Nigella's Venetian Carrot Cake

I am absolutely loving Nigella Lawson’s new cookbook ‘Kitchen’. It’s a beautifully written book and I am thoroughly enjoying cooking my way through it.

One of the recipes that caught my eye almost immediately was for Venetian Carrot Cake. I love Venice, and anything with the word Venetian in it always draws me in. Also, I have been wanting to make a carrot cake for some time, as for one reason and another I just never have, although I have certainly eaten plenty of it.

It’s a wonderful recipe, and is even dairy and gluten free (if you don’t include the optional mascarpone cream). However I did something with this recipe that I rarely do with Nigella’s recipes. I changed an ingredient. (I know, I was shocked at myself too!) The original recipe calls for pine nuts, which while they do make it utterly Italian, I really am not fond of except in savoury food. They can also be really expensive. So I substituted flaked almonds. I’m sure it is gorgeous with the pine nuts if you are a fan, but the almond version was a huge success in our house and they went beautifully with the almond meal/flour Nigella calls for in the cake.

I can honestly say this is the nicest carrot cake I have ever eaten. I was particularly thrilled as it was, as I mentioned, the first time I have ever made a carrot cake. It isn’t overly sweet and the rum soaked sultanas and nutmeg give it a beautiful depth of flavour. I urge you to make this cake - either with the pine nuts if you like them or flaked almonds as I did - as soon as you can. You will not be disappointed.

You can find the recipe here. I can’t wait to make it again. Seriously. Yum.

The 21st Century Housewife's Cinnamon Dolce Latte Cake

I have a serious fascination with marble cakes - most likely because my family and friends love them. There is something about the lovely swirls in the batter that somehow make them taste extra good.

This particular cake came into being because of that famous coffee company you see on virtually every street corner. Originally I was trying to duplicate those cute marble loaf cakes they have with the pink marbling. Unfortunately I was never happy with the results, and I was struggling to get the effect I wanted. I found this odd, because my traditional Marble Cake is my most oft requested cake, but for some reason, this slight variation was foiling me.

Then I got to thinking about my absolute favourite coffee at the aforementioned coffee shops - a Skinny Dolce Cinnamon Latte - which I can only get in the US as we don’t have the cinnamon syrup in the UK yet. And the idea for this cake was born. It is not as spectacular in appearance as my original marble cake  - several test cakes later the marbling is pretty, but just not as pronounced - but it tastes absolutely wonderful, and is - not surprisingly - a real treat with a cup of coffee. 

¾ cup butter, softened

1½ cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 cups all purpose flour (unbleached if possible)

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 cup milk

1 heaping tablespoon instant coffee granules (I use decaff)

about 2 teaspoons boiling water (use as little as possible)

Preheat oven to 350℉ or 160℃.  Grease and flour or line two eight inch round pans.

Cream the butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.  Add the vanilla and beat together. 

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon. Gently blend this mixture into the buttery eggy mixture alternatively with the milk - keep the electric mixer keep it on low to avoid being covered in flour! 

Remove about half to three quarters of a cup of batter from the mixing bowl and put in a small bowl. Dissolve the instant coffee in as little boiling water as possible and beat this into the mixture in the small bowl

Divide the larger bowl of batter between the two baking pans. Now dollop three spoonfuls of the coffee flavoured batter in three different places on top of the batter in each of the baking pans. Using an ordinary dinner knife, gently cut through the batter so that the coffee flavoured batter marbles through the plain batter. Here’s how each layer should look before baking.

Place the pans in the oven and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or until a piece of dried spaghetti or skewer inserted into the centre of the cake layers comes out clean. 

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pans for about ten minutes.  Remove from the pans and cool on wire racks.  When completely cold, the layers can be frosted and sandwiched together to make a two layer cake.  Fill and frost as desired. 

The frosting I use consists of 6 tablespoons softened butter creamed with 3 cups icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar) in an electric mixer.  I then add enough milk or cream to make a spreadable icing (usually about 1 to 3 tablespoons). Add about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and beat through. This should give you enough frosting to cover the top and sides of this cake, with a thin layer in the middle too. 

