Farmhouse Fruit Cake. An Essential.

I love fruit cake, the white farmhouse sponge one rather than the dense Christmas version.  Although to be fair I've been known to gobble down vast quantities of the latter...

Anyway here is a vital recipe for anyone who wants a good old fashioned farmhouse fruit cake to go with a mug of tea or to take to a cake sale.  If you are enthusiastic, hold back a little flour and mix it  with the dried fruit before adding to the mixture - allegedly this helps stop the fruit from sinking but I think it worked fine without the faff.

Ingredients

225 g self raising flour
175 g unsalted butter
50 g brown sugar
125 g caster sugar
3 free range eggs
200 g of dried fruit (I used some left over cake fruit mix, sultanas and raisins)
zest and juice of an orange
1/2 shot of sweet sherry (optional)
1 tbsp brown sugar for sprinkling

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and line a normal sized loaf tin.
2. Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy then add the eggs one at a time, beat well between each addition.

3. With a large spoon, gently fold in the flour, then the zest, juice, fruit and sherry if using.

4. Spoon into the prepared tin and sprinkle over the brown sugar.

Bake for 1 hour, covering with tin foil if it starts to look a bit brown early on.

5. Allow to cook on a rack for 5 minutes before turning out and allowing to cool completely.

Divine.