy baking!