Farmhouse Sultana Cake
This is my updated version of a very popular heritage recipe for a farmhouse sultana cake, found in a South Island high-country sheep station cookhouse notebook. It would have been made to feed the shearers or musterers for ‘smoko’ . . . morning or afternoon tea. The cake keeps really well, retaining its moistness, and it travels well even in a stockman’s saddlebag.
Ingredients
Method
- 500 g sultanas
- ½ cup brandy or whisky (or cold tea)
- 250 g Pams butter
- 1 cup Pams sugar
- 5 Pams eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2½ cups Pams plain flour
- 1 tsp Pams baking powder
- ¼ tsp Pams salt
- Put sultanas in a saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 5 minutes, then drain. Place sultanas in a bowl and pour over the brandy, whisky or tea. Leave to cool.
- Pre-heat oven to 160°C. Grease a 20 cm square cake tin and line with non-stick baking paper.
- Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add sultana mixture and vanilla to the egg mixture and combine. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into the mixture and fold in.
- Pour into tin and bake for 1½ hours, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the tin for five minutes then turn out onto a wire cake rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.