Spiced raisin bunt cake.

Hi! I spent all of this Saturday morning baking ice cream cone cakes and cake pops for another party so after all that, practicing with biscuit icings, baking bread and making a roast dinner I really didn't plan to bake anything else this weekend but on Sunday night and with few ingredients I found I couldn't help myself.
So I raided the cupboards and found some leftover raisins a quarter a pack of muscovado sugar, got together some spices and threw it all in with some basic ingredients. And it turned out really nice, Boyfriend certainly enjoyed eating about half the cake hehehe. The spices and raisins made it warming and perfect for this time of year, I ate my piece warm and think it would be really nice with custard too.
It's a really easy one so I'd definitely recommend giving this a go. 
Here it is:

And here's how it's made: (note I'm making an educated guess as to how much spices i used as I didn't measure but just kept tasting the batter and adding more depending on my taste, I suggest you do the same)

200g Self raising flour
200g Butter, softened
100g Caster Sugar
100g Dark Muscovado Sugar
1 tsp Baking Powder
4 eggs
2 handfuls of raisins (ok I know this isn't a precise measure however you can add as little or as many as you like)
1 tbsp Cinnamon 
1 tbsp Mixed spice
1/2 tbsp Ginger

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees C 
Put the butter, flour and baking powder into a bowl and rub together with your fingertips until you get a sandy consistency then add the sugars and eggs and beat with an electric whisk until you have a smooth batter.
Add the raisins  and spices and stir until evenly distributed within the batter (At this point I then tasted the batter and added a bit more spice depending on taste)
Grease a bunt cake tin (or just an ordinary cake or loaf tin if you prefer) and pour in the batter.
Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and turn onto a wire rack to cool.

And there you go! really easy and just a few ingredients. As I said I think it's best warm and would be really yummy served with custard. I also think If you have more ingredients you could be really creative with this, throwing in all sorts of dried fruit, orange zest, liqueurs etc but I like it just how it is, simple and tasty.

Before I go I'll show you my attempts at biscuit icing I mentioned. I've been practicing with flooding icing and once I've gotten better I'll make sure I make a batch and blog about it but for now here's my first attempt.

  Yes that is my fingerprint at the bottom having squished the icing before it set!

Also here's the party cakes I mentioned I make this weekend. There were cake pops

As well as ice cream cone cakes and as it was Halloween I made some with orange icing and topped each one with a spider, bat or pumpkin shaped jelly sweet.

So that was my weekend, It's boyfriends birthday this week too so I 'll have to me making something for that too or he'll feel left out hehehe.

So bye for now, get baking and let me know what you make.
Cupcake Kris