Pomegranate & Berry Cakes

These are the other baked goodies I took to our church market stall, and these went like...well, hot cakes. :-) They're a very simple recipe, that is very effective. I don't know if it was a baking mishap on my part, but the batter was very liquidy and didn't rise at all. That worried me a little, but the compensation was that the crust became gorgeously crunchy and sticky and golden. The cake underneath was very light and the combination of the two was excellent. What really made these cakes though, was the pomegranate molasses I brushed over the top of each cake. I know pomegranate molasses is the big old foodie ingredient at the moment...and it's seriously good! My mum bought it for me at the local market, not knowing it was the fashionable ingredient of the mid 2000s, and was surprised when I became so excited about it.
All it contains is reduced pomegranates - no sugar or additives, and it's seriously sweet, but also very tangy and almost sour. It's an amazing combination - more interesting than lemon, but with the same sort of tang. And our bottle cost only $1.80! [edit: We were wrong. It cost $2.40. Shocking!] It gave these little cakes an amazing flavour and a great glossy sheen.
These were more popular than the peanut butter chocolate muffins I made, partly because of the name; anything with pomegranate in the title just sounds so very exotic, doesn't it?
Read on for the recipe:


Pomegranate & Berry Cakes

60g butter
200g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
150g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
juice and zest of 1 lemon
3 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
approx 120ml milk
1 egg
150g mixed berries (from frozen is fine)
For syrup:
2-3 tablespoons pomegranate molasses

Preheat oven to 200C.
Melt the butter and set it aside to cool. Stir together the flour, baking powder, bicarb, sugar, salt and zest. In a measuring jug, pour in the lemon juice, then enough milk to come to the 200ml mark. It will curdle, but that's ok. Then beat in the egg, molasses and melted butter. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir briefly; the batter should scarcely be combined. Fold in the berries, spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for about 25 minutes. Leave in pan for 5 minutes to cool slightly, then remove to a rack. Whilst still warm, brush with the pomegranate molasses.
Note - I found the cakes stuck fairly stubbornly to the paper cases, so next time I would spray some cooking spray in them before filling.
Makes 12.