A test of their baking skill, young lasses of Lancashire baked this cake for their betrothed as a gesture of love, care and friendship, as part of courtship. A bit of food trivia, a courting cake was presented to William and Kate before their nuptials.
Lancashire Courting Cake Helped Lasses Land a Husband
A test of their baking skill, young lasses of Lancashire baked this cake for their betrothed as a gesture of love, care and friendship, as part of courtship,
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter unsalted
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 3 tsp. pure vanilla extract
- 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, unbleached
- 4 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup milk
Filling
- 2 - 4 cups whipped cream or substitute non fat plain greek yoghurt
- 2-4 cups strawberries sliced, over ripe
- 1/4 cup icing sugar to dust on top
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Prepare 2 or 3 cake pans by lining the bottoms with parchment paper.
- Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Taking time at this stage will result in a much lighter cake.
- Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Beat in 2 teaspoons vanilla.
- Sift flour, baking powder, salt into medium bowl. Fold into butter mixture.
- Gently mix in milk to make a dropping consistency.
- Divide batter into your prepared pans. To remove extra air bubbles give your pans a good whack on your counter before putting into the oven. Think about an ex...it will help!
- Bake cake for 25- 30 minutes, or light brown and firm to the touch. Let cool completely on wire racks.
- If you have made two layers and have lots of berries, you can carefully slice each layer in half horizontally with a long serrated knife so you have four layers.
- Otherwise, just place one layer on a decorative plate, layer with sweetened whipped cream (or flavoured non fat yoghurt) and sliced strawberries.
- Top with the next layer and repeat until complete. Some prefer to place the final layer with the cut side up to make it more flat, but topping covers all sins.
- Dust with powdered sugar. Arrange more berries atop cake.
- Refrigerate the cake for at least an hour before serving to let the flavours blend. Good luck!
Notes
*if you don't have caster sugar simply pulse regular sugar in your food processor and then measure.
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