The Vineyard Cake from Sweet

The promise of this cake was what sold me on 'Sweet', Vineyard cake, also called Cleopatra cake, is filled with grapes, and uses most of a bottle of Muscat - that's an attractive combination for a wine merchant.

Closer inspection of the recipe shows that it wants an inconvenient amount of Muscat - 450ml, we sell bottles of the suggested Muscat Beaumes de Venise in 375ml bottles, and I knew I had an elderly half bottle of Californian Muscat at home needed using (if it was still okay). Because of the size of the original recipe it also needs to be made in a chiffon or angel food cake tin, which I don't have either. A bundt tin won't do because there's a sugar crust and grapes on top of it, which is where you want them to stay.

Happily it was an easy recipe to half, so I made it as a loaf cake instead, and it's cooked through beautifully. The old bottle of Muscat I had (2009 vintage) was past it's best but still basically sound. There's no point in cooking with wine that's corked (cork taint smells and tastes like musty cardboard,  it's caused by a bacteria in the cork, and nothing will fix it), oxidised, or otherwise faulty. Wine that is older than it should be to be at its best is slightly different. As it ages it loses its fruit flavours, which is what was happening to my Muscat, but it still had enough of its distinctive sweet grapey character to be drinkable, and as cooking it would have much the same effect on it as aging had, I was happy to use it. For future baking I'll be looking for 500ml bottles of moscatel (basically the same grape, but Spanish rather than French) though I'm also curious to see how it might work with a pale cream sherry.

Meanwhile, grease and flour a 2 pound loaf tin, wash and slice lengthways 50g of seedless grapes (which turned out to be far fewer than I expected) and finely grate the zest of a lemon and half an orange. Preheat the oven to 210°C/190°c fan oven/gas 6.

Take 170g of caster sugar, 90g of butter at room temp, 40 ml of olive oil, and the scraped seeds of half a vanilla pod and mix for a couple of minutes until light and fluffy. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating well each time, and then take 250g of plain flour, a good pinch of salt, 1 tsp of baking powder, and 1/4 tsp of bicarbonate of soda and add about a third of it to the mix followed by half the (225ml's total) of wine, blend and then add half the remaining flour and the rest of the wine, followed by the rest of the flour.

Pour the batter in the tin, scatter the grapes evenly across the top, and put in the oven. Now take 35g of caster sugar and 35g of butter and mix in a small bowl until it's a thick paste. Wash and half another 50g of grapes (no longer surprised at how few that is) and when the cake has been in the oven 15-20 minutes carefully remove it and spread the sugar crust evenly over the top, breaking it into small pieces as you go, scatter the grapes on top of it and stick it back in the oven, wearing the temperature to 180°c/160° fan/ Gas 4 and continue to bake for another half hour or so until a skewer comes out of the cake clean. Allow to cool for half an hour in the tin before removing.

It's a gloriously light cake, with an attractive grapey, almost incense smokey note from the Muscat (you can smell the wine, it's great). It's very good with a cup of coffee but I'm going to get that chiffon tin because I think this would be a brilliant dinner party cake (possibly with some whipped cream laced with the remaining Muscat on the side). Apparently it keeps well - I'll report back on that.