The Recipe Room

Another Canadian recipe I learned from my great-aunt, this gumdrop cake,  is apparently a traditional Christmas cake over there.  We usually visited her in the summer, but luckily this cake freezes very well, so she always made sure to save some for us when we visited.

The cake is far from healthy, and I imagine it’s quite fattening, but what do you expect from a cake full of fruit gums?!  In any case, it’s sinfully delicious and a great treat for the little ones – and the older ones too!

My great-aunt’s recipe calls for sugar-coated gumdrops, but I can’t usually find that kind at my local shops and usually just substitute the regular kind.  I don’t think the difference is really noticeable, even though a Canadian might disagree with that assumption.

The cake is sweet enough on its own and doesn’t require any frosting, just make sure you don’t leave it in the oven too long as it’s best when the sponge is nice and moist.

Ingredients:

• 227g butter
• 400g granulated sugar
• 375g flour
• 4 eggs
• 250ml milk
• 2 rounded teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons lemon extract
• 500ml gumdrops

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
2. Butter and flour a tube cake pan.
3. Beat the butter and sugar until they’re light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs and beat well.
5. Add flour and baking powder alternately with milk – beginning and ending with flour.
6. Add the lemon extract.
7. Cut the gumdrops into small pieces and coat with a little flour.
8. Fold the gumdrops into the batter.  The batter should be very stiff to avoid the gumdrops sinking to the bottom during baking.  Add a little more flour if necessary.
9. Pour the batter into the greased and floured tube cake pan.
10.  Bake for 1 hour or until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

For more seasonal ideas, try this Christmas cake recipe.

 

Prep Time:  15 minutes

Cooking Time:  60 minutes

Serves:  8

Difficulty:  Medium

Tags: butter, cake, Christmas cake, dessert, eggs, gumdrop cake, gumdrops, lemon extract, milk, sugar flour

This entry was posted on Monday, 30 April, 2012 at 2:36 pm by Sarah White and is filed under Desserts, Less than 90 mins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.