Tomato Soup Cake

Student life and life during the war have one thing in common- the cupboards are always empty. This cake was originally made during the war as it lasts a lot longer than your average sponge cake, it comes somewhere between a carrot cake and a fruit cake - I think it gets better with age. 'Tomato Soup Cake' perhaps does not sound the most appetizing, however I discovered that a tin of tomato soup in this cake really does work - I enjoyed making my friends guess what the secret ingredient was! Originally I spotted the recipe on Food52, however after discovering that my student store cupboard ingredients were not quite up to providing all the spices in their recipe, I simplified it to make it more student friendly. I have since made the cake again with all the spices, both versions were equally delicious, so delicious that my dog tried to have a slice while I was photographing it! 

You will need...

250g plain flour

170g caster sugar 

4 teaspoons of baking powder

2 teaspoons of cinnamon 

3/4 of a tin of tomato soup

2 large eggs 

A mug full of raisins 

For the icing...

100g of cream cheese

200g icing sugar 

You will need to...

-Preheat the oven to 180C and grease two 8 inch cake tins.

-Mix together all ingredients apart from the raisins, this will make a smooth pink batter. 

-Fold in the raisins, then pour the batter into the cake tins.

- Bake for 35-40 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.

- In the meantime, mix the cream cheese and icing sugar together in a mixing bowl, keep adding the icing sugar until you get smooth icing with a thick consistency- if you don't add enough icing sugar the icing will drip off the cake and look messy.

- Leave to cool on a wire rack before icing.

Enjoy Z! x