Melt the chocolate, which should be broken into small pieces, with the Butter and water by placing it all in a bowl over a pan of very hot water (make sure the bowl doesn't touch the hot/boiling water in the pan below or it will go lumpy!) Leave for about 10 minutes, beat and stir until smooth.

Tunis cakes also originally had a small apple, orange and banana made of marizpan in the center of the decoration instead of the circle of buttercream. Christmas Fun and Activities A quarter-pound of dates, figs, and prunes, half-a-pound of flour, three ounces Demerara sugar, three ounces of butter, one ounce of shelled walnuts, one level teaspoonful of mixed spice, two eggs, half-a-teaspoonful of bi-carbonate of soda, three ounces golden syrup, milk. Bake at 170C (please note that if using a Fan Oven reduce temperature to between 140C and 150C) for one-and-a-half hours until golden in color and a skewer test comes out clean. Pour the cooked chocolate over the top of the cake; smoothing it very carefully (don't rush this) and leave to set for at least 12 hours.

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Minimum life based on 'use-by' date of product. Average life based on last week's deliveries. Life guarantee shown based on delivery tomorrow with the Life guarantee starting the following day. The origins of the cake are Edwardian. Scottish bakery Macfarlane Langs produced commercial Tunis Cakes in the 1930s, and when they merged with McVitie & Price in 1948 to form a company called United Biscuits (which still owns the McVitie’s brand) the recipe passed to the new company. McVitie’s produced a Tunis cake until the mid 1980s. Members of my family can remember when they stopped producing these at the start of the second wold war and how pleased they were to see one again after the war.

I fancied a little more aroma to my cake so subbed the lemon for orange zest, and also added ground cinnamon to the mix. I have no interest in marzipan flowers so kept the citrus theme going by decorating with crystallised peel. Add the Eggs individually and with each Egg add one tablespoon of each kind of Flour, and beat well. Mode, — Sieve the baking-powder well with the flour; break the volatile down in a mortar with a little milk; cream up the butter and sugar, adding the volatile and eggs in the usual manner. Then mix in the flour with milk to a nice free cake-batter consistency; grease a clean flat tin, and lay the batter out in gieces weighing about 2 1/2 ozs. each; wash them carefully over with egg, brush-ing them up to the centre, and bake in a warm oven. Sell at 1d. each. If you are in Norfolk or Suffolk and able to get hold of a Tunis Cake from Wendy’s House Bakery then I can highly recommend it. The cake itself was light and moist and the chocolate topping was lovely and rich without being too sweet. I’m not sure my photo’s do it justice but it looked really lovely and my family and visitors really enjoyed it this afternoon.If you want to be extra fancy, you can make half of the buttercream pink using red food coloring and have the inner circle yellow and the outer circle pink! To make the buttercream, mix together the icing/powdered sugar, butter, orange juice and yellow food Coloring until smooth. Cool cake for a minimum of 10 minutes before removing it from the tin and cool completely for a minimum of 10 hours. Chocolate Topping Start your day with a croissant, and enjoy the flaky, buttery pastry as it falls into your mouth, and down your shirt. Then, in the afternoon, revel in the spongy goodness of a madeira cake, for a day’s worth of sweet enjoyment.