The 21st Century Housewife’s© Apricot and Almond Loaf Cake

The wonderful flavour combination of apricots and almonds makes this cake almost sinfully delicious.  It’s seriously moist, so it is best if you can make it the day before and allow it to rest overnight before slicing into it.  (It tastes even better after it has sat for a while.)  However, every time I make this it smells so good while it is cooking I find myself cutting into it when it is still warm.  It tends to crumble and make a bit of a mess if you do that but it is so worth it because it tastes absolutely ambrosial - if I do say so myself! Actually, even when it has cooled, this tends to be a very crumbly cake so I always use a very sharp knife to cut it.  Sadly it is definitely not low-calorie, but I comfort myself with the thought that dried fruit and nuts are really very good for you!   

1¾ cups all purpose flour

¼ cup ground almonds

¾ cup white sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ tsp salt

¾ cup chopped dried apricots (ready to eat ones)

1 cup desiccated coconut

¾ cup chopped almonds

2 eggs, beaten

1/3 cup oil or melted butter, cooled a bit

1 cup buttermilk or milk

1 teaspoon almond extract

Mix the flour, ground almonds, sugar, baking powder, dried apricots and coconut together in a large bowl.

In another bowl or large pitcher mix together the eggs, oil or melted butter, buttermilk or milk and almond extract.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones all at once and stir thoroughly to blend. 

Pour into a large (2 lb) greased and floured or lined loaf tin, or you can divide the mixture between two smaller ones.  Bake at 350℉ or about 170℃ (160℃ fan) for 40 to 50 minutes (30 to 40 minutes if you use smaller loaf tins) or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

The 21st Century Housewife’s© White Chocolate and Pistachio Cake

My son is stuck in Athens at the moment due to the volcanic ash that has made flying impossible over most of northern Europe, so my mind has been pretty much concentrated on that part of the world these days. Having visited Greece myself, I particularly remember the lovely flavours in their desserts and pastries. So yesterday afternoon I decided to get creative in the kitchen and invent a cake inspired by them. As I love pistachios I decided to start with those Then I discovered some white chocolate chunks in my pantry it all just kind of evolved from there. I used rosewater as a flavouring as it is used extensively in Greek cakes and pastries, but if you can’t find it (or don’t like it), just substitute one teaspoon of vanilla. You can also use ordinary milk in place of buttermilk if you don’t have any to hand, although I do like the texture and flavour buttermilk gives the cake.

I used the same method for this cake that I use for muffins - mixing the dry ingredients and the wet ones separately and then mixing them together. You still get a lovely light cake and it makes it incredibly quick and easy to put together.

2 cups all purpose flour
¾ cup white sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup shelled pistachios, roughly chopped
¾ cup white chocolate chips or chunks
2 eggs, beaten
⅓ cup oil
(I used sunflower oil)
1 cup buttermilk
¼ teaspoon rosewater
(It’s very strong, so don’t be tempted to use more than this!)

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Stir in the pistachios and the white chocolate chips.

In another bowl, combine the beaten eggs, oil, buttermilk and flavouring.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold together until well mixed.

Bake in a greased and floured (or lined) 2 pound loaf tin for 40 to 50 minutes at about 350℉ or 160 to 170℃. Cool completely before slicing - in fact, if you can it is best to make this cake the day before as it slices better the next day. As you can see from the photograph, this is very nice served with strawberries and some good vanilla ice cream.

My Secret Ingredient

Cakes and muffins are among the things I enjoy baking most. I started out when I was a little girl with ready prepared mixes, moved on to other people’s recipes and then began to invent my own as well. When you have made cakes and muffins for as long as I have, you start to learn tricks and ingredients that make them tasty nearly every time – things that affect not just the flavour, but also the texture and mouth-feel of these treats. And one of the ingredients I have come to value the most is one I never really even liked very much to start with - buttermilk.

