This is a versatile recipe as it can be made in different sizes, served as a dessert or just as a treat. It’s quite easy to make – another food processor mixture which I love! The most time consuming aspect is soaking the raisins beforehand.
Ingredients
1 cup of raisins
1/4 cup muscat
125g self-raising flour
125g caster sugar
125g butter
2 large free-range eggs
A handful of chopped walnuts
Muscat syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 water
1/4 cup muscat
Method
Place the raisins into a bowl with the muscat and leave to soak for at least an hour.
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C. For small cakes, grease a muffin tin. Or, for a larger cake, grease a 20cm round cake tin. I happened to have a small square tin on hand, so I used that, as well filling the remainder of the mixture into muffin molds.
Put all the ingredients except raisins, muscat and walnuts in a food processor and blitz till smooth. Carefully fold the raisins and muscat and then the walnuts into the mixture. If the mixture looks too wet or sloppy, add a tablespoon or two more of flour.
Spoon mixture into the muffin tin or cake tins. Tap lightly to settle the mixture.
Place the tin/s in the oven and bake for 20 minutes for muffins, 35-4o minutes for the round cake tin or until the muffin/cakes are cooked and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. I cannot be more precise than this as the mixture has a lot of liquid and it’s difficult to judge exact cooking times.
Meanwhile, to make the syrup, put the sugar and water in a heavy based saucepan, stirring until dissolved. Then boil for 5 minutes without stirring or until the the syrup has reduced to stickiness but not toffee. Take off the heat and add the muscat.
Remove the muffins/cake from the oven and pierce all over with a skewer. Pour over the hot syrup.
Cool the muffins/cake in the tin/tins. Turn out carefully as the the cakes can be quite fragile with the infused syrup.
Serve with a scattering of raisins and walnuts in any left over syrup.
The Quirk and the Cool 