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Florence Cake slice
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Florence Cake Slice

a traditional Florence Cake baked in a traybake tin and cut in to slices
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time1 hour 20 minutes
Course: Cake
Cuisine: Northern Ireland
Keyword: florence cake, madeira cake with jam, traditional Northern Ireland cake, cake slice
Servings: 24

Equipment

  • 1 rectangular traybake tin, approx 18cm x 28cm or a 9" square tin

Ingredients

Base

  • 115 g butter
  • 60 g caster sugar
  • 170 g plain flour
  • 150 g raspberry jam a good quality conserve works well

Cake

  • 170 g butter
  • 170 g caster sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 225 g self raising flour

To finish

  • 250 g icing sugar
  • 12 glace cherries

Instructions

To make the base

  • Preheat the oven to 160C (fan).
  • Soften the butter and cream with the sugar until soft, light and fluffy. Add the flour and mix well then press the mixture evenly into the traybake tin. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and allow to cool while you prepare the cake mix.
  • Reduce the oven temperature to 140C (fan).

To make the cake

  • Soften the butter and cream together with the caster sugar. Crack the eggs and weigh, you need the same weight of eggs as butter and sugar (170g) so if you have less than this add some water or milk to make up to the correct weight. Add the eggs and flour to the creamed butter and sugar and beat until smooth.
  • Check that the base has cooled enough so that it can be gently touched without leaving a mark and spread the raspberry jam evenly over it. Carefully spoon the cake mix over the jam and spread evenly then bake until the cake springs back when gently pressed in the centre. This will take about 1 hour 10 minutes.

Icing

  • Set aside to cool and make the icing. Weigh the icing sugar into a bowl and add water to make a paste-like consistency - it should spread easily but not run off the cake. You will need 40 -50 ml water but add it gradually so you don't end up adding too much and the icing be too runny.
  • Spread the icing over the cake, you can do this when the cake is slightly warm then chop the glace cherries in half and arrange over the icing. I arrange them in a 4 x 6 formation as this is how the cake will be cut - ideally each piece will have a glace cherry in the centre, but so long as it's there somewhere it will be fine. The cake needs to cool completely until the icing sets before cutting into squares.

Notes

If you like you can add a little flavour to the cake mix - vanilla or almond extract would work well.
Any jam of your choice can be used, if you don't like raspberry then try blackcurrant or even strawberry.
This should keep well in an airtight container for up to a week.