Cardamom milk traybake
This is my boy’s absolute favourite cake – he would have it every day if I made it every day. It’s a light sponge, doused in sweet fragrant milk, chilled, and then topped with simple whipped cream.
Ingredients
For the cake
- 8 medium eggs
- 250g/9oz caster sugar
- 250g/9oz plain flour
- 1 lemon, zest only
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp almond extract oil, for greasing
For the sweet milk
- 397g tin condensed milk
- 4 cardamom pods
- 100ml/3½oz full-fat milk
For the top
- 600ml/20fl oz double cream
- 1 tbsp icing sugar
- chopped pistachios (optional, see Recipe Tips)
Method
Preheat the oven to 170C/150C Fan/Gas 3½. Line and grease the base and sides of a 23x33cm/9x13in brownie tin.
Put the eggs in a mixing bowl with the caster sugar. Whisk on a high speed using a hand-held mixer until the mixture triples in size, is light in colour and very fluffy. When the whisks are removed, the trail of the mixture should just sit on top. This can take up to 10 minutes.
Sprinkle in the flour and fold through using a metal spoon. Add the lemon zest, vanilla and almond extracts and keep folding until you have no pockets of flour. Pour the mixture into the tin, carefully level off and bake for 35 minutes.
Take out of the oven and leave to cool in the tin.
To make the sweet milk, pour the tin of condensed milk into a jug. Crush the cardamom pods, remove the husks and crush the little black seeds to a fine powder in a pestle and mortar. Add to the condensed milk along with the milk and mix well.
Pour the milk mixture all over the still-warm cake and allow to soak through, then pop into the fridge to chill completely. Whip up the cream with the icing sugar until you have soft peaks. Take the cake out of the tin and layer on the cream (see the recipe tips for decoration ideas). Cut into squares and serve.
Recipe Tips
It's perfect as it is, but if you'd like to make your traybake extra special you can sprinkle with almonds, desiccated coconut, rose petals blended with freeze dried raspberries, granulated sugar or chopped pistachios.