Buttermilk was originally the liquid that was left over when cream was churned into butter. However as butter is made on a large commercial scale these days, the buttermilk we buy in the supermarket now is cultured. Basically, lactic acid bacteria is added to skim or non fat milk. It’s perfectly safe because it is pasturized, but I don’t like to think about it too much because no cook wants to hear the word bacteria in their kitchen! However like many things that sound a bit strange, this ingredient actually makes things taste incredibly good.

I first remember buttermilk in my mother’s kitchen. Mom wasn’t really a big baker so I can’t imagine what she used it for, but I know she would drink it ice cold from the fridge. I tasted it once and was horrified. Thicker than ordinary milk, with a tart, almost sour taste, it didn’t impress my childish taste buds one bit. Such was my dislike that when I discovered a muffin recipe not that much later which called for it, I made it a point to substitute ordinary milk. I avoided buttermilk like the plague. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I decided to make that old recipe actually using the real thing.

It was a revelation. The muffins had more body, and thus a more satisfying mouth feel. The sugar in the muffin recipe offset the buttermilk’s tart flavour, and it somehow made them taste even better. I started to use it regularly in muffins. Now people have been using buttermilk in muffins for years, but one day I got to thinking about what the results would be like if I used buttermilk in my cakes. I’d heard about using mayonnaise in chocolate cakes, and although I had never done it myself, I had tasted cakes made with it that were delicious. So much against my better judgement I used buttermilk in a sweet cake recipe – my devil’s food cake recipe in fact. The results were fantastic. Just like in muffins, the buttermilk gave the cake more body and enhanced the flavour. It didn’t make it taste any less sweet, and it was just somehow better.

Since then I’ve been using buttermilk in a lot of my recipes. Not every cake responds well to it; very light white cakes are not enhanced by it at all, and it certainly does not work well in a classic Victoria sponge. However most chocolate cakes, especially those which involve bananas, and also ginger and spice cakes get a real boost from my now not-so-secret ingredient. Not surprisingly, cakes that take a leaf out of the muffin book, like my Carrot, Walnut and Ginger Snack Cake and my Banana Maple Walnut Loaf Cake also benefit from the addition of buttermilk.

So if you like making cakes and muffins, do yourself a favour and consider substituting buttermilk when ordinary milk is called for next time. The results may surprise and - I hope - delight you!

My Grandma's Special White Cake

My Grandma’s name was Ruby Sybil Wilde, and she was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, which is very close to the Welsh border. Her mother brought her to Canada when she was a little girl where she grew up and eventually met and married my Grandpa. They had two daughters, one of whom was my Mom. Grandpa was the Reeve (Mayor) of the town they lived in for over thirty years, so Grandma used to do lots of entertaining and people always talked about what an amazing cook she was. Sadly I never got to meet her as she died in her early sixties, four years before I was born. (If you want to read a bit more about her slightly mysterious story, you can click here.)

I don’t know why Grandma called this ‘Special’ White Cake but it may have been because it tastes amazing. It’s a lovely light cake that you can eat frosted or unfrosted, and as the original recipe calls for ‘2 teaspoons vanilla or other’ you can flavour it pretty much how you like. Next time I might try using almond flavouring. As Grandma wrote on the recipe card (you can just see it at the bottom of the photo), this is “a good size cake with some body to it”. You could use just about any flavour frosting, from something seriously chocolatey to something light and lemony. I think it would be nice served with fruit too. On this, my first attempt with it, I‘m going to just sprinkle confectioner’s sugar over the top to make it look pretty and to emphasise the vanilla flavour.

I did fiddle about with the method a bit because I was using an electric mixer so I didn’t feel I needed to separate the eggs and add the whites separately as they used to do back in the days before electric mixers were common. I also misread the recipe and added a cup of milk instead of the ½ cup Grandma called for but I didn’t realise until after it was in the oven. It all turned out beautifully anyway. Plus it uses store cupboard ingredients and takes about ten minutes to throw together. I baked this in a 9 inch square pan, but I’m sure you could use the mixture for cupcakes if you preferred - just don’t bake them as long. I can’t wait to experiment with this recipe; it’s got so much potential! Thanks Grandma!

