I have had this recipe in my 'collection' for so long now and never made it, someone gave it to me a long time ago, and think it was a family recipe, was so easy.
Make tea; add fruit; leave overnight; stir in rest of ingredients - my recipe said use normal black tea, but I went fancy and made Earl Grey - although I am not fancy enough to have any in the house, I had some delivered from a friend who walked them round on Thursday!
This is what I did..
I used 3 tea bags and 10 flozs of boiling water - 1/2 pint. I let it brew for a while.
weighed out 12 ozs of dried fruit - the recipe said 6oz of each sultanas and raisins, but I added a few cherries as I had some in the cupboard and just made up to the 12ozs.
Put the fruit in a large enough bowl that you are going to make the cake, add the brewed tea, leave overnight.
NB My recipe said to add the sugar at this point, however I googled a recipe - (Mary Berry was first up), and she added later which is what I did.
with regards to the sugar I have been unable to get any light muscovado sugar (as per Mary) since lockdown, I have some dark and some demerera...and loads of white as each time I have asked for caster sugar I have had granulated as a sub from Tesco. So a mix is what I chose, I thought all dark would be too much - and I also didn't have that much in the cupboard!
Back to the recipe - having left the fruit over night, now add
8oz of brown sugar and
10 oz of Self raising flour
mix throughly and then add 1 large egg
(due to lockdown large seems impossible to get, so medium it was)
My mix was a bit on the dry side - so added a drop of milk - not much, just enough so that the mix moved, both my recipes said that the mix would be wet...so can only assume my fruit was drier than some!
Put in a 2lb loaf tin and cook on 130c for 1 and 3/4 hours - keep an eye on it.
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| must iron this lovely cloth I got from the charity shop. |
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