STM recipe: Ottolenghi Simple Too’s Brown sugar cake with brown sugar cream

An ingredient can easily sit in the pantry forever, before we suddenly rediscover it and see it in a new light. Here it’s dark brown soft sugar, which we have always loved but have never made a concerted effort to build a whole cake around, using its deeply unique toasty notes and the sugary moisture that it holds within. It does, however, make the cake sink in the middle ever so slightly, but we don’t mind — once it’s topped with cream no one will ever know!

The brown sugar cake and cream are pretty perfect as they are, but they are truly completed by adding sumac roasted strawberries; it really is (blissful) death by brown sugar. Still, you can take all kinds of different directions and finish the cake with chocolate shavings, a drizzle of carob or date molasses, passionfruit pulp or raspberry jam.

Keeping notes: Tightly wrapped, the baked sponge will keep for 2 days. The cream is best made on the day, and once the topping is on the cake, you should serve it straight away.

Ingredients

3 eggs

225g dark brown soft or muscovado sugar

150g plain flour

¾ tsp fine sea salt

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

150g unsalted butter, melted and warm

75g creme fraiche

Icing sugar, to serve (optional)

Brown sugar cream

200ml double cream

200g creme fraiche

1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract

50g dark brown soft or muscovado sugar

Preparation

Step 1 Preheat the oven to 180C fan.

Step 2 Put the eggs and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk on high speed for 5 minutes (or whisk by hand), until light and almost tripled in volume. Sift over the flour, salt and raising agents and whisk on low speed until just combined. Mix together the butter and creme fraiche and, still on low speed, stream down the sides of the bowl and mix until just combined.

Step 3 Transfer the mix to a 23cm round cake tin (bottom and sides lined with parchment paper) and bake for 30–35 minutes, until springy to the touch. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a wire rack.

Step 4 For the cream, put everything into the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk to soft peaks.

Step 5 Remove the cake from the tin and put on a serving plate, dollop the cream on top, sprinkle with icing sugar, if using, and serve.

Serves 4

Extracted from Ottolenghi Simple Too by Yotam Ottolenghi and Verena Lochmuller. Ebury Press, $69.99. Photography by Jonathan Lovekin.