Eccles Cake

Ingredients

250 g pack butter , softened, plus extra for greasing
250 g soft light brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs
100 g plain flour
250 self-raising flour
100 buttermilk
2 eating apples , peeled, cored and diced to about 1cm pieces
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
zest 1 lemon
2 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp soft light brown sugar
85 g currants
85 g raisins
50 g mixed peel
85 g icing sugar , sifted
zest and juice 1 lemon
1 few sugar cubes , roughly crushed

Instructions

Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Grease and line a deep 20cm cake tin with baking parchment. Mix together the filling ingredients and set aside.
Put butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until pale. Beat in the eggs, then fold in the flours, buttermilk and apples. Spoon half the mixture into the tin. Scatter over filling, leaving a 2.5cm clear border all around the edge. Spoon remaining mixture on top, starting by dolloping round the edges, then moving into the middle. Bake for 1 hr 25 mins or until a skewer poked in comes out clean. Cool in the tin.
Mix the icing sugar with enough lemon juice to make a runny-ish icing. Remove cake from the tin, drizzle over the icing, then scatter with crushed sugar cubes and lemon zest.