Nectarine & blueberry cake with vanilla cream

Recipe and food styling: Jan-Marie Harford-Brown


This recipe can be made with other seasonal fruit combinations such as apricot and blackberry, cherry and orange zest or my all time favourite banana and passion fruit syrup.

2 large Nectarines
100g fresh Blueberries
230g Butter, softened
337g Sugar
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
4 Eggs
2 tblsp Lemon Zest
345g Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
pinch of Salt
4 tblsp Icing Sugar
200ml Creme Fraiche
1 Vanilla Bean


1 Preheat the oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 4. Grease and line the base and sides of an 8 inch round cake tin with baking parchment.
2 Halve each of the nectarines and slice into wedges. Set aside along with the blueberries.
3 Beat together the butter, vanilla and sugar until pale and creamy. Then add eggs, beating in one at a time.
4 Fold in the flour, baking powder, lemon zest and salt (This will make a super thick batter). Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and level the top with a spoon.
5 Place the Nectarine wedges randomly over the top of the cake batter, then scatter over berries and gently press the fruit into the batter. Dust with 2 tblsp of icing sugar.
6 Bake in the preheated oven for 1 ¼ hours, or until a tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
7 To make Vanilla Cream. Mix creme fraiche, 1 tblsp of icing sugar and vanilla bean seeds until combined.
8 Once the cake is cooled, remove from the tin and dust lightly with more icing sugar. Serve a slice of the cake with a dollop of the vanilla cream.