And second attempt...

Okay, I think this will be the one. Had another go at the cake using Nigella's Spruced Up Vanilla Cake recipe from Nigella Christmas. Her recipe suits a 2.5 litre Bundt tin (hers is little fir trees standing in a circle) and it seems to fit this tin too. There were some small patches of uncooked flour on the outside of the cake (you can see that it looks a little patchy in places) so I'm going to use less flour when flouring the tin next time and also invest in some spray oil which might give a more even and lighter coating than brushing round with vegetable oil.

Still need to work out the decoration...but have tonight roughed out some flags and now need to print some Jolly Rogers to go on them - no, I'm not confident enough in my artistic abilities to draw them by hand!

By the way - my favourite instruction in this recipe is number 5. Nigella, I rely on you to be more confident than that!!!

225g soft butter
300g caster sugar
6 eggs
350g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250ml (250g) plain fat-free yoghurt (I must confess that I didn't use fat free yoghurt - we regularly make our own yogurt with full fat UHT milk and I just used a cup of that. Will buy some fat free for the real thing)
4 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 x 15ml tbspn icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4 and put a baking sheet in at the same time. Butter or oil your tin very very thoroughly (Nigella uses oil-sodden kitchen paper - I brushed oil round and then floured the tin also).

2. Put all the ingredients except the icing sugar into a food processor and blitz together.

3. Pour or spoon the mixture into the greased tin and spread about evenly.

4. Place the tin on the preheated baking sheet in the oven and cook for 45-60 minutes until well risen and golden. After 45 minutes push a skewer into the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is cooked (mine was not - took another 5 minutes to cook through). Let it sit out of the oven for 15 minutes.

5. Gently pull away the edges of the cake from the tin with your fingers, then turn out the cake, hoping for the best (!).

6. Once cool, dust with the icing sugar pushed through a small sieve - representing snowfall on the Alps with this particular tin.