My Easy and Delicious Country Fruit Cake Recipe
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This is a favourite recipe of mine and my family, and apart from being absolutely delicious, the preparation time for this cake is only about ten to fifteen minutes, plus about one hour and fifteen minutes actual baking time.
The other thing I love about this cake is that isn't too "heavy" and makes a lovely light snack with a cup of tea, or a delicious addition to a country picnic. It reminds of olden days gone by where the farmer's wife would be baking away in the flagstone floored farmhouse kitchen, in order to give her hard working farmer Husband and her children a treat for their tea.
You will need an 8 inch cake tin and ideally some greaseproof paper for this recipe.
Ingredients
1 pound of self-raising flour
1 pound of sultanas or mixed fruit
8 oz butter
8oz caster sugar
8 tablespoons of milk
4 large eggs
4 oz chopped nuts, (optional, if nuts not used top up with equal weight of dried fruit or halved glace cherries).
Method
Pre-heat your oven to 165 degrees Celsius, (if you have a fan operated oven reduce this to 155 degrees Celsius).
Mix all of the ingredients together (an electric mixer will be the easiest and quickest way of doing this).
Grease your lightly with oil, then wipe out any surplus with kitchen roll.
Cut out a square of greaseproof paper the same size as the base of your tin, (in this case 8" x 8"). Place this in the base of the tin and lightly oil the surface of the paper, before again carefully wiping out any surplus using kitchen roll.
Pour your cake mixture into the tin and smooth out the surface with a spoon that has been dipped in hot water (to avoid the cake mixture sticking to the back of the spoon).
Place the tin in the centre of the oven and bake for initially one hour. At this point insert a skewer into the centre of the cake to check if the cake has cooked through. If the skewer comes out clean remove the cake from the oven. if any cake mixture remains on the skewer return the cake to the oven and check again at 10 minute intervals until the skewer comes out clean.
Cool in tin for five minutes, run a round ended knife around the sides, and then carefully invert the tin on to a cooling rack.
Peel away the greaseproof paper.
Gently turn the cake over ensuring you do not break it. If in doubt, allow it to cool upside down and then invert once cold.
The Finished Cake
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Comments
another tasty recipe, just don't know what caster sugar is, but I'll google it...
thanks for sharing!
I have always loved country cakes and breads. I will have to look up caster sugar too. I have never heard of it.:)
Hi Ocbill, ditto your comment, I used to hate fruit cake too, (and still do if you are talking about Christmas cake and Wedding Cake, in other words dark fruit cake), but I love these light fruit cakes nowadays.
Hi Elisabeth and Queenbe, Caster sugar is like normal granulated sugar, only ground down slightly more so it is a finer consistency. You can get around the problem of not having caster sugar by melting half of the butter and a tablespoon of the milk in a pan on a very low heat, and then stirring in the normal sugar until it dissolves into the butter, before adding the resulting liquid to the other ingredients. You might want to add an extra ounce of sugar if using standard granulated though, as due to the larger granules there is more space between them, therefore less actual sugar than if you used Caster sugar.
thanks for the info,misty, I've seen 'finely granulated sugar' in the grocery store, maybe that is the same thing..
I guess it probably is, but don't buy "icing sugar" by mistake, as that will be way too sweet. It needs to be granulated, just in a finer form than normal granulated sugar, (such as you use in tea, coffee etc).
mmmm cant wait to try this out...Thanks for the sharing...they sure looks good too.
Hope you enjoy it Jayjobas, it really is ever so easy to make, and the key is to not overcook it to avoid it going dry. I definitely suggest the lower heat scale, and to start checking it to see if it is cooked no later than one hour after it goes into the oven.
ocbill says:
4 weeks ago
LOL. I hated these as a kid but now as I've gotten older they are quite tasty. great recipes.