Makes one 22cm cake

I don’t know about you, but lately I have taken great comfort in the known; in tried and tested cakes, and all things familiar. This cake is a real favourite of mine – simple, delicious and easily adaptable (surely good qualities for navigating life in general, really). I make it often with strawberries as pictured, or plums, but raspberries or ripe apricots would be equally lovely. It’s inspired by the streusel cakes I ate in Germany when I was an exchange student, and in the absence of seeing old friends there, I’ll eat this cake.

Ingredients

Streusel topping

60g butter, cubed
½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste
55g caster sugar
75g plain flour
Pinch of salt

Cake

125g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
100g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
150g almond meal
185g caster sugar
375g strawberries, hulled and quartered

Method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C (fan-forced) and grease a 22cm round springform tin well with butter and line the base with baking paper.
2. Place streusel ingredients into a small mixing bowl and use your fingertips to work butter and vanilla through the sugar, flour and salt until mixture resembles large breadcrumbs. Set aside.
3. Place melted butter, eggs and vanilla in a medium mixing bowl and whisk to combine. In a separate large bowl, sift together flour and baking powder, before stirring in salt, almond meal, and caster sugar. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the melted butter and egg mixture, stirring gently to combine.
4. Spoon batter into lined baking tin and smooth the top with a spatula before scattering with strawberry quarters. Sprinkle with streusel topping and bake for 55-60 minutes or until cake is cooked through and streusel is starting to colour.
5. Allow cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so before carefully releasing from the tin and placing on a wire rack to cool further.
6. Slice into large wedges and serve cake warm with ice-cream or cream. Whilst best eaten the day it is made, any leftover cake will keep happily in an air-tight container in the fridge for a day or two, just warm slightly before serving.

This recipe is from Tilly Pamment's The Plain Cake Appreciation Society (Murdoch Books, RRP $39.99).

You can read more about what Tilly is baking this winter here.