This week, Roy was looking through the recipes available in his Great, Great Grandma's old cookbook when he came across this recipe for fruitcake. The recipe was unlike any he had seen before, and he was curious to know how the cake would turn out. Before he could have a go at cooking the cake though, he had to find out one vital thing - how big was a tin of plum jam? A little research solved the problem and Roy had a go at the cake. The results were delicious - moist, not too sweet, and full of fruit. So this week Roy Creates A Delicious, Slightly Pink Fruit Cake.
Ingredients:
- 250 grams of butter
- 250 grams of sugar
- 2 eggs
- 750 grams of dark plum jam
- 250 grams of sultanas
- 250 grams of currants
- 250 grams of raisins
- 60 grams of mixed peel
- 60 grams of slivered almonds
- 500 grams of plain flour
- A pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
- A scant cup of hot milk
- Vanilla essence to taste
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and prepare two similarly sized cake tins. The original recipe only made one cake, but the tin must have been enormous! To prepare the tins, spray with oil (or grease with butter) and put a piece of baking paper on the bottom of the tin (cut to size). Line the sides of the tin with baking paper, which should stick up over the sides of the tin by about 2 inches.
- In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar
- Add the eggs and beat in
- Add the jam and beat well
- In another, small bowl mix together the hot milk and bicarbonate of soda
- Add the hot milk and bicarbonate of soda to the butter, sugar, egg and jam mix, beating in quickly to avoid the milk scrambling the eggs (it shouldn’t be a problem because there are lots of other ingredients in with the eggs already)
- Add a teaspoon of vanilla essence. The original recipe just says essence and since the cake turns out slightly pink tinged it may have been Parisienne Essence which would have given it a darker colour and has no flavour!
- Mix in the fruit
- Add the flour and mix thoroughly
- Pour the cake mix (which will be an astonishing pink) into the two cake tins, trying to keep the amounts in the tins about even (Roy weighs the tins before and after filling them, so that they have about the same amount of mix, by weight)
- Put the cakes into the oven.
- After the first half hour, turn the oven down to 170
- The cakes will take about 1 ½ hours to cook, in total, depending on tin size.