Here is my recipe for a wonderfully simple, traditional fruit cake. It’s perfect with your afternoon cup of tea and wonderful with a big blob of strawberry jam!

Serves 6-8 and you can find a weight conversion chart here!

• Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees centigrade
• Heat all the ingredients gently on a low to moderate heat letting it bubble for approximately two minutes after reaching the bubbling stage
• Pour the heated ingredients into a mixing bowl and add the plain flour, self raising flour and salt.
• Mix in together slowly but throughly with a wooden spoon. Ensuring that all flour bubbles disappear
• Pour the entire mixture into a loaf tin and bake in the middle of an oven for between 1 hour and one hour ten minutes.
• Test the inside of the cake by placing a knitting needle into the loaf and observing to see if it comes out dry or covered in wet mixture (you know all this, why am telling you?!).
• A fruit cake such as this should be allowed to go a shade darker than you would allow a sponge to go, so remember that when you want to rescue it from the clutches of the oven.

Enjoy it with a pot of tea made from loose leaves. I recommend Taylor’s, Yorkshire Tea. It’s the only tea I drink nowadays!