Cake is my downfall. I can refuse a glass of wine, push away an opened box of handmade chocolates, spurn a toffee from the tin and turn my nose up at a HobNob, but I can never, ever resist a slice of cake. The feel of the soft, open texture of the sponge between my finger and thumb, the warm scent of vanilla, orange, lemon and almond. A slice of cake is both pleasure and vice and I sometimes look away as I walk past a particularly tempting shop window.
I had been awaiting Nicola Humble's Cake – A Global History (Reaktion Books, £9.99) with as much anticipation as a warm Dundee cake coming out of the oven on a winter's afternoon. A mere 150 pages in length and the colour of creamed butter and sugar, this is the story of cake and its place in our history, its myths, legends and folklore. It arrived this week and I have found it as difficult to put down as a slice of village-fête chocolate cake. This sliver of a tome is testament to research, but also contains a drawing that has haunted me since childhood – John Tenniel's 1872 illustration of the lion and the unicorn fighting over Alice's plum cake from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.
For many, the cake tins are put away from Easter (simnel) until the leaves start falling from the trees (gingerbread or apple kuchen), but I am rather fond of a light-as-a-feather sponge on a June afternoon. A vanilla sponge with a hint of rosewater; a shallow almond torte with domes of apricot peeking through the crust; a blueberry battercake or perhaps a Swiss roll with a filling of cream rippled with crushed raspberries. Bring a soft butter sponge and a bowl of strawberries complete with their green hulls into the garden, and you will find more than the bees buzzing round you.
Summer cakes should probably be lighter than the ginger and spice-flecked temptations of autumn. The dark butterscotch notes of muscovado can be put aside until September in favour of pale sugars and fillings of soft jams and fresh fruits. I baked a fine cake for summer the other day with peaches and blueberries. I started with a light almond sponge, then folded in a thread of berries and then some clingstone peaches, a little squished where I had forced them off their stones. It made a perfect summer dessert as well as a tea-time cake.
I am not a fan of the high-rise double-decker cake – fine for a birthday, but I prefer something altogether more shallow and less showy. That said, a pale, flourless sponge stuffed with fruit can be quite heavenly in summer. Try Nicola Humble's hazelnut sponge below: it has a gentle, almost Edwardian quality to it that particularly appeals on a summer's afternoon. It's the sort of baking that begs to be held high on a cake stand and served with a proper silver slice. (No, I haven't one either.)
I have spent my life eating food that is in harmony with nature and the rhythm of the seasons. The year has reached that point when the air is so still and calm, the sun so high, that all I want is a huge bowl of salad and a slice of tender, fruit-marbled cake. Right now I really wouldn't mind if I never chop an onion again.
A cake for midsummer
Blueberries and peaches are rippled through the soft, almond-rich crumb of this pretty cake – the very essence of summer. I sometimes add a few rose petals and an extra handful of raspberries at the last moment, or perhaps a light scattering of caster sugar.
Serves 8-10
175g butter
175g golden caster sugar
200g ripe peaches
2 large eggs
175g self-raising flour
100g ground almonds
1 tsp grated orange zest
a few drops of vanilla extract
150g blueberries
Line the base of a 20cm, loose-bottomed cake tin with baking paper. Set the oven at 170C/gas mark 4.
Cream the butter and sugar together 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, to the creamed butter and sugar, pushing the mixture down the sides of the bowl from time to time with a rubber spatula. If there is any sign of curdling, stir in a tablespoon of the flour.
Mix the flour and almonds together and fold in, with the mixture at a slow speed, in two or three separate lots. Add the orange zest and vanilla, and once they are incorporated add the chopped peaches and blueberries.
Scrape the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Test with a skewer – if it comes out relatively clean, then the cake is done. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes or so in the tin, run a palette knife around the edge, then slide out on to a plate, decorating as the fancy takes you.
Nicola Humble's hazelnut and raspberry cake
A wonderful light yet sumptuous cake from Nicola Humble's book. As she says: "I have made this cake for many years, and it never fails to please. A German-style cake which substitutes ground nuts for flour, this is delightfully squidgy and satisfying without being cloying. It works very well as a dessert for a party."
Serves 8
220g whole hazelnuts
6 large eggs
180g caster sugar
250ml double cream, whipped
150-200g raspberries
Grease and flour a 24cm springform tin. Line the base with a circle of baking parchment. Set the oven at 170C/gas mark 4.
Place the nuts in a dry frying pan (preferably cast iron) and toast carefully over a low heat, shaking the pan to rotate them. This can also be done in a moderate oven, but the nuts must be checked frequently, as they burn very easily. When they are golden in patches, allow to cool. Grind the cooled nuts in a food processor. The aim is to reduce most of the nuts to a coarse flour, but to retain some larger chunks for texture. Be careful not to process too far or they will release their oils and turn to nut-butter.
Separate the eggs carefully. Whisk the yolks and sugar until pale, creamy and very thick. Stir in the nuts. Whisk the egg whites to firm peaks then gently fold them into the yolk mixture with a large spoon. Turn into the tin and bake until the cake begins to shrink away from the sides of the tin – approximately 45 minutes. Leave in the tin to cool for 10 minutes, then release the clip and turn out on to a rack. When completely cold, carefully cut the cake in half horizontally, then fill with whipped cream and raspberries.
If preferred, the mixture can be baked in two layers in shallower cake tins, in which case the layers will take about 25-30 minutes to bake.
Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/nigelslater for all his recipes in one place
