Strawberry and custard cake

You will need: Large mixing bowl, wooden spoon, scales, 23cm square cake tin or round if you prefer, cooling rack.

Ingredients:

250g unsalted butter, softened but not melted
2 tsp vanilla essence
440g castor sugar
4 medium-sized eggs
300g self raising flour
40g custard powder (magic ingredient)
250 ml full-fat milk

For the topping:

Half pint of cold made-up custard (make the day before and leave overnight in the fridge)
Punnet of strawberries

Method:

Margarine your tin and then dust with flour to stop it sticking, cut out a piece of greaseproof paper and line the bottom of the tin, margarine over the paper and flour again.

Mix all the cake ingredients together in your bowl with your wooden spoon.

When all nicely mixed and you can see it is smooth, pour it into your tin, scrape every morsel out of your bowl.

Bake in a moderate oven (160/325/gas 3) for approximately 1 hr 15 minutes.

If it has a brownish crust on top when baked don’t worry. (It is useful to have a knitting needle for poking into the middle of your cake to see if it is cooked; any wet on the needle, leave your cake in for a little longer).

Turn carefully on to a wire rack to cool. When cooled, dust with icing sugar, or if you want something a bit more glamorous, make a strawberry and custard cake.

Make up half a pint of custard but use double the amount of custard powder so it is thick custard. Leave it to cool overnight in the fridge.

Next day beat it a little to soften it and make it creamy then put on top of your cake and decorate with fresh strawberries.

Yorkshire sweet strawberries are in season now.

• Anita Tasker runs Pattacakes, the tea-room, bakery and patisserie at Main Street, Welburn, near Castle Howard.