The Optimist's Cake - Golden Syrup Sponge

Golden with sunshine, syrup sponge cake

The Optimist’s Cake - Golden Syrup Sponge

A rich, juicy sponge, reminding you of syrup pudding and the best school dinners.  Golden syrup lifts the mood, you can’t help feeling cheerful.  This is a recipe from Pam Corbin in the River Cottage Handbook # 8. Cakes, and another infallible standby for when you need a straightforward cake, oozing with goodness, of which a little goes a long way.

Perfect for school lunch boxes, afternoon tea and taking round to neighbours. It would be a good cake to make if you are selling your house as it fills the kitchen with a welcoming sugary friendly smell which is pretty much irresistible.

The theme this week at the Seniors Lunch Club was “Looking after your own Mental Health” as we’ve had a few people saying they feel down, flat, unmotivated recently. It’s a natural and healthy reaction to the year we’ve had, but we thought we’d swop tips for boosting our natural resilience. These are some of the ideas our fabulous bunch came up with:

• Do something practical for yourself, however small. The washing up, doing your make-up, achieving some small task will cheer you up. Have a routine of tasks and tick them off your list.
• Keep moving and go outside if you possibly can – even to walk round the same park you’ve walked round every day for a year. There’s always something new to see.
• Enjoy the animals – your own dog or cat or watch the squirrels and birds, see how they interact and squabble.
• Do something for other people – bake a cake, make a phone call, knock on a neighbour’s door and have a chat. Good for you and good for them.
• Have hope in the future, look forward to something, and count the blessings you have today.
• Allow yourself to accept help – even if you’ve always been the active “do-er” - sometimes you can accept a meal from a neighbour and be grateful.
• Use lavender to help you sleep; meditate and visualise a favourite journey or walk, imagining the sights and the sounds as you go.
• Give yourself a small treat every day.

 
Serves 8               Timings: 1 hour

• 250g golden syrup
• 100g butter (I like salted as I love that tang of salt against the sweet)
• 150g self raising flour
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 50g white breadcrumbs – I used the ready made from M&S and they gave a sort of soft crunch in the cake which was very appealing
• Zest of ½ unwaxed lemon, and the juice of the lemon
• 1 egg
• 150m plain yoghurt
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar

Preheat your oven to 180°C and put the 200g of the syrup and the butter in a little pan over medium heat to melt and mix. Grease and line a 1 litre loaf tin. Sieve the flour and bicarb into the mixer bowl and add the breadcrumbs and lemon zest.   Remove the pan from the heat and let the butter/syrup mixture cool a little. Resist dipping your finger in. (I can’t).

Mix the egg and the yoghurt, and beating on a low speed, mix into the flour. Then add the syrup/butter mix and whisk until you get a glossy liquid batter.

Spoon the batter into the cake tin and bake for 40 – 50 minutes until brown on top and a skewer comes out clean.

Mix the remaining syrup, a little water and the lemon juice in a small pan and warm through. Add 2 tablespoons of caster sugar but don’t mix.

When the cake comes out of the oven, leave it in the tin and prick with a skewer through the cake but not right to the bottom. Make quite a few of these holes.

Spoon the warm syrup/juice mixture over the cake, giving it time to dribble into the holes and moisten the cake. The caster sugar will stay on the top and give it a subtle crunch.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin, then remove from the tin and wrap in foil. It will keep 4-5 days, if you can stop yourself from eating it all in one go.