Summer Fruit Cake

This is a cake that always ALWAYS pleases.

If you don't believe me, try it. Go on. But hurry because summer is about to end!

This recipe has been adapted from Nigel Slater's Midsummer Cake. I always cut down on the sugar in mine and swap blueberries for other available summer berries.

Ingredients

175g butter
175g golden caster sugar
175g self raising flour
200g ripe peaches
Handful of blueberries and raspberries each
2 large eggs
100g ground almonds
1 TSP grated orange zest or essence
A few drops of vanilla extract

Preheat the oven at 170C and line the base of a 20cm tin with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar together by hand or in a food mixer until pale and fluffy. Halve, stone and roughly chop the peaches. Beat the eggs lightly then add a little at a time. Add a bit of the flour if mixture begins to curdle.

Next mix the flour and ground almonds together and fold in to the mixture at a slow speed. Add the orange zest and vanilla then add the peaches and blueberries.

Scrape the mixture into the cake tin and  distribute evenly. Add the raspberries by pushing them gently into the mixture one by one. Bake for an hour but test with a toothpick to see if cake is done. Leave cake to cool for 10 minutes or so and serve with a sprinkling of icing sugar.