As the name suggests, this Cut and Come Again Cake is for, well, cutting and coming back again for another greedy guts slice!
This is a recipe from Keighley’s own ‘Mike the Baker’, the award-winning baker in the town and regular bakery contributor to the local ‘Keighley News‘. I’ll let him tell you all about this recipe in his own inimitable words.
“I hope you’ll indulge me in a little story before I get to this week’s recipe. t’s a story of how recipes came to be and why a recipe can mean so much more than any other, a recipe that can remind you of a place or connect you to people from the past or those you haven’t seen in a long time.
Cut And Come Again Cake has been made for many a year within our rugged borders of Yorkshire. This cake is a through-and-through Yorkshire cake which will always have you coming back for more because its that good!
How could you not love a cake called Cut and Come Again? It’s deliciously moist and fruity and begs you to cut another slice, cut another slice I say… at risk of sounding like Fred Elliot the butcher from Corrie.
I presume years ago if you called at your grandparents’, which we used to do at the weekends, they would offer you a cup of tea and add ‘’would you like a slice of cake I’ve just baked?”.
When did you last hear those magical words? Unfortunately, nowadays you visit the supermarket and buy pre-packed cakes.
I
It’s no wonder most people can’t be bothered to get the mixing bowl out and bake a cake, which is a real shame, because soon the skill of cake making might be lost through the generations. No wonder cake stalls at local fetes are the first to sell out.
In Yorkshire it’s a tradition to eat our fruit cakes with Wensleydale cheese to balance out the sweetness, and this is not a modern fad but a staple bound by heritage. Come Christmas Day, ask any Northerner about this natural pairing.
The cheese, I guess, helps offset the dryness often found in a Yorkshire fruited Christmas cake, which often lacks the alcohol that’s needed to feed the cake.
A true Yorkshire man, goes the saying, is a bit like a Scotsman with all generosity squeezed out of him!
When I was growing up, Monday was always baking day and Friday ‘the big shop’. You could always tell what day of the week it was by what we were having for tea, but every day we would eat well. Sounds like a bygone Idyll doesn’t it? But we always had fun, and felt safe leaving the back door unlocked when popping down to the corner shop.
We were allowed to mess around on the roads with our bikes, and played footy and cops and robbers until it got dark.
Enough of this reminiscing, I think I need to cut another slice before its all gone! “
Ingredients
- 340g/12oz self-raising flour, sifted
- 1 teaspoon mixed spice
- Half a teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 175g/6oz butter, cold from the fridge
- 110g/4oz soft brown sugar
- 225g/8oz mixed dried fruits, to include half cherries
- 3 eggs, lightly beaten
- 170 ml ( 12 tablespoons ) milk
Method
1. Line and grease and 8 inch/21cm cake tin with parchment baking paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, mix spice and nutmeg and mix them together well.
3. Rub in the cold butter so it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
4. Add the sugar and dried fruits and mix well until all the fruits have been covered by the mixture.
5. Add the beaten eggs and milk and stir well with a wooden spoon, so everything is combined and picked up from the bottom of the mixing bowl.
6. Spoon the cake mixture into the prepared cake tin and level the top of the cake with a spatula.
7. Bake your cake in the middle of the pre-heated oven 180 c/Gas Mark 4 (fan oven 160c) for around one hour, until golden brown in colour and a skewer comes out cleanly.
8. Once baked, allow the cake to stand in the tin for five minutes, before transferring onto a cooling wire.
9. Best eaten with a wedge of Wensleydale cheese and a cup of Yorkshire tea.
30 Responses to Cut & Come Again Cake.
Thank you so much for this recipe. It is a cake that my grandmother and mother made often when we were younger and I’d never been able to find the recipe anywhere. Stands to reason it is just something that just moved south when my grandparents did during the war years. And yes, we eat fruit cake with cheese too which raised many an eyebrow down here in Kent years back. Planning a trip north this year, if the pandemic allows, to the very area where ‘Mike the Baker’ sells his wares; will have to pop in to investigate.
Wow Thereza same here it’s a family recipe from way back and I’d lost it too!!Mine is baking right now as I live in New Zealand so we’re 11 hours ahead of you!! I can’t wait to try it and feel my childhood memories come flooding back. Thank you chef for the recipe ??
I to have searched for this recipe, I did have a written copy but lost it when my mother-in-law passed. Shall be making it in the new year.x
Hi there seems to be a lot of recipes for cut and come again, but not the one I had, lost it when moving house. I remember it had tea bags butter and I think syrup. I keep trying to find it. I remember to that you boiled it in a pan. Keep looking.
This is just my cup of tea!! Can’t wait to try it. Not sure how long it will last, but will try. Also picked up the Pease pudding and also your sly cake recipe, which is a little different from the one I did some years ago, using lard instead of butter. Sadly I can’t find it at the moment, as I have squirreled it somewhere amongst my accumulated recipes set aside over 50 plus years of baking since my school days. One of the few good things to come out of the current situation is a lot more baking has been going on in the last few months. Hope that will encourage more home baking for the future. Happy cooking.
