Standby fruit cake

Many years ago, I came home from university with a cake recipe involving many ingredients and three complex stages. My Mother was not at all impressed with my new recipe and insisted that I copied her recipe into my book.

She was right. I never made the complicated recipe but I've made her recipe many times.

This recipe keeps well-if hidden.

Here it is with a few, minor tweaks of my own.

Ingredients:

8oz/225g plain flour

1 level teaspoon baking powder

6oz/170g soft brown sugar

5oz/140g margarine or butter

3 eggs

2 tablespoons milk

11/2lb/650g sultanas or other mixture of dried fruit (chop larger fruit such as apricots)

Note-I have sometimes used a 500g packet without problems.

Method:

Heat oven to 150 C/300 F /mark 2

Grease a 8"/20cm cake tin and line with paper.

Add the flour, baking powder and sugar to a large mixing bowl, add the butter/margarine, eggs and milk.

Stir until well mixed then add the dried fruit.

Add to cake tin.

Cook for three hours until a skewer comes out clean.

If necessary, cover for the last hour with foil.

Enjoy