The cake is a really simple cake that tastes rich and deli­cious, the good thing about this cake is that you can pick and choose what you put in it from the ingredi­ents, as long as the basic amounts all add up to the the same total.

Page 1 — The Cake

Ingredients

For the cake.

225g plain white flour

¼ tea­spoon salt

½ tea­spoon ground cinnamon

¼ tea­spoon ground nutmeg

¼ tea­spoon ground cloves

¼ tea­spoon ground allspice

200g but­ter

200g dark brown sugar

2 table­spoons treacle

1 table­spoon marmalade

¼ tea­spoon vanilla essence or vanilla flavouring

4 eggs, lightly beaten

800g mixed dried fruits (this can be made up of either dif­fer­ent amounts of sul­tanas, rais­ins, cur­rents, etc, or whatever you buy)

150g glace cher­ries, chopped in half

150g chopped mixed peel

100g chopped nuts or almond slices (chopped again)

rum, brandy, or amaretto.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 150°C/300°F/Gas Mark 2. If you have a fan assisted oven you might want to lower this tem­per­at­ure a little, this will be dis­cussed more later.
2. Add the but­ter and sugar to a bowl.

3. using your hands cream it together. You can use a spoon if you wish, but I always find it fun to use my hands.

4. the end res­ult of this is a mix­ture that should look like this.

5. add in the treacle, marmalade, and vanilla essence.

6. mix together until the mix­ture is uni­form, light, and fluffy.

7. get the 4 eggs in a bowl of some sort.

8. lightly beat the 4 eggs with a fork, this is to break them up so that you can pour bits of them into the mix­ture.

9. mix the eggs into the cake mix, a little at a time.

10. when this is done it should look like this, at this point put it to one side and get another bowl.

11. sieve the flour, salt, and spices into the new bowl.

12. If you have ground all­spice, good stuff. I have to use a pestle and mor­tar on mine as we only have whole, so that needs using to make the all­spice fine enough.

13. mix the flour, salt and spices all toghether, and then add this to the other cake mix a little at a time. 

14. fold this mix­ture all together, fold­ing is done by mov­ing the spoon in a fig­ure of 8 motion in the bowl, mov­ing the mix over the middle.

15. when the flour mix­ture is all mixed in and the cake mix looks like this, it’s time for the fruit.

16. add the 800g of mixed dried fruits into the mix­ture.

17. using the same fold­ing motion as before you will end up with it look­ing like this.

18. now add in the chopped nuts, cher­ries, and mixed peel.

19. mix that all together, again using the same fold­ing method. It’s worth get­ting used to fold­ing as it’s a method used a lot in bak­ing.

20. Now take an 8″ round bak­ing tin, grease it and line the bot­tom and sides with non stick bak­ing paper. Pour in the cake mix­ture.

21. put the cake into the oven and bake for 3 hours, and test with a skewer. If the skewer comes out clean, it’s cooked. If not, keep it cook­ing and check every 20 or so minutes. I find that my oven isn’t so bril­liant for this, so your mil­age may vary from mine. I had to cook the cake 1 hour at 150°C, then 1 hour at 125°C, then 1 hour back at 150°C, but with some bak­ing paper over the cake to stop it burn­ing. The basic gist is to keep check­ing the cake and alter­ing to suit.
22. when check­ing remove the cake from the oven and put in a skewer.

23. when the skewer comes out of the cake clean, then the cake is cooked.

24. Remove from the oven and let the cake cool for 15 minutes in the tin.
25. Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool down fur­ther.

26. When the cake is fully cooled, make a few holes in the top of the cake with the skewer and pour 4 table­spoons of the rum, brandy, or amar­etto over the cake. Let it fully soak in.
27. store the cake wrapped in foil and in an air­tight tin or con­tainer until ready to decorate.