Recipe: Giggle Cake

So that you can recreate the taste of that lovely fruit cake I made all those years ago for the Llangollen garden show, I have written up the recipe below. For a list of ingredients search in the Shopping list tab above.

1) Grease with butter and line a 7" round cake tin and set your oven to 180*c.

2) First I put 350g of Mixed dried fruit in a bowl and covered it with boiling water. I left these to soak for a good half an hour before using them in the recipe later on. This allowed the fruit to soak up the water and become very moist and plump in the cake once cooked.

3) Put 125g of unsalted butter and 175g of soft brown sugar in a large pan and gently heat through until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Drain the mixed fruit using a sieve and then place the fruit on a few pieces of kitchen roll to dry off any residual water. Add the fruit to the sugar mixture and cook on a low heat making sure you stir the mixture well. After 5 minutes transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl and set it aside to cool for 10 minutes. 

4) Measure out 225g of Self raising flour and 1 teaspoon of ground mixed spice. After the mixture has cooled, sift in the flour and mixed spice, add a pinch of salt, and mix it in well. Beat two eggs and add them a little at a time to the cake mixture until it is all nicely incorporated. 

5) Measure 225g of drained tinned pineapple and chop it up into pieces of about 2cm on the outer edge of the ring. Also measure out 125g of glacé cherries and cut them all in half. Add the pineapples and cherries to the cake mixture and stir it in until it is combined.Transfer the mixture to the cake tin before levelling the surface. 

6) Bake the cake in the oven for about an hour. Test the cake with a cake tester or a fine metal skewer to make sure it is done; it should come out clean if it is. Transfer your cake to wire rack to cool. 

The pineapple and soaked fruit in this cake give it a wonderfully moist consistency and the pineapple is really a lovely and different flavour for a fruit cake. Let me know how it goes if you try it in the comment boxes below!

Giggled Beginnings

There was a fourteen year old boy. Over the preceding few weeks he had seen the little town of Llangollen getting ready for it's annual Garden Show. The excitement was building as everyone was getting prepared for the festivities! There were competitions for flowers, vegetables, arts and crafts and foods of all varieties.  He had tried his hand at growing vegetables but had gotten dismayed when his lettuces suddenly shot up to around two foot and became quite inedible. He had watched his little sister proudly construct a scarecrow of Harry Potter out of marigolds, balloons, Papier-mâché and large sheets of black cloth; but that wasn't for him. There had to be some way for him to get involved!

Looking down the list of competitions there didn't seem to be very much left that he could enter with only a few days to go. Whilst on the brink of admitting defeat he suddenly noticed a category that didn't require weeks of planning or months of growing. Could this be the competition for him? It was the competition for the 'Best fruit cake'. He hadn't really baked very much before but decided that if he wanted to enter the competition he would just have to give it a go.

That night he sat pouring over his mother's cook books until he came across a fruit cake that he liked the look (and name) of; a Giggle Cake! He didn't know whether it would be any good but the name was enough to spur him on to try it out. After a few hours of soaking fruit, lining tins and licking the spoon he stood back and looked at his creation. It was beautiful. What an incredible thing that fruit, flour, butter and eggs could all be combined to make such a thing of beauty. He was hooked.

The day of the competition came and he headed to the Town Hall to enter his creation. 'Come back at four o'clock' stated the elderly lady who accepted his cake. Before heading off, he had a sneaky look at the other entries. There were five other fruit cakes of various shapes and sizes. Two octogenarians were proudly placing their fruit creations on the table. His heart sank as he realised that these women had at least sixty years more baking experience that he did. 'Never mind' he thought; he had thoroughly enjoyed the experience and would be sure to break out his whisk again in the future.

Four o'clock came and he set off back to the town hall to pick up his mother's plate and congratulate the winner. He looked across at the table to see to which of the kindly old lady he should be directing his praise. He soon spotted the blue ribbon... 'No... Surely not... it is!' The blue ribbon had been placed next to his Giggle cake. A beaming smile crept across his young face; his creation had beaten all of the other ladies cakes to win the prize! He picked up the knife next to the cake like a triumphant knight on the field of battle, cut himself a slice and had his first bite of his prize winning cake. It was delicious! 

And from that very first bite my love of baking has grown and grown. Not very much unlike those damned lettuces from all those years ago.