Ruby Sybil Wilde’s “Special” White Cake

½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla (or another flavouring of your choice)
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup milk (recipe originally called for ½ cup but 1 cup worked nicely)

Cream the butter and sugar together using an electric mixer. Beat in the eggs. Add the vanilla.

Sift the flour and baking powder together, and add alternately with the milk, beating after each addition.

Bake in a greased and floured (or lined) nine inch square pan at 350℉ or 160 to 170℃. Be careful, the cake tends to brown very quickly and ideally you want it to be fairly pale. Mine took about thirty minutes to cook, but I did lower the heat to 150℃ (about 325℉) for the last five minutes. I would suggest setting the timer for fifteen to twenty minutes and then keeping an eye on it after that, depending on how fierce your oven is.

Frost if you like, or sprinkle with some confectioner’s sugar. As you can see, it does want some sort of adornment as it really isn’t all that pretty, but it smells and tastes so good I’m struggling not to just eat it plain, straight from the tin!



In the end, I served this cake sprinkled with icing sugar with a bit of good vanilla ice cream on the side, and it tasted amazing.

Beautiful Cakes

I love baking cakes, and I get lots of compliments when I do, but I've never been one to make fancy decorated cakes. This isn't because I don't like them, it's only because I find the whole idea of them very intimidating because I don't consider myself very artistic! One day I'm going to try my hand at decoration, but for the moment I'll content myself with icing and a few carefully placed adornments - like the odd sugar flower or some shiny chocolate discs.

My cousin Esther on the other hand, makes and decorates the most amazing cakes.  When we had our tenth anniversary party nine years ago, Esther made us an anniversary cake that was tastier and even more beautiful than the one we had at our wedding.  One time when we visited for a family dinner there was a beautiful cake spread over the dining room table of her Mom's house, all decorated with gorgeous sugar flowers. The only thing that has stopped her from turning her cake making into a business so far is a lack of time, but she does occasionally make cakes to order for customers in the Sarnia and Bright's Grove, Ontario area. Here are a few of her creations:-





Check out these cupcakes - yummy!



And the pièce de résistance - a 16th birthday cake complete with a hand made iPod Touch!



Esther is really generous with her recipes and shared this recipe for her chocolate and banana cake with me a few years ago. It’s one I make quite regularly as it is keeps so moist and delicious. It even freezes well (without icing).  I tend to freeze slices as opposed to the whole cake as then you can just thaw a slice or two at a the time. 

I have played around with the recipe a bit, as some of the ingredients – like Crisco - are not easily available in England.  No matter what I do though, this cake is always delicious.  Esther recommends you frost it with your favourite chocolate icing which is fabulous, although when I’ve been pressed for time or wanted to freeze some of the cake, I’ve just sprinkled it with icing sugar. It’s very tasty that way too.
 
Esther’s Amazing Chocolate and Banana Bundt Cake 

1 cup Crisco or softened butter
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 cup sour cream
(I have used crème fraîche when unable to find sour cream - and I use the low fat variety as well so I am sure you could use low fat sour cream)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/3 cup cocoa
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup boiling water
 
Preheat oven to 160ºC or 350ºF.   Grease and flour a Bundt or tube pan.
 
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cocoa and salt.  Set aside. Cream together the Crisco (or butter) and sugar in a large bowl.  Add eggs, one at a time, and continue creaming.  Add bananas, sour cream and vanilla.  Blend well.  Now add the dry ingredients you set aside earlier and stir until mixed.  Carefully pour the 1 cup boiling water over the entire mixture.  This sounds silly, but it really does work!  Blend the water in.  The batter will be quite loose, but that is okay. 
 
Pour the batter into the pan and bake for about 40 to 45 minutes until just starting to brown and a cake tester comes out clean.  Allow to cool for 20 minutes in the pan before attempting to remove the cake.  If you are planning to frost the cake, or dust it with icing sugar, be sure to allow it to cool completely first. 

The 21st Century Housewife's© Chocolate and Banana Snack Cake

I’ve been working on developing some easy to make, delicious cakes that can be served without icing in an homage to the “Snackin’ Cakes” Betty Crocker marketed in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. I think this is my best one to date - and my very willing taste testers all agreed!

