Marmalade and Coconut Crumble Cake

Another super-quick cake.. although this takes 20 minutes and not 12.

I had been hearing things like "apple crumble", "raspberry crumble", "blueberry crumble", "pear crumble" and.... well you get the picture. Anyways I think I must have had something crumbled somewhere but never consciously knew what it entailed. That was until I made some raspberry crumble muffins. I never knew how easy it was to achieve such a crust. All you do is throw together some ingredients, rub them together with your fingers, pile them on top of your cake, and you're done!

So today as I was lazing around and flipping through cookbooks (my way to destress & unwind), I came across a recipe called "marmalade and coconut crumble cake". The cookbook in which it's written dates back to 1994 when I was barely four years old and perhaps that drew me even more into making this. (It also helped that we had every ingredient at home.. major plus point for lazy-me.)

This is a very fun cake to make, perhaps because it's a "melt and mix" cake... which means you melt the butter and then stir all the ingredients together with a wooden spoon.. no mixer needed. I always make a beeline for recipes that don't call for a mixer.. partly because its whisks are such a hassle to clean and also because I'd rather do without the noise pollution.

Just one question though, whenever a recipe calls for soft brown sugar it always says "firmly packed". How important is that? Because I always keep my sugars, flours, etc in airtight containers once I purchase them... and so their "firmly packed" quality is somewhat nonexistent.

Ingredients:

1 and 3/4 cups self raising flour

125g unsalted butter

3/4 cup caster sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/3 cup marmalade

1/4 cup plain yogurt

>For coconut crumble:

1/2 soft brown sugar

1/2 cup plain flour

1/2 cup desiccated coconut

90g unsalted butter

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease 20cm cake tin and line with paper. Grease paper. Sift flour into large bowl and make a well.

Melt butter and sugar in small pan over low heat until sugar dissolved and butter melted. Remove from heat. Combine eggs, marmalade, and yogurt in a small mixing bowl, whisk until combined. Add butter and egg mixtures to flour. Using a wooden spoon, stir until combined; do not overbeat. Spoon mixture into prepared tin; smooth surface. To make coconut crumble, combine sugar, flour, and coconut in a medium bowl. Add butter. Using fingertips, rub butter into mixture until well combined. Sprinkle over cake batter in tin.

Bake 40 minutes or until skewer comes out clean when inserted in centre of cake. Leave cake in tin 5 minutes before turning onto wire rack to cool.