This lovely recipe is from Tina Bester’s book, Bake. It calls for small heart-shaped
cake tins, but a plain muffin tin will do just fine.

Makes 6 small sandwich cakes
Prep 10 min Bake 60 min

200g butter
200ml castor sugar
5ml (1 tsp) vanilla essence
4 eggs, lightly beaten
200ml self-raising flour, sifted
For the passion-fruit curd
1¼ cups (310ml) sugar
100g butter
¼ cup (60ml) passion-fruit pulp
3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 Preheat the oven to 180°C and
grease six 7cm x 9cm heartshaped
cake tins.
2 Cream the butter and castor sugar
until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla.
3 Gradually add the eggs to the
butter mixture, while beating. Add
the flour and mix through.
4 Spoon the mixture into the
prepared tins and bake for about
20 minutes until a testing needle
comes out clean and the cakes are
golden brown. Turn out and leave
to cool on a wire rack.
5 For the passion-fruit curd,
mix together the sugar, butter,
passion-fruit pulp and eggs
in the top of a double boiler
and heat, stirring, until all the
ingredients have melted and
combined.
6 Allow the mixture to cook until it
thickens, stirring occasionally. (It
takes about 45 minutes to make.)
7 Slice each cake open and
spread with the passion-fruit
curd. Dust with icing sugar and
indulge.