Tea and fruit bread

Even food bloggers have really bad kitchen days… Everything seemed going OK until I bumped into the mother of all disaster recipes. Without going into too much detail, the whole thing ended up in the trash bin. Then, I realised I was missing the key ingredient for the next bake. In despair, I turned to google to guide my way out of this mess. “Tea and fruit bread”, said the oracle. “You cannot get this one wrong”. She was right: it is super easy, quick and more importantly, fool-proof.  A couple of hours later everything was fine again…

On a side note, this is very close to what my Grandmother used call English cake and insist on buying every Christmas. Us kiddies never thought the point of it – all that crystallised fruit was unappealing. We would patiently wait for it get too dry to eat, so my Mother could convert into a much more appetising bread pudding made with custard.

Tea and fruit bread (adapted from a recipe found in nigella.com)

Ingredients

• 1 cup black tea
• 250g  mixed dried fruit
• 250g white flour
• 2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 125g of caster sugar
• 1 large beaten egg
• 2 tablespoons orange marmalade

Method

Grease a  loaf tin (about 650g)

Preheat oven to 180oC

Put the fruit in a small bowl, and pour in the tea. Let it soak overnight if possible, or until the fruit is swollen.

In a bowl combine the flour, sugar, egg and marmalade. Then, fold in the fruit and any tea left in the bowl.  Mix thoroughly

Put into loaf tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour

Allow to cool slightly before removing from the tin