Seeing as this month’s kit is ‘Once upon a story’, I thought I would share the story behind this recipe today.

I only tried this out yesterday and it’s just so good I had to jiggle things around on the blog schedule and share with you immediately. Yes, it’s really that good!! Don’t let the name scare you away.

So the story is, I have a group of girlfriends that I’ve met through Florida trip planning. We love Florida and we love cooking/baking. We have a whatsapp group where we chat each day and discuss Florida, shopping and share recipe ideas. We all love The Pioneer Woman too. The TV programme is so much fun. Good hearty family cooking which is throw together style.

So my friend Cheryl recently mentioned Dump Cakes. It really is a case of dump it all in. I had never heard of this before, but we’ve all been making these cakes these past few days. I made mine last night. I have to confess, I could not follow the actual recipe as I could not bring myself to buy a cake mix. It really is a case of ..tinned fruit…dry cake mix….butter on the top and in the oven!! As easy as that. But I love to bake and I love homemade, so this really wasn’t me. So I’ve adapted this concept and come up with something this is still very much a ‘dump cake’ but more of a homemade version. Or as my sweet friend Cheryl called it last night ‘Posh Dump Cake’. So this is what it shall be known as from now on.

To start I took a pie dish and spread some butter around to coat the dish. I had a large punnet of blueberries that really needed using up, so these were perfect.

You really can use any fruit though. Tinned fruit works great I hear. Also ideal if you need to throw something together last minute as we all have tinned fruit of some sorts in the cupboard.

A lot of the recipes that I’ve been reading used tinned pie mix as the base, so I thought I’d add some cherry preserve.

I always keep a jar of this Morello Cherry preserve and use it in muffins or when I make Black Forest Cupcakes. I had about 1/4 of the jar left so I spooned it all in and mixed around so that all the berries were coated.

In a separate bowl I mixed my dry ingredients which replaces the ready cake mix.

I mixed 1 1/4 cups plain flour, 1 cup caster sugar, 1 heaped tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt. Mix well and then spoon over the top of the blueberry mixture.

I melted 4oz butter (1 stick) and poured over the top and gave the dish a side to side shake which released some of the blueberries to the top.

I popped it in the oven on 180c (375f) for about 45mins. Until it looked like this.

I love how the jam has bubbled up around the edges. We ate it whilst it was still hot. The others had hot custard. I did think about the home made ice cream that needs using up but I decided to try it without for the first time.

OMG!! I think this is possibly the best dessert we’ve ever eaten. We all agreed!! I’m so glad that I had it without anything else. The topping is quite crispy, but so buttery. Like you get that initial crisp and then it’s melt in your mouth good. Then teamed with the jammy fruit. Oh wow, it’s something else. It may not be the prettiest of desserts, but it really does make up for that in every other way. I would class it as a combination of crumble/cobbler. I don’t think I’ll ever make another crumble though. This is by far more superior.

I urge you to try it. If you type ‘dump cake’ in to google or Pinterest you will see so many variations and you can then throw together what suits you best. That’s what I love about this dessert, it’s so adaptable and so fast, completely faff free and yet tastes utterly divine.

Let me know when you’ve tried it!!

Lisa x

ps….thank you to my ladies for introducing me to the world of dump cakes xx