Happy Birthday Mar!!!

I love the way the light from the candels is captured in this pic. This is a cranberry white chocolate cake I made for my friend Maryam to celebrate her 30th birthday pre-Christmas. Before making it, I asked her to name three of her favourite ingredients. She named as cranberry, nuts and chocolate. And as some foods are just meant to be together (call it food fate) I thought that these would go perfect! So all I did was whip together a basic cake recipe and added dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks. In hindsight I should have baked the cake with real cranberries, which would have given it a nice moisture. It being Christmas and my local Tesco not incredibly amazing at stocking some foods (although on a sidebar, they did have everything I could have asked for to make sushi) I stuck with dried. The birthday girl enjoyed it and so did everyone else. It was a light cake to finish off a light meal! And not too summery.

4oz olive oil
6oz caster sugar
3 eggs
160g self-raising flour
dried cranberries

250g white chocolate

macademia nuts for decoraton

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4; 180C; 350F
Grease a cake tin

a) whisk together the oil and sugar until completely combined
b) whisk the eggs and add to the sugar/oil mixture in three batches always ensuring the eggs are fully combined before adding the next batch.
c) sift the flour into the sugar oil mixture and fold in until a nice dough is formed

d) fold in the cranberries and white chocolate
e) pour the dough into the cake tin
f) bake for roughly 45-50m or until a skewer comes out dry

Ice the cake with your favourite kind of icing. I made a white chocolate cream cheese icing. I think I have a problem. I don't make anything else at the moment. I must stray away!