Fruitcake almost as mother made it

Out of the oven, ready to cool off.

Ready for icing – it would
look smoother if I took more care
with the paper layer.

My mother wasn’t a great cook generally but made a nice fruitcake. I no longer have her recipe but this one, adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe, adds elements of hers: cherries, dates, brazil nuts.

Ingredients

• 1kg dried fruit including: raisins, currants, 250g chopped dates, candied citrus peel, halved maraschino or glacé cherries (100–200g to taste)
• zest and juice of one orange
• zest and juice of one lemon
• 150ml brandy plus extra for feeding
• 250g unsalted butter
• 200g brown sugar
• 175g cake flour
• 100g ground almonds
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100g brazil nuts, coarsely chopped
• 4 eggs

Method

Gradually bring the fruit, brandy, sugar, zest, juice and butter to a gentle boil and simmer for 5 minutes then leave to cool.

Heat oven to 150°C. Line a deep 20cm cake tin with 2 layers of nonstick baking paper. Wrap 2 layers of newspaper around the outside. You can tie with string but I knot together strips of twisted newspaper to tie the paper in place.

Mix the vanilla extract and eggs into the cooled fruit mix.

Mix the dry ingredients well to ensure that the baking powder is evenly distributed. I add them to the fruit mix and mix on top, but if you want to be more correct, mix them separately. Mix the dry ingredients into the fruit mix, making sure they are evenly incorporated.

Add the mix to the prepared cake tin and bake for 2 hours. You can test with a skewer to see if it comes out clean; a little damp in my book is OK.

Remove from oven, attack with skewer to make holes and spoon over 2 tablespoons of brandy.

Leave to cool before removing from the cake tin. It is now ready to ice or to store, with periodic additions of brandy to preserve it.

Icing

I use a layer of marzipan with an outer icing layer – you can use what you like but something not too brittle is best. A trick to get the marzipan to stick to the cake: use a thin layer of jam (my mum used apricot but the layer is too thin to taste),