This recipe is brilliant – very versatile and quick to make. It also contains relatively little fat and not too much sugar but still satisfies my cake cravings perfectly. I often half the ingredients and use a small cake tin, because a big cake is often too much for the two of us. Add fruit, dry or fresh, chocolate chips, nuts – whatever takes your fancy. Substitute the rum with a fruit liqueur or juice. Ice it, or don’t. Use a round or a loaf tin. This is one of those cakes that will become your go to cake. The one you’ll be able to whip up at short notice. The one nobody will notice being basically the same cake over and over again because you’ll make it differently every time with whatever is at hand.

Today I’ve gone with a Caribbean theme: pineapple, mango, coconut and spiced rum.

And here are the ingredients:

• 4 medium eggs
• 175 g caster sugar
• 2 packets (or 2 tablespoons) of vanilla sugar
• 100g soft unsalted butter
• 250g quark
• a couple of shots of rum (I used spiced Kraken rum)
• a few drops of vanilla aroma
• 300g flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 50g desiccated coconut
• 4 tablespoons of pineapple chunks (tinned)
• 2 tablespoons of diced mango (tinned)

Pre-heat the oven to 160C (fan) or 180C.

Grease your cake tin.

Beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla sugar until creamy.

Add the soft butter, the quark, the rum and vanilla aroma and fold into the egg/sugar mixture.

Mix the flour and baking powder and add whilst stirring continuously.

Fill the cake mixture into the baking tin. Put the pineapple, mango and coconut on top and use a fork to mix it in.

Pop it into the oven and bake for 60 minutes. Use a wooden toothpick to check if the cake is done (if nothing sticks to it, it’s good otherwise put it back in the oven for a few minutes).

Leave to cool.

Enjoy!