BREAKFAST CAKE.

Yes, cake for breakfast. A sweet, light and simple start to the day.

It’s a compelling thought. Instead of running around pulling all the healthy, fruity things together for breakfast, you just cut yourself a slice of home-made cake, and sit down with a cup of tea or coffee.

All together now: a long, drawn-out, sigh of relief.

I’ve always adored hotel breakfasts in Italy and across Europe for their insistence that cake be part of the event. It just seems so civilised. Unclenching. Inclusive.

Surely, it says, if you can just sit around and eat cake for breakfast, your day will be that much sweeter.

For this to work, the cake itself can be any cake (we have made a national cult out of banana bread, which is very definitely cake and not bread), but I find the light, soft, finely crumbed tea-cake style to be the least demanding.

This is a modest, rather plain cake, which is a massive part of its appeal. Cakes are rarely allowed to be plain these days. It’s liberating.

It’s baked in a 20 cm wide tin, the sort that used to be known as a sandwich tin (the point being you had two sandwich tins, so you could sandwich the two cakes together into one).

 This small size is also freeing. You won’t have cake for days, you won’t eat huge quantities of it, you won’t have so much you have to farm it out to neighbours. You’ll have just enough.

 You can brush it with butter and dust with cinnamon sugar, or you can ice it with tangy yoghurt icing (following the breakfast theme to the death). Or you can leave it alone, which means it can share the plate with whatever is around – a puddle of yoghurt, a handful of berries, a spoonful of crunchy granola. 

It also means you can pop back and revisit this cake at lunchtime, after work, and after dinner as well.

BREAKFAST CAKE

• 100 g butter, softened

• 100 g caster sugar

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 x 60 g eggs, room temperature

• 150 g self-raising flour, sifted

• 100 ml milk or buttermilk

• Good pinch of sea salt

Heat oven to 180C (160C fan-forced).

Butter or oil a 20 cm round cake tin, and line the base with a disc of baking paper.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale, scraping down the sides once or twice.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

Add the vanilla and salt and beat until combined.

Add half the flour and half the milk and lightly beat, then remaining flour and milk and lightly beat.

Pour and scrape the cake batter into the cake tin, and bang it gently on the bench to get rid of any air bubbles.

Bake for 30 minutes on a rack in the middle of the oven, until an inserted bamboo skewer comes out clean.

Leave in the pan for 5 minutes, then gently turn out onto a wire rack.

Cool to room temperature and serve in wedges, or cut in half and then cut crosswise into slices.

CINNAMON SUGAR TOPPING

Very cute and nostalgic. The sugar and cinnamon form a light crust with the melted butter to give you that tiny crunch between your teeth that is so appealing.

• 1 tbsp butter

• 2 tbsp caster sugar

• 2 tsp cinnamon

Mix the sugar and cinnamon while the cake is baking.  As soon as the cake is turned out, dob it with soft butter and use a pastry brush to brush it over the entire top.

Scatter evenly with the cinnamon sugar and leave to cool.

(Place a sheet of baking paper or similar under the cake rack to catch all the escapees; I perhaps should have mentioned that first).

YOGHURT ICING

Sweet but tangy, yoghurt makes a cracking icing for a simple cake. Every yoghurt is different, and every spoonful from one container of yoghurt is different, so just add the yoghurt bit by bit until you have enough.

• 125 g soft icing sugar

• 1 tbsp natural yoghurt, or more

Stir the yoghurt into the icing sugar until combined – keep beating, it’s amazing how the sugar eats it up. If too dry, add a little extra yoghurt but don’t overdo it.

Whisk until smooth, and keep in the fridge until the cake has cooled.

Give it another stir, and pour over the middle of the cake, allowing it to slowly move across the cake and trickle down the sides.

(Place a sheet of baking paper or similar under the cake rack to catch the run-off; I perhaps should have mentioned that first).

Thanks for dropping by! And as always, thanks for your comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Terry for being our hand-model.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present, and to the continuing strength and resilience of First Nations people, communities and cultures.