How gorgeous is this! A crispy sweet toffee dough cake crust that gives way to a gorgeous mouthful of old fashioned fruity pudding, a truly outstanding cake, completely outrageous as far as my expert cake eating husband says. I was so pleased to watch him scoff this down with no dignity, the perfect compliment. With our nose to tail eating there is plenty of rendered down crackling lard in our house from our Gloucestershire Old Spot Pigs and this is a top favourite way to use it.
Making Your Own Lard
It is easy to make your own lard, ask your local butcher for some back fat and a little bit of skin if available, pop in the oven on a high heat and after 40 minutes remove from the oven and pour off the liquid lard into a loaf tin, return the fat to the oven and repeat until the fat is not rendering any more lard, leave the lard to cool and then turn out of the tin and wrap in parchment paper, store in the fridge and use as needed.
Prep Time 15 minutes / Proving Time 1.30 hours / Cooking Time 30 minutes
Ingredients
(makes 8" cake)
The Dough
250g 00 flour
8g dried yeast
5g sea salt
25ml olive oil
160g water
Lardy Cake Filling
250g caster sugar
200g fresh lard softened
2 tbsp fresh softened lard
2 tbsp soft brown sugar
200g dried fruit
100ml earl grey tea
First to make the dough as this will need to rest and prove for an hour, place all the ingredients together in a bowl, I keep the salt on the opposite side to the yeast until mixing, using your hands or a dough hook bring the mix to form a dough and knead for seven minutes, cover with a tea towel and leave to rest for a hour.
Mix the lard and caster sugar together and leave to one side, in a bowl pour the tea over the dried fruit and leave to infuse while the dough proves. When the hour is up roll out your dough to a thin circle, spread two thirds of your sugar lard all over the dough.
Take one side of the dough and fold half in to the middle so you now have a straight edge on one half of the circle, take the bottom corner and fold up in to the centre of the dough circle, repeat with the top corner which will in turn create another corner and then another, now you will have a circle again, cover with a tea towel and leave to rest for twenty minutes. When time is up gently roll out the dough circle to half the size again, spread the remainder of the sugar lard over, drain the soaked fruit and sprinkle evenly over the dough, now fold up again as before.
Line and grease your 8" cake tin base with the two tablespoons of lard, sprinkle over the sugar and place the dough circle in your tin, leave to rest again covered for half an hour, meanwhile pre heat your oven to 210 degrees and if you have a baking stone place that in the oven to heat up as this will stop your cake getting a soggy bottom and over browning the top as you are cooking at a high heat.
Cook in the oven for 30 minutes, once done, leave to cool in the tin for 15 - 20 minutes, so that the gorgeous toffee bottom can set, otherwise it will just run off if you remove the cake before. Turn the cake upside down and make sure you get yourself a slice first as this will be gone fast.
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