Small, thin, sponge cakes with sultanas and peel, decorated on top with dried fruit or sugar plums. Associated with the 'water cure' at Malvern Spa and known from advertisements from the 1850's to 1940's, many by Need's Confectioners of Malvern. Malvern Cakes appear repeatedly in literature of the 19th Century, and astonishingly frequently in the works of the, hugely popular, Worcester novelist Ellen Wood.


Illustrated Malvern Advertiser, Visitors' List, and General Weekly Newspaper
Saturday 5 July 1856


Original Receipt from 'Saleable Shop Goods for Counter-Tray and Window:' by Frederick T Vine (Vine 1907)

No. 87.- Malvern Cakes.

½ lb. butter.   1 lb. sugar.
1 ½ lbs soda flour (No. 1).    1 lb. plain flour,
¾ lb. sultanas.    ¼ lb. peel.
6 eggs.    Milk.

Mode. - Sieve the flours together upon the board, weigh the sultanas, and shred up the peel rather fine; cream up the butter and sugar; add in the eggs. When well beaten, mix in the flour and fruit with milk to cakebatter consistency; then have ready some large shallow cake rings, a little smaller than muffin hoops, say 3 ins. in diameter, and put about 3 ozs. of the batter into each; spread it out thin with a palette knife, and sprinkle a few sugar plums upon the top. Bake in a warm oven; they will not require much baking. When done, loosen them from the tin with a palette knife, and sell at 1d. each.