Squidgy pineapple and allspice cakes

The Waitrose has a bi-monthly magazine called Seasons which is free. I picked the March/April one up and saw so many opportunities for some of the recipes. This is a good thing about Easter in my opinion. Bakers have a really good excuse – not that we need one, to go mad and bake loads.

One of the temptations was this recipe of ‘Squidgy pineapple and allspice cakes’. They looked so cute, mini-loaves shaped. I took a look at some of the ingredients and decided straight away that it was going to the top of the list. Have you seen anything more delicious than pineapples? Well, in fact I have, but they are awesome after undergoing some heat. They are only behind bananas (all time favourite) and apples.

The cakes are ever so easy to prepare. The only thing I would tell you to be careful about is the melting of butter together with treacle and sugar. The temperature has to be really low and it has to be done really gently. Otherwise, if it gets too hot when you add the egg you will end up with scrambled eggs. Yes, it did happen to me. I had to prepare another batch. Ah, nearly forgot: the original recipe calls for slightly salted butter. First of all I don’t remember seeing ‘slightly salted’ butter anywhere where I shop so I decided to use unsalted butter. Very pleased that I did so.

This recipe yields 8 cakes – using 150ml mini-loaf tins.

All you need is:

75g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

250g of pineapple cut into little pieces

200g plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground allspice

100g caster sugar

100g black treacke

6 tablespoons milk in room temperature

1 egg, lightly beaten

Now just follow these easy steps:

1. pre-heat the oven – 180oC ( 160oC if fan assisted) and grease & line the baking tins. It will facilitate the removal of the cakes later as they will be terribly soft. Reserve.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and allspice into a bowl,. Reserve. Put the sugar, treacle & butter in a saucepan and heat ever so gently until the sugar is dissolved and butter has melted. Remove form the heat and pour milk into it, followed by the egg. Mix well.
3. Pour over the dry ingredients and stir until well mixed. Add nearly ¾ pineapples to the batter and mix it all. Divide equally amongst the tins and scatter the surface of the cakes with the remaining pineapple pieces.
4. Bake for 25 minutes until the cakes have risen and are just firm to touch. Remove from the oven and gently lift them from the tins, and leave them to cool on a rack.
5. Drizze the cakes with the icing below. Let it to dry and serve. Oh, it will be hard to eat only one. Trust me.

Icing:

100g icing sugar + 2 tablespoon water for icing . Mix it together and drizzle the little cakes with it when ready