Madeira Cake, Lemon & Blueberry Trifles

30 minutes prep, 1 hour, 10 minutes cook

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the Madeira loaf:

175g Stork with butter, or similar

175g golden caster sugar

3 large eggs

Zest from one unwaxed lemon

Few drops of vanilla extract

200g self-raising flour

50g ground almonds

A jar of lemon curd

200g fresh blueberries

Almond slivers

Method

For the Madeira loaf, heat the oven to 170ºC/Fan 150ºC/Gas 3. Butter and line the base of a 900g loaf tin with greaseproof paper. Beat together the sugar and butter with an electric whisk or beater until light, creamy and fully combined. Increase the speed and add the eggs one at a time.

Add the vanilla extract and lemon zest, and beat in the flour and ground almonds until fully incorporated, and you have thick batter. It should fall off a wooden spoon, so add a splash of milk and combine further, if it needs loosening up a bit.

Tip the batter into the prepared tin and smooth over. Bake for around 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean, and there's a good colour to the crust.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool for around 15 minutes, then remove from the tin, peel away the paper, and allow it to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the trifle, empty the quark into a large mixing bowl, and add 6 teaspoons of lemon curd. Beat with a wooden spoon so it's fully combined.

Cut a slice of Madeira cake, then roughly cut into big cubes. Line the bottom of each of your individual trifle glasses with some cubes. Then for each glass, heat 2 tsps of lemon curd in the microwave for no more than 10 seconds to loosen it up, and pour over this sponge layer.

Take half of the quark and lemon curd mixture, and split between each of the four glasses, then add a layer of fresh blueberries.

Take more cake cubes, and add another layer to each glass. Then repeat heating 2 tsp of lemon curd for each, and pour over the cake cubes.

Finally, finish with the rest of the lemon curd and quark mixture split across the four glasses. Decorate with a ring of blueberries around the edge of the glass, and a sprinkling of almond slivers. You'll have over half the Madeira cake left over, which can be used to make more trifles, or just for eating!