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Orange Fruit Cake
For three loaves take two cups each of orange marmalade and chopped, steamed prunes or raisins (or instead of two cups of prunes use one cup chopped nuts and one of currants or raisins or prunes); three-fourths cup of shortening; one scant cup of sugar; three eggs, four cups of flour; a teaspoon each of salt and nutmeg; two of baking-powder, and a half-teaspoon each of cloves and cinnamon. Bake slowly till quite done. In three individual loaves it will require about two hours.
A dense, marmalade-sweetened spice loaf that behaves more like a light fruitcake than a cake. The original assumes a wood or coal range and a cook who knows what her batter should look like, so a few things need pinning down.
- "Bake slowly" means 300–325F"Bake slowly" means a low oven, around 300-325F -- period guides put a slow oven anywhere from roughly 250F to 325F, and at the lower end of that range three small loaves will genuinely take close to two hours. If your oven runs hot, tent the tops with foil once they colour rather than raising the heat.
- ShorteningAt this period this means lard or one of the then-new vegetable shortenings; butter works and tastes better here against the spice and citrus. Three-fourths cup is 12 tablespoons, or a stick and a half.
- There is no added liquidThe moisture comes entirely from the marmalade, the eggs and the steamed fruit. Cream the fat and sugar, beat in the eggs, then fold in marmalade and fruit before the dry ingredients, and expect a stiff batter you spread rather than pour. If it will not spread, a few tablespoons of milk or orange juice is within the spirit of the thing.
- Steaming the prunesModern prunes are already soft and pitted; ten minutes over simmering water, or a soak in hot water and a thorough draining, is enough. Excess water will make the loaves gummy at the centre.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for four cups of flour is modest by current standards, which is correct for a heavy fruited batter — more lift only makes it crumble. Use double-acting powder as sold today.
- "Individual loaves"This means three separate small loaf pans, not single-serving ones. Three 5½ x 3-inch pans, or three 8 x 4-inch pans filled shallowly, will do; grease and line them, as the sugary marmalade sticks.
- DonenessA skewer at the centre should come out clean and the loaves should pull slightly from the sides. Fruited loaves read as underdone longer than plain cake, so trust the skewer rather than the clock.
- KeepingWrapped closely, these improve for two or three days as the spices settle; they slice much more cleanly on the second day than warm from the oven.
Cakes built on jam or marmalade rather than sugar alone were a standing household economy: the preserve supplies sweetness, acid, moisture and flavour at once, and a jar past its best gets used up. Orange marmalade is popularly associated with Scotland, and with Dundee in particular, though the Keiller origin story is tradition rather than documented fact and boiled orange preserves were being made in Britain well before that. The alternatives offered in the parenthesis, prunes or raisins or currants or nuts interchangeably, are typical of the era's recipe writing: the cook was expected to use what the shelf held rather than shop for a fixed list.