hot toddy fruitcake

🕒 Prep: 20 minutes 👩‍🍳Cook: 3 hours plus overnight soaking

🍰Cuts into 12 slices

ingredients

For the cake

200ml hot, strong black tea (use any type)
3 tbsp whisky
3 tbsp good-quality orange marmalade, thin or medium shred
700g mixed dried fruit
100g mixed peel
100g glace cherry (natural colur)
225g butter
225g golden caster sugar
4 eggs, beaten
225g plain flour
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
finely grated zest 1 lemon

For cake filling

2 tsp caster sugar
50ml hot black tea
1 tbsp whisky, (or use orange juice if you prefer)

instructions

Step: 1 Mindle the hot tea, whisky, marmalade in a large bowl till the marmalade liquefy. mix in all of the dried fruit, peel cherries, then leave covered to soak overnight.

Step: 2 Next day, turn the oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3 and grease and double-line a 20cm round, gaping cake tin with non-stick baking paper. Beat cream together with butter and sugar with an electric beater until fleecy. now Add the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each one addition, now trun up in the flour and spices, now follow by the lemon zest and soaked fruit. Add any type of liquid that too hasn’t been soaked up by the fruit, ladle into the arranged tin, volume the top. after then bake for 1½ hrs. Heat down the oven to 140C/fan 120C/gas 1 and bake for another 1½ hrs or until a fork inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack in the tin.

Step: 3 While the cake is warm, use the fork to dot the cake with holes all the way down. liquefy the sugar in the tea, add orange juice, and then spoon over the surface.

Step: 4 If you’re making the cake in advance, nourish it with a fresh swig of hot toddy every week, but take care not to make the cake pulpy. so it can be kept for a month well-wrapped in an airtight container in a cool and dry place, and the cake can be made the same day that you decorate it.