Recipe: Series 2, 2 of 7 - Fruit Cake
Category RecipiesFirstly apologies for this not getting posted yesterday, drinks with friends and then home for lots of CSI lovliness got in the way!
Right, Fruit Cake. This is a really rich, no holds barred type of fruit cake. Suitable for weddings, Christmas (our your chosen festival that tends to involve fruit cake) or just for a hubby with a PASSION for fruit cake. It is not cheap to make, nor is it a quick recipe, but it is worth it and most of the'fancy' ingredients like black treacle, mixed spice, glace cherries and even chopped peel will last for several years in your storecupboard and make numerous cakes per lot bought.
Acknowledgement for it goes to my School cooking teacher, Mrs Johnson.
Ingredients:
12oz butter
12oz brown sugar
6 eggs
1 & 1/2 lbs of dried fruit
3oz flaked almonds
3oz ground almonds
3oz chopped glace cherries, washed
12 oz plain flour
3tablespoons mixed spice
3 tablespoons black treacle
3oz chopped peel
granted rind and juice of 1/2 orange and 1/2 lemon
Heat the oven to 100C.
Take a BIG bowl (seriously the biggest you have as everything ends up in this bowl and needs mixing) and beat sugar and butter with an electric whisk until light and fluffy. Work in the eggs one at a time.
Weigh out the dried fruit, flaked almonds, ground almonds, mixed spice, chooped peel. Mix it all together and separate it into two halves in bowls. Do the same with the flour. (This just helps in the mixing stage. There is so much to mix into the sugar/butter/egg mixture that doing it in two halves is a LOT easier than all in a oner.)
Put one half of the flour and one half of the fruit mixture into the butter/sugar/eggs mixture and mix well with a wooden spoon. Repeat with the other half. Then mix in all the remaining ingredients. Make sure that everything is really well mixed - flour and fruit have a tendancy not to mix unless pushed a little.
Put the whole into a cake tin with a removable base. The tin needs to at least 8" in diameter to take this quantity. Now for the part where havning two pairs of hands is really useful: Wrap a few, folded sheets of newspaper round the outside of the tin, covering all sides and secure it with string (non of your modern plastic string either as this is likely to melt and leave a nasty smell and mess in your oven!) This stops the sides of the cake from drying out during cooking. Make a small dip-like impression in the top of your cake mixture, ensuring that all the rest is level. The easiest way to get it level is to lift the tin and bang it on the worksurface a few times, this will also remove any miscreant air bubbles.
Put the tin in the oven for 3-4 hours. You will need to test whether it is cooked by putting a skewer into the middle and seeing if it comes out clean. Once cooked allow it to cool for a few minutes, then unwrap the newspaper and remove the cake from the tin. Allow to cool on a wire rack.
Consume with long-awaited plesasure and lashings of tea in front of a roaring fire.
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Comments
Posted by At 03:11:53 On 26/07/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by bob At 20:34:18 On 22/05/2007 | - Website - |