Lucky bean cake recipe

kay, so the chocolate flapjack recipe I posted has turned out to be one of my most popular posts. So, in a similar vein, I’ve decided to post another of my favourite recipes. If I remember correctly, this originates from Blue Peter, a show I’ve never really watched, but obviously I was watching when they made this cake, and I’m really rather glad that I did. The whole ‘lucky bean’ thing is one of those daft things about ‘the person who gets the bean gets to be lucky for a whole year!’, which is obviously complete bullshit and really it’s best to make this cake without the bean in because if you end up eating the bean then it’s disgusting because all the foil sticks to your mouth and you have to take it out and it’s really not a very pleasant experience.

And now, without further ado, how to make a not-so-lucky hopefully-sans-bean cake:

Ingredients:

• 250g margarine
• A tiny bit of baking powder
• 150g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 200ml milk
• 300g self-raising flour
• 1 butter bean, if you’re going for the whole bean thing

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Melt the butter.
3. Beat the butter and the sugar together.
4. Mix in eggs, flour and baking powder.
5. Whisk.
6. Wrap the butter bean in foil. Don’t use much foil: as I said earlier, it’s rather foul when you end up eating it.
7. Drop it in the mixture.
8. Mix.
9. Bake for 50 minutes (normally slightly less) in a ring-shaped tin. Sprinkle the baking powder in the tin before you put the mixture in the tin: seriously, this cake can be quite hard to get out, and the baking powder helps one hell of a lot.
10. Leave to cool.

This makes a very heavy, thick and delicious cake that goes marvellously with cream and strawberries. It’s best to eat it in nice big pieces, because it goes stale very quickly. If it’s been a few days, sticky it in the microwave and then smear jam all over it and it tastes a lot better.