You probably already have everything you need to make this in your store cupboard and fridge. Don’t worry if you don’t have buttermilk; I do like the tangy flavour it gives, but ordinary milk works just fine.

To read more about my “snack cakes”, the history behind them, and for another snack cake recipe, check out the entry just before this one!

1 ¾ cups all purpose flour
¼ cup cocoa (not drinking chocolate)
1 tablespoons baking powder
1 cup white sugar
2 generous pinches of salt
½ cup chocolate chips
1 egg, lightly beaten
⅓ cup sunflower oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
2 mashed bananas

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar, salt and chocolate chips.

In a medium bowl, beat the egg, oil, buttermilk and vanilla . Stir in the mashed bananas.

Add the egg and milk and banana mixture to the flour mixture. Stir thoroughly until well blended, but don’t beat. Pour the mixture into a greased and floured (or lined) nine inch square pan.

Ovens can vary quite radically so you’ll probably need to watch this the first time you bake it. I bake mine at about 350℉ or 170℃ for 20 to 25 minutes or until a piece of dry spaghetti inserted into the middle comes out clean (ie. with no batter clinging to it).

This cake really does not need any frosting and it is easy to pick it up and eat it with your fingers. (Far too easy in my experience!) However, a little dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of good vanilla ice cream does go really well with it if you want to serve it as a proper dessert.

The 21st Century Housewife's© Carrot, Walnut and Ginger Snack Cake

When I was a kid growing up in Canada, Betty Crocker marketed a cake mix called “Snackin Cake”. It was a moist cake that you served without frosting. One of the “modern time savers” of the late 1970‘s and early 80‘s, if I recall correctly the box even contained a handy disposable baking pan you could cook the mix in. The cake had a bread-like texture similar to a loaf cake and it became a real cult favourite.

I wanted to develop a recipe that was almost as easy to make as the original snackin’ cake, but something that was a bit more wholesome and tasted homemade. (Snackin’ Cake tasted amazing, but homemade isn’t a word I would use to describe it - it had a distinctive cake mix flavour to it.)

My recipe still has the firm texture of the original, so you can pick it up and eat it in squares if you want to - although as you can see from the photo, eating it with a fork and a side of ice cream works too! I have tried to use store-cupboard ingredients in this so that it is easy to whip up at a moment’s notice. I did use buttermilk because I like the flavour it gives the cake, but ordinary milk will work just fine if it is all you have on hand. Similarly, don’t worry if you don’t have crystallised ginger, just add a bit more of the ground ginger.

We really like nuts in our family so I used a whole cup in this recipe, but if you are not as enamoured of them as we are, just use 3/4 of a cup instead. I normally dust this cake with icing sugar, but there is no reason you could not frost it if you wanted to. In fact, I think a cream cheese icing might be a very nice idea. (Although it is not true to the original ethos of a snackin‘ cake, I won’t tell if you don’t!)

The whole idea of snackin’ cake was that you could make and bake it quickly, and possibly even eat it warm, but do let it cool a little before you try to cut it up or it will fall to pieces. And if you are eating it warm, don’t bother with the icing sugar as it will just dissolve into the warm cake. (And yes, warm with ice cream is very, very good!)

2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 tablespoons baking powder
1 generous teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon crystallised ginger, very finely chopped
1 cup chopped walnuts (or other chopped nuts)
1 cup grated carrot
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup sunflower oil (mild olive oil, corn or canola oil works too)
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

Measure the flours, sugar, baking powder, ginger, crystallised ginger, carrots and walnuts into a large bowl and stir to mix.

Beat the egg, oil, buttermilk and vanilla in a medium bowl.

Add the egg and milk mixture to the flour mixture and stir thoroughly until well blended. Don’t beat the mixture though or the cake will be tough. Pour the mixture into a greased and floured (or lined) nine inch square pan.

Bake at about 350℉ or 170℃ for 25 to 30 minutes or until a piece of dry spaghetti inserted into the middle comes out clean (ie. with no batter clinging to it).

