Nanny's Boiled Fruit Cake (with adaptations for diabetic)

by freebird 21st October 2012, 9:21 pm

This was my Nan’s recipe. It’s simple to make, and I always make two of different flavours and cook them in the oven together. The recipe that she gave me follows, but I have added my own comments alongside:

1 cup milk
1 cup sugar (I always use brown)
1 cup dried fruit (usual dried fruit mix, or dr apricots & almonds, cherry & almond, date & walnut etc)
4oz/125g butter or margarine
2 cups self-raising flour (I always use half wholemeal and add some baking powder)
1 egg
essence or spice

1. Put milk, sugar, fruit and butter in a saucepan, bring gently to the boil and boil for a few minutes.
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the flour, essence/spice and the egg.
3. Put the mixture into a greased loaf tin or 7” round cake tin and bake for 1½ hours, Gas mark 4.

I adapt this recipe to make something for my diabetic man, by halving the sugar and making it up by volume with a granulated sweetener - the sweetener is not added to the boiling mix but added with the flour. As the missing sugar would have provided some bulk, I use 1½ teaspoons baking powder to give the cake a bit of extra help. I use a half-fat spread in place of the butter. The lower fat content and the sweetener can result in the cake being a little dry, so I usually add some extra milk to compensate. I have discovered that the cake in the round tin is always more moist that the one in the loaf tin, regardless of the ingredients.

Whilst this isn’t the best fruit cake, the fact that it is so straightforward to make makes it a really good ‘everyday’ sort of a cake.