I have recently moved into a new house. A desire to do a bit of nesting, coupled with just having bought yet another cookbook, the baking book Honey and Jam, led me to make a cake.

Whilst trying to orientate myself in the surrounding streets of very similar grand Georgian terraces, I popped into the local corner shop. I went in with pretty low expectations, banking on just getting milk and eggs. However, I was confronted with quails eggs, cashew nuts and several different types of brie. So I bought some duck eggs, my favourite brand of local butter and some cashew nuts for good measure.

The flavours in this cake were inspired by some ice cream I had recently at Swoon Gelato: caramelised fig and mascarpone. The duck eggs gave it a richness, and the butter tinged it yellow, and I added some ground almonds to the sponge. I topped the cake with sliced figs, fig jam and mascarpone cream.

 

For the cake:

 

2 eggs

100g butter

60g plain flour

40g ground almonds

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp fig jam

 

For the marscapone cream:

250g mascarpone

100ml double cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp honey

 

For the topping:

 

1 tbsp fig jam

4 figs, sliced

50g flaked almonds, toasted

 

 

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Whisk together the eggs and the milk and add the vanilla. Mix the flour and ground almonds together. Add alternate amounts of the flour and egg mixture to the butter and sugar, until all incorporated.

 

Grease a 18cm cake tin and line with greaseproof paper. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 20 minutes, until there is no raw batter and the top is springy. Turn out of the tin and leave to cool.

 

For the marscapone cream, mix the mascarpone and cream together until softly whipped, then fold in the honey and vanilla.

 

When the cake is cool, top with the sliced figs, drizzle over the fig jam and scatter over the toasted almonds.