Grandma’s Fruitcake [HOW TO MAKE]

 

Date: 15/10/12

Background: My Grandma, and consequently my mum also, is my baking teacher and idol. Some of my earliest memories are of stood on a chair in my Grandma’s kitchen making fairy cakes and scones with her. Ever since I have been at university, virtually whenever I came back from Rugby to Birmingham I brought with me a delicious homemade creation from my lovely Grandma. Be it apple pie, coconut cake, chocolate cake, lemon meringue pie or Christmas pudding, regardless or the contents, a cake tin was a welcome addition to our communal kitchen.

After being at home for the weekend prior to coming back to Brumland to start my new job, she had made me a lovely fruitcake, to take to work . A few years ago she had given me the recipe for this cake. And it is one of the easiest cakes to make!

What: Grandma’s All-In-One Stork Fruitcake- Recipe from my Grandma

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Ingredients:

• 4oz Stork margarine
• 4oz caster sugar
• 8oz self raising flour
• 12oz mixed fruit
• 1tsp mixed spice
• 2 eggs
• 1/4pint milk
• 2tbsp walnuts for the top

Method- see how easy it is!

1. Put all ingredients into a bowl
2. Mix ingredients together
3. Pour mixture in a greased and line 2lb loaf tin
4. Place in a preheated oven- Gas Mark 3 (160C)
5. Cook for 1.5-1.75 hours
6. Best eaten after 24hours

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What was Good: Some fruit cakes can be quite dry, but my Grandma’s fruit cake is definitely not that! I love light fruit cake, when I say light I mean, you know when you cut a fruit cake open and the cake itself is light in colour with fruit within it, not dense and sticky like a Christmas cake. The mixed fruit in it was a selection of glace cherries, raisins and sultanas, which helped to keep the cake lovely and moist, and the mixed spice added a lovely autumnal flavour and scent to it as well. It was a fantastic ‘store cupboard’ cake, not just because it can be made with ingredients you can easily find in your store cupboard, but also because despite it now being 4 days after cutting it, it still tastes as fresh as the first day! So I can keep it airtight in the store cupboard for days! Another of my favourite things about this lovely cake are that the walnuts used to top the cake add a delicious flavour, and fab texture when biting into it.

What was Bad: I for one am not going to disrespect my Grandma by saying anything bad about her baking She made it because she loves to cook for people, and I am very grateful!

Waffle-O-Meter:

Hola Chicas/Chicos!

I am back in the sunny, warm, fragrant country that is England after spending a week (7 nights) with my fl8ies in Majorca! I have had severe blog withdrawal symptoms…

We were staying in the lovely hotel that is the Hi! Bouganvilla ApartHotel in Sa Coma, Majorca, a massive 600 room family hotel comprising of studios and apartments, whereby we enjoyed 5 swimming pools, 2 restaurants, 2 bars and an all inclusive breakfast, lunch and dinner buffet!

Majorca 2012 :-) VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Pudding wise, the holiday was a real mixed bag. The BEST puddingy aspect was the most amazing caberet act of The Sundaes, 3 hilariously delicious ladies- Vanilla, Strawberry and Chocolate who entertained us the whole evening with the music selection that only a misery guts could resist singing along to! You may even remember them from Britain’s Got Talent 2012? 

Sadly, the rest of the holiday failed to deliver on the pudding front… If you have watched Peter Kay you may remember his joke about being at a party and having the ‘Scooby Doo’ effect of voulevants, quiche, chicken legs, voulevants, quiche, chicken legs… etc. Well disappointingly at the Bougenvilla, it went a little like, generic mousse cake, generic blamonge, generic fruity pastry concoction, generic mousse cake, generic blamonge, generic fruity pastry concoction.. but this was repeated on a daily basis… without fail.. with little variation. Usually with some tinned fruit cocktail on the side, and pots of ice cream that are gone in one teaspoon full!

But those puddings sound amazing, I hear you cry. But I am afraid the distinct lack of flavour and unusual texture combinations, not to mention the repetitiveness of it all, meant that although it always LOOKED nice, it certainly didn’t live up to my eatible expectations.

I may sound very ungrateful, and trust me, the food itself minus pudding was a winner, there was so much choice and it was so exciting each day waiting to see what will be on the menu for us to choose (a WIIIDE selection of combinations) of. But when a pudding-obsessive like myself goes on holiday, I would love and adore some tantalising gastronomic extravaganza to happen on my plate! I am ashamed to admit that on more than 1 occasion I went without pudding altogether!

 

We celebrated my friend Emily's 21st Birthday whilst on holiday. So I made a makeshift birthday pudding platter for her so that we could be really embaressing and sing happy birthday. This is another example of the hotel's food looking pretty! It consisted of generic pastry fruit concoction, generic sponge cake, watermelon triangles, grapes and pink grapefruit segments! Emily liked it anyway! :D

 

On our last ever day, my friend Louise and I did have a deliciously decadent and long awaited ice cream from Restaurante El Sol, by the beach in Sa Coma. Two scoops of ice cream (I indulged in Dulche de Leche and Chocolate) for 2,50€ was money well spent in my opinion! Oh yeah and we ate it on a hired 4 wheeled bike!

 

So please do not let my pudding snob ways deter you from choosing the Hi! Bouganvilla ApartHotel as your holiday destination in 2013, they gave us one of the most memorable weeks of our lives when we stayed there!