Donna Hay's Peach & Strawberry Cake

Peach & Strawberry Cake

I've eaten a few tarts and cakes made by different people that tasted heavenly, and the baker would say that they just followed the recipe from a Donna Hay book. Hence I have to give credit to the amazing Donna Hay who has helped millions of women (and men) to bake for their family & friends. 

My sister in law baked this Peach & Raspberry Cake/Tart a few times and my husband would try to steal some every single time. 

It was my youngest son's first birthday last week. My baby is growing up fast! and I wanted to bake a simple cake on his special day. We had a few more gatherings after his actual birth day so I baked three cakes in total last week. It was a bit tiring but I think we saved a lot of money. Baking cakes at home is certainly much cheaper than spending more than $30 each time for cake.

I baked this cake on my son's birthday. I tried to make that day as special as possible for my little baby, I cooked his favourite spaghetti and let him make a mess, I let him play outside for long even though its winter, etc.

My Cheeky Baby Turning 1 Eating His Favourite Meal

Back to the cake I finally decided to try Donna Hay's recipe for Peach & Raspberry Cake for the first time. The problem was I didn't have any frozen raspberries so I substituted raspberries with fresh strawberries and it is not peach season here so I used canned peaches. I hope Donna will forgive me for this.

This recipe is from one of the pages of Donna Hay's Off The Shelf book.

Ingredients:

• 125 gram very softened butter
• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 cups of self raising flour sifted
• Peach Slices from Canned Peaches
• 2 Fresh Strawberries - Cut to slices
• Icing Sugar
• Dollop Cream

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius. Line a 22 cm round cake tin with removable base with baking paper.

2.  In a large bowl, place butter, caster sugar and vanilla essence. With an electric mixer beat until soft and fluffy.  

3. Add eggs and beat well. 

4. Fold in the flour gradually and mix well.

I love how batter comes together and creates this fluffy creamy texture

5. Pour the cake batter into the tin. Top with Peaches and Strawberries.

If I am to bake this cake again I will put a lot more fruit slices on top as the cake will expand right to the edges when baked.

6. Bake in the oven for 1 hour. 

7. To test that the cake is clean you can use a long skewer stick, or get a special cake tester needle. I eventually bought one so that I don't waste wooden skewers.

8. Wait until the cake is cool. Sift icing sugar on top for decoration. Eat cake with thick/dollop cream. Yum.