Black Christmas Cake

This recipe is taken from Dan Lepard’s new book ‘Short & Sweet’
Put it on your Christmas book list, it’s good, in fact very good!!

Ingredients (I doubled this recipe)

375g dried mixed fruit
150g chopped prunes
1 teaspoon orange extract
200g chopped ginger glace
500ml stout/porter
200g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground mace
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 200g muscovado sugar
175g black treacle
3 medium eggs
250g spelt or wholemeal flour
½ teaspoon baking powder

Method

Pre-heat the oven 170⁰c/150⁰c fan oven/335⁰f/gas 3
Line the base and sides of a 20cm round cake tin with non-stick baking paper.  
(I think it a good idea to line the outside with a couple of layers of brown paper, my cake was a little burnt on the sides, it could be my oven of course!!)

Dried fruit 

(I added up all the dried fruit and chose what I had in the cupboard – sultanas, raisins, cherries, dried cranberries, ginger/, peel/chopped a little and chopped prunes)

Stir the dried fruit and orange extract in a bowl.
Bring the stout to a boil then simmer for about 15 minutes and reduce to 100ml.
Add the butter to the pan and let it melt then remove from the heat, leave to cool and stir in the spices.
Beat the eggs and stir them in 
Sift the flour and the baking powder together adding back the bits caught in the sieve and beat gently this in to the mixture with the fruit.
Spoon into the cake tin and bake for 2 ½ hours (I should look after 2hours)