Allow to cool a bit before slicing. This cake keeps quite well, and tastes really lovely the day after it is made too - if you can wait that long :)

The 21st Century Housewife's© Marble Cake

Tomorrow is my son's birthday, so today we are making birthday cake. I love making all kinds of cakes - from plain and simple white cake to chocolate extravaganzas - but as far as my son is concerned, the only cake that is really a birthday cake is a marble cake.

I had forgotten about marble cake for years, until we had one when we were visiting the US when my son was little, and I was reminded how much I had loved them myself as a kid. I developed my own recipe when we got home, using one of my vanilla cake recipes and going from there. A few years have gone by since then, and both the cake and I have evolved a bit, but it is still my (now nearly grown up) son's favourite.

I've photographed a single layer of the cake un-iced, so that you can see the pretty pattern on the top. The pattern runs right through the cake, so it looks gorgeous when it is cut. My recipe makes a two layer cake, and I always sandwich it together with vanilla icing - either homemade or Betty Crocker, depending on how much time I have. Then I ice the top and sides and decorate it with Hershey's Kisses or other chocolate candies. I like how the chocolate candy against the vanilla icing hints at the mix of flavour and colour inside.

You really do need an electric mixer for this one, unless you have extremely strong arms and lots of stamina!

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 and 1/2 cups white sugar (superfine or caster sugar if possible)
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 and 1/4 cups milk (reserve 2 tablespoons from this)
2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350℉ or 160℃. Grease and flour two eight inch round pans.

Using the large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Gently blend this mixture into the buttery eggy mixture on very low speed. Now add the the milk - EXCEPT the 2 tablespoons you have reserved. Blend the mixture on low speed until it is smooth and then beat for on a higher speed for about a minute.

At this point, remove about 5 generous spoonfuls of batter from the mixture and place in a small bowl.

Add the vanilla to the batter in the large mixer bowl and blend thoroughly. Divide this batter between the two baking pans.

Now take the batter in the small bowl and sift the cocoa powder into it. Add the reserved 2 tbsp of milk. Stir to blend together well.

Using a spoon, dollop the chocolate batter over the top of the vanilla batter in the baking pans, about three well-spaced dollops per pan. Gently run a knife from one side of each pan to the other, cutting the chocolate and vanilla mixture together. You want to see streaks of chocolate through the vanilla. Be careful not to over-blend.

Place the pans in the oven and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or until a piece of dried spaghetti inserted into the centre of the cake layers comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pans for about ten minutes. Carefully remove from the pans and cool on wire racks. Allow to cool completely before icing and decorating.

The 21st Century Housewife's© Mincemeat and Brandy Cake

This is such an easy recipe to make and it just tastes of Christmas! It is also wonderful for people who are not big fans of traditional fruitcake (like me!) because although it has many of the elements of a fruitcake, the sponge makes it so much lighter. It will keep for three or four days if you wrap it well and it tastes even better the day after it is made. It isn’t the prettiest cake in the world, but it sure tastes good!

1 cup mixed dried fruit
3 tbsp brandy - dark rum or whisky work too, but you have to slightly adjust the name of the cake to Mincemeat and Rum or Mincemeat and Whiskey Cake :)
½ cup plus 1 tbsp butter, softened
¾ cup white sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
1-¾ cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 cup mincemeat
3 to 4 generous tablespoons of demerera sugar for the topping

Put the mixed dried fruit in a bowl and pour the liquor over top. Stir and set aside. Grease and flour (or line) an eight or nine inch square pan.

Cream the butter and sugar in an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and beat in. Gently blend in the flour.

Using a wooden spoon, fold in the mincemeat and soaked dried fruit (along with any liquor left in the bowl), stirring until just mixed through.

Pour into the cake tin and sprinkle the demerera sugar over the top. Bake at 300℉ (150℃ ) for 30 to 40 minutes. Ovens vary so radically in how quickly they cook, it really is worth keeping an eye on this the first time you bake it so it does not brown up too fast. The cake is done when a skewer (or piece of uncooked spaghetti) inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool, and the cover tightly with foil or store in a sealed tin. It is lovely served on its own with a cup of tea, or serve it as a dessert with some good vanilla ice cream.