Sharon´s Boozy Cheer-Up Cake

Finding a bag of dried fruit on a shelf in the larder, the problem then arose of what to do with it. So we invented Sharon´s Boozy Cheer-Up Cake.

First the bag of dried fruit, which included things like apple rings, dried whole apricots and prunes, was soaked overnight and the water thrown away. The fruit swells up and becomes all juicy. In the days before fancy supermarkets dried fruit was a staple ingredient for sweet treats throughout the winter months.

Then the now-soft fruit was put into a tight-lidded container and just covered with sherry from our local bodega and left overnight again. The next day it was all whizzed in the food processor.

Now we turned to our 35-year-old New Zealand cookbook. We bought this when living in Wellington and it is a treasure-trove of ancient colonial recipes. Bet you don´t have recipes for Ladysmith Cake, Khaki Cake, Gruel or Mutton Broth.

Surprisingly, we had all nearly all the ingredients for the traditional Fruit Cake contained in the book.

Ingredients

Eight ounces of butter
Eight ounces of brown sugar (we only had white)
Two tablespoons of Golden Syrup (we used treacle instead)
One tablespoon of marmalade (we had some three-year old home-made)
Five eggs (three of which had to be borrowed from next door)
12 ounces of flour
Pinch of salt
One teaspoon of baking powder
One and a half pounds of mixed fruit (this is where we used our sherry-soaked fruit)
Two ounces of mixed peel
One teaspoon of mixed spice
Half a teaspoon of nutmeg.

Cream the butter and sugar together then add the golden syrup or treacle and the marmalade. Add the well-beaten eggs and the sifted dried ingredients. Then add the fruit and cook in a medium oven for about two and a half hours.

Our cake turned out a bit like a bread pudding, rather than airy-light concoction, but several volunteer samplers agreed that it tasted lovely.

It certainly cheered Sharon up – hence the name.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009.