The Best Everyday Fruit Cake

The Best Recipes

This versatile fruit cake is lighter than traditional celebration fruit cakes, yet still wonderfully moist and flavorful. The dried fruits are soaked overnight, ensuring they remain juicy and distributed evenly throughout the batter. Adding mixed spices brings warmth without overpowering the natural sweetness of the fruits. Unlike its more formal counterparts, this cake doesn't need…

This versatile fruit cake is lighter than traditional celebration fruit cakes, yet still wonderfully moist and flavorful. The dried fruits are soaked overnight, ensuring they remain juicy and distributed evenly throughout the batter. Adding mixed spices brings warmth without overpowering the natural sweetness of the fruits. Unlike its more formal counterparts, this cake doesn’t need to be made weeks in advance or fed with alcohol – it’s delicious fresh from the oven and keeps well for up to a week.

Preparation time: 20

Cooking time: 1:45

Ingredients

  • 400g Mixed dried fruit

  • 125 g Butter

  • 3 Eggs

  • 60 ml Milk

  • 1 tbsp Jam

  • 125 g Soft brown sugar

  • 250 g Self-raising flour

  • 2 tsp Mixed spice

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C/ 150°C fan/ gas mark 3/ 325°F
  2. Either grease the tin with butter or pop the liner in
  3. Weigh the fruit into a bowl for later
  4. Put all the ingredients except the fruit into a large bowl (or your mixer/food processor).
  5. Beat together well, but don’t overdo it
  6. Scrape the mixture down and mix again
  7. Add the dried fruit and stir in by hand. You don’t want to break up the fruit.
  8. Carefully put the mixture in the tin/liner and use a knife to make a slight depression in the top of the mixture. This means you will have less of a domed top
  9. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, and test with a toothpick. When it comes out clean the cake is done. If not, return to the oven for 10 minutes and repeat. You may need up to 1 hour 45 mins
  10. Take the cake out of the oven and leave in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool

Store in an airtight box when cool. (You can leave the liner on until the cake is served)