Finding A Way To Bake

It seems like ages ago that I broke my food processor. I was about to make some biscuits and I put the butter into the processor bowl and switched it on. I'd forgotten that the butter had only just come out of a very cold fridge and while the motor could cope with the butter's consistency the utensil couldn't and snapped right off.

Being sans processor didn't stop me from baking a wonderfully moist fruit cake on Friday afternoon however. I simply needed to find a way to blend all of the ingredients that I would usually pop into the mixer. So I heated them up!

Here is my recipe for a wonderfully simple, traditional fruit cake. It's perfect with your afternoon cup of tea and wonderful with a big blob of strawberry jam!

Cherry's Classically Simple Fruit Cake

Put 4oz of butter, 6 oz of caster (superfine) sugar, 7 oz of seedless raisins, 7oz of sultanas, 1tsp of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg and 2 eggs (whisked) into a pan. Heat the ingredients gently on a moderate heat letting it bubble for approximately two minutes after reaching the bubbling stage.

Pour the heated ingredients into a mixing bowl and place into the fridge for twenty minutes, allowing it to cool off a little bit. After twenty minutes remove the bowl from the fridge and add 4 oz of plain flour, 4oz of self raising flour and a pinch of salt. Mix into the melted mixture, slowly but throughly, with a wooden spoon. Ensuring that all flour bubbles disappear.

Pour the entire mixture into a loaf tin and bake in the middle of an oven for between 1 hour 10 minutes and one hour twenty minutes on 180 degrees centigrade. Test the inside of the cake by placing a knitting needle into the loaf and observing to see if it comes out dry or covered in wet mixture (you know all this, why am telling you?!). A fruit cake such as this should be allowed to go a shade darker than you would allow a sponge to go, so remember that when you want to rescue it from the clutches of the oven.

Enjoy it with a pot of tea made from loose leaves. I recommend Taylor's, Yorkshire Tea. It's the only tea I drink nowadays!

Comments

[weirdbunny]

I make a boiled fruit cake, in which you put the ingrediants in the saucpan on the stove, then add flour then straight into tin, and oven. No need to put in the fridge. I love it, it's really moist.

When the plumber came to do some work in my kitchen he knocked the lid of my food processor over and accidently broke it !

[Sarah]

Whilst I love Taylors tea, I ADORE Glengette tea, aparently you can only get it in certain parts of Wales and Shropshire (I get it in Church Stoke near my Parents Caravan) IT IS HEAVEN!! There is a place called the Bird on the Rock tearooms (in nearby Clungunford) which do their own blend too and sell it in little packets like my Grandma used to get!

I'm SO going to have to do some baking this evening!

Thanks for the great post as ever!

[Violette]

I tell you what Cherry, since we had the samples on the exhibition, I have not stopped drinking this tea. I bought a 80 box to bring back to France. I now have to look for a supplier in Paris (probably have to give them a phone call to find out) cause I'm Yorkshire tea addicted !

[writershand]

Fruit cake jam and English tea. Now you're talking.

[Scott at Realepicurean]

I'm very old fashioned with tea these days. The tea strainer rarely goes back in the draw!

[Teacats]

Must try this tomorrow -- BTW -- check out Waitrose.com -- check the Unit Conversions sections -- has the American equivalents -- for example 180 degrees C equals 350 degrees F. Very handy guide!!!

Jan x

here making tea at Rosemary Cottage -- and thinking about baking!

[Cabriola]

I have just discovered this blog and I think it is fantastic !!

Congratulations from Spain