Christmas Spruce Cake

This beautiful cake owes it all to the mould! I have sung the praises of the fabulous Nordic ware in a previous blog:

https://thequirkandthecool.com/2013/07/10/fancy-individual-butter-cakes/.

This Nordic ware mould called Holiday Tree Bundt Pan is like a Christmas spruce tree.

I found this recipe in Nigella Christmas, a cook book full of exciting Christmas treats! It’s also on Nigella’s website: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/spruced-up-vanilla-cake

It’s a simple vanilla butter cake, which can be spiced up with Christmas flavours of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.

But beware – you must grease the mould really carefully as the cake is very tricky to remove from the tin!

Ingredients
225 gms soft butter (plus more for greasing)
300 gms caster sugar
6 large eggs
350 gms plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250 gms plain fat-free yoghurt
4 tsps vanilla extract and/or
1 tsp each cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg
2 tbls icing sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C fan forced or 170 degrees C non fan forced and put a baking sheet in at the same time.
Butter or oil the Nordic ware spruce tree mould very thoroughly. Alternatively, you could use a large 2.5 litre capacity tin.
Put all the ingredients except the icing sugar into a food processor and blitz together. Pour and spoon the mixture into the greased tin and spread evenly.
Place the tin on the preheated baking sheet in the oven and cook for 45–60 minutes until well risen and golden.
After 45 minutes, insert a skewer into the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is cooked. Rest the cake out of the oven for 15 minutes.
Gently pull away the edges of the cake from the tin with your fingers, then turn out the cake.
Once cool, dust with the icing sugar pushed through a small sieve.