We eat our cake with cheese. Many of my Australian friends do not understand this. I will keep this recipe and make it for my Yorkshire born mother. Thank you.
I am an experienced baker so tried his recipe for my partner who is Yorkshire born and bred. Sadly, it turned out to be dry and the crust quite hard made it on Friday and on Sunday we had to have it with custard as it was so dry. Did I do something wrong? Used good ingredients, followed instructions to the letter. Can anyone explain why it was so dry?
Hi Chris. It sounds like the dryness is due to over baking the cake. Did you bake the cake in the middle of the oven? All my recipes get test baked and I was very happy with the results of this cut & come again recipe when I sampled it. Regards Baker Mike
Baker Mike also asked me to add that the dryness is also possibly due to small eggs being used and the batter being a little stiffer than normal?
Is it possible that you have a fan assisted oven and that Baker Mike’s 180 C is for a conventional oven? If so you were a good 15 C too hot. Just a possible…
Yes I made a similar cake & it turned out the same as you explain. I think it was because we rubbed the butter into the flour instead of beating the butter & sugar that’s what I put it down to. We live in New Zealand & my mother used to make this cake but I don’t remember what she did. I’m going to make the same cake but cream the butter and sugar & see how it turns out.
My Mum used to make this cake every weekend and I just recently found her recipe. Mum always used the rub-in method rather than creaming butter and sugar, she said you change the texture of your cake if you use creaming method.
Thank you very much for this recipe. My Mum used to make it, and I never found her recipe.
Will try it.
My mother-in-law use to make this cake and everyone loved it, I now make it for my husband her son Paul no way can you buy a cake that tastes like this it’s just so lovely making another tomorrow we can’t wait thanks for recipe X🙂🥰
I have made this cake with excellent results – and will definitely make this again.
I was a little apprehensive about comments saying the cake was dry. I was pondering whether to use mls as my measure or tablespoons, but the recipe didn’t say how many tablespoons? I decided to go with mls and added 170ml of milk and it was just fine, although some bakers may have only added 1 tablespoon of milk, resulting in a dry cake? Just a thought?
“Cut and come again cakes” always have the butter rubbed in not creamed that is a different type of cake which is similar to a Dundee or Christmas cake .
I had a great cut and come again cake recipe which disappeared during a move house. Cannot wait to try this one where hubby will take to the shoot and eat with a slice of cheese.
New gamekeeper whose partner has introduced it. Lovely
Great recipe.
A shame that ‘Yorkshire’ has to be repeated endlessly throughout the piece, though, or is this an invitation to parody? And then over and over again in the comments. I was always taught that advertising your own importance is a sure sign of a chip on the shoulder. How ver ‘Yorkshire’.
Aye, Yorkshire chips are best in t’ world, too. Here’s a recipe to go with them https://traditional-yorkshire-recipes.info/mushy-peas/
Only 3 mentions which is hardly endless – I take it you are not from Yorkshire?
The place where I got my original recipe from was The Yorkshire WI cookbook which my mum bought in the 1960s. Sorry (not really) to mention the county again.
What does 170ml/tablespoon mean?
I just had to guess the milk. I used a lot less than 170ml. If id used it all, the batter would have been very runny.
It’s still in the oven, so I don’t know how it will turn out.
Mike the Baker’s recipe shows 12 tablespoons of milk used.
I read elsewhere that “cut and come again” means it gets softer/stickier the longer it is kept in the tin, like parkin. You cut or score it after baking and then “come again” to eat it a few days later.
Maybe that could explain why the cake when first baked is a bit dry?
I found this mentioned in a very interesting book on parkin, which is available free of charge in pdf form: http://www.fencott.com/FencottBooks/ParkinFinalPDF1605.pdf
Thanks very much for this link, Melissa; very interesting. I have found the same phenomenon with cakes kept in tins, but have never understood why this should be; maybe the condensation inside a tin is a factor? Any biologists out there with an answer?
Surely if the cake is completely cold before going into the tin there shouldn’t be any condensation.
I am from Canada and just read a wonderful novel called Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame, in which a British senior goes on a television baking show. The author describes the protagonist baking a number of old-fashioned recipes and described this cake. As a fan of fruitcake, I Googled for a recipe and found you. I’ve also had to Google British Mixed Spice so I have the right ingredients. Excited to bake it this week. And thanks for the suggestion to store it in a tin for a few days.
I tried this recipe and found the mix way too sloppy. Cake was bland. I will not be making it again.
First ate this cake when my mother in law made it so so good I’m going to make it for my husband for valentines day
First cake we made in domestic science class. We were all so proud of ourselves.Have not made it in many years .Still have the original recipe ,going to make it again
I have this receipe too from my domestic science class in school in the early 60’s. My mother always made it too but in those days we could.n’t afford pure butter so margarine was used. We always loved it in or house so im sure it made no difference. We also used white sugar.