Recipe: Boiled fruitcake
John Chapman, 60 years old, an Over60 community member from Andrews Farm in South Australia, shares his famous family fruitcake recipe.
“This was my mum's favourite cake recipe and she would bake every Wednesday. I loved, as a child, to sit in the kitchen and watch while she baked enough cakes, biscuits and pies for the whole family for a week. I got to lick the bowl, of course. The smell of this cake baking takes me straight back to those childhood memories and my beloved old mum, god rest her soul, I wish she was here now to see me bake her cake. To share this with everybody means a lot to me. I hope everyone who tries it loves it as much as my family do.”
Serves: 8 to 10
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients
125 g butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
375 g mixed fruit
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup rum
½ teaspoon bicarbonate soda
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Method
1. Preheat oven to 175C. Grease a 20cm cake tin and line base with baking paper.
2. Melt butter over low heat with brown sugar, golden syrup, mixed fruit, cinnamon, nutmeg and rum. Simmer for three minutes.
3. Turn off heat, add bicarbonate of soda and mix thoroughly.
4. When mixture is cold, add flour and eggs, mixing well. Spoon mixture into tin, smoothing the top.
5. Bake for 40-60 minutes.
6. Cool on rack and turn out when cold.