This recipe is from Pani Stasia *,  she and my mother were at school together.  She baked wonderful cakes and everyone loved this soft cake with seedless green grapes on the top within a mound of lovely meringue.

Many years ago I jotted down the recipe and now I found it amongst  my many hand written recipes.

I obviously had not written it down very well and in my first attempt, although the topping part worked very well , the bottom cake part was not as I remembered it.  Part of the problem was some of the measurements were in spoons and I think my conversions did not work out that well.  Also I remember that seedless grapes used to be very small, now they seem to be much bigger.

My next attempt was a disaster!  I tried cutting the grapes in half  (bad idea) and I adjusted the base ingredients  – the base did not cook well at all this time – a big gloopy mess – straight to birds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of a pair of wood pigeons that come into the garden looking for cast off cake!

I decided to bake the cake base separately and add the topping later – I had a couple of goes and found that a Victoria sponge using two eggs was the best.

Note

This method means you have 4 egg yolks left over (you can use these in many other recipe). The original recipe used the yolks in the base and the whites in the topping – sadly I could not recreate this.

Cake Ingredients

• 100g butter
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100g self raising flour
• Grated rind of 1 lemon

Method

• Grease a 22cm loose bottomed tall sided tin.
• Preheat the oven to GM4 – 180°C.
• Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy
• Add the eggs and lemon rind and whisk again.
• Fold in the plain flour.
• Place the mixture in the tin and bake for around 25 minutes.
• Leave to go cold before adding the topping.

Topping Ingredients

• 225g seedless green grapes
• *
• 4 egg whites
• 200g granulated sugar
• 2 sponge fingers – crushed

Method

• Preheat the oven to GM2 – 150°C.
• Whisk the egg whites until they are stiff.
• Add the sugar and whisk again till stiff.
• Mix in the crushed sponge fingers
• Put half of the meringue mixture on top of the cake base.
• Place the grapes in a layer on top of the meringue.
• Put the rest of the meringue mixture on top of the grapes and smooth it down.
• Bake for 1 hour – if not dry enough – lower oven to GM1- 140°C and leave for another 30 minutes.
• Switch off the oven and leave cake in the oven.
• Once oven is cold take out the cake and leave to cool in the tin.
• Do not try to take it out of the tin until it is totally cold.

 

Queen Anne tea plates & Portmeirion – Crazy Daisy cake forks  – Sophie Conran’s design from 2009.

Coffee set and plates – Greenway by Hostess Tableware – design by John Russell, 1960 – 1979.

*

• Pani  translates as Madam, Lady or Mrs and is a polite form of address – it is like donna in Italian or saying Miss Mary in the Southern States of America.
• Stasia is the shortened form of the Polish name Stanisława. (The feminine form of Stanisław)
  
• St Stanisław is the patron saint  of Kraków & Poland, he was a martyr, murdered by the Polish king Bolesław II the Bold in 1079 – a story which has much in common with St Thomas à Beckett and the English king Henry II  in 1170.