Serves: 16 portions - Time:
The simplest way of describing a buckle is a cake, laden with fruit (I have chosen blackberries because they are still in season here) and topped with an oaty crumble. However, some recipes don’t have a topping and some recipes pile half the fruit on top of the cake batter so I’m not sure there is a definitive way of cooking buckles. Either way it is delicious-served warm with custard for pudding, or cold with coffee midmorning or tea at four o’clock.
Ingredients
- For the topping
- 90g porridge oats
- 40g plain flour
- 60g cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 60g demerara sugar
- For the buckle
- 240g plain flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- Pinch salt
- 150g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
- 130g golden caster sugar
- 2 medium eggs, beaten
- 1 teaspoon vanilla paste (or extract)
- 90ml buttermilk
- 400g blackberries
Method
- For the topping, put the porridge oats and flour in a mixing bowl and rub in the butter until no visibly large lumps remain. Stir in the sugar and set aside.
- Heat the oven to 180˚c, fan oven 170˚c, mark 4. Grease and line a 9 x 9 inch (22.5 cm) square cake tin with non-stick baking parchment. Mix the flour with the baking powder and salt and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer or with an electric beater. Slowly beat in the eggs followed by the vanilla paste. Stir in the buttermilk-don’t worry if it looks curdled. Fold in the flour mixture until you have a smooth batter. Fold in the fruit.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and spread to the edges, leveling out the surface. Sprinkle over the crumble topping. Bake in the oven for about 40-45 minutes until the cake feels firm in the centre and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 20 minutes then carefully lift it out and place on a wire rack. Cut into squares and serve warm with custard or cold with a cup of coffee or tea.
