Who wants cake?! How about a Quick Cake?

It's true, this is a quick cake. How quick? How about less than 10 minutes to prepare and and 12-15 minutes to cook? Quick enough? It's better than one of those stupid microwave mug cakes, I promise you!

I got this recipe from a friend whose son has an egg allergy. My daughter had an egg allergy, too so it was a great share. Luckily my daughter has outgrown her allergy and is now perfectly fine with eggs but we still make this cake because it's quick, it's delicious and we can muck about and change the flavours to whatever we want.

Using the basic batter recipe, I'll add different flavourings or fruit to make different cakes. This cake comes out thick, dense and somewhat sticky. It's cut into bars and tastes amazing with coffee, tea or just as an on-the-go snack.

Here's the recipe:

1 400g tin of condensed milk. You can use the low fat, full fat, whatever.
1 cup of self rising flour
1tsp vanilla extract

That's the basic batter. No honestly, that's it. Now the flavour side is up to you but this cake has:

1tsp ground cinnamon
1/4tsp of ground clove
1/4tsp ground nutmeg
1generous handful of chopped dates

Preheat oven to 170C/300F.

Put all dry ingredients in a bowl and give a quick stir then pour in the tin of condensed milk and add liquid flavourings (or zest) into the batter and mix well. It will be very thick and while mixing you'll think "This is never going to turn into a batter" and then suddenly it does. It'll be like frosting, and since there's no egg, resist the urge to eat the batter. So tempting...

Pour the batter into a small, greased slice pan/brownie pan  (mine gets sticky in the middle so I criss-cross baking paper to make it easier to lift out) and push it about into the corners. Add in your fruit and just poke it down. Or do the classic thing and add fruit to the batter before pouring. I prefer the fruit on the top and not sunk to the bottom, that's my personal preference but you make yours any way you want.

Bake in the oven on centre rack for 12-15 minutes or until the top is golden and shiny. The middle will give a gentle spring back. It's not a big riser, and is more like a cake bar.

I've used fresh blueberries with orange zest, cubed apple with cinnamon, dates, banana and raisin. so many options, just let your imagination go. Cardamom works nice, too. Aniseed. Honestly you can go giddy with options.

This one was made for lunchbox snacks. The kids will wake up to the smell of cake and hopefully be in a good mood. This is my breakfast cake and I'm brewing coffee now...