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Election Cake
1/2 cup butter 8 finely chopped figs 1 cup bread dough 1 1/4 cups flour 1 egg 1/2 teaspoon soda 1 cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 cup sour milk 1/4 teaspoon clove 2/3 cup raisins seeded, and cut in pieces 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon salt Work butter into dough, using the hand. Add egg well beaten, sugar, milk, fruit dredged with two tablespoons flour, and flour mixed and sifted with remaining ingredients. Put into a well-buttered bread pan, cover, and let rise one and one-fourth hours. Bake one hour in a slow oven. Cover with Boiled Milk Frosting.
A yeast-raised fruit cake that borrows its leavening from a piece of ordinary bread dough, then boosts it with soda and sour milk. The success of it rests on the dough being lively and the bake being slow.
- The bread doughThis means about one cup of risen, unbaked white bread dough, taken from a batch at its first rising. If you are not baking bread anyway, mix a small dough of 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 cup warm water, 1/2 teaspoon yeast and a pinch of salt, and let it double before using.
- Slow oven300 to 325F. The cake is dense with sugar and dried fruit and will scorch on top well before the centre sets at any higher temperature. An hour at 325F in a standard 9x5 loaf pan is about right; a skewer should come out clean.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured, roughly the acidity of buttermilk. Use buttermilk, or stir 1 1/2 teaspoons of lemon juice or vinegar into 1/2 cup whole milk and leave it ten minutes. The acid is there to react with the soda.
- Bread pan, coveredA 9x5 loaf tin. Cover with a cloth or loosely with foil for the rise so the surface does not crust over, and take the cover off before it goes into the oven.
- The riseOne and a quarter hours is a guide, not a rule. Butter, sugar and fruit all slow yeast down, so judge by volume: the dough should be visibly puffed and nearly filling the pan. In a cold kitchen it may want two hours.
- Dredging the fruitTossing the raisins and figs in two tablespoons of the measured flour keeps them suspended rather than sinking to the base. Take that flour from the 1 1/4 cups, not in addition to it.
- SaltA full teaspoon is on the high side for a single loaf by modern taste, particularly with salted butter and a frosting to follow. Half a teaspoon is defensible.
- Boiled milk frostingA cooked frosting given elsewhere in the book; check the method against that recipe rather than assuming it here. Any simple boiled or seven-minute icing serves the same purpose. Frost only when the loaf is completely cold.
- YieldOne loaf, roughly twelve to sixteen slices. A heavy fruit loaf of this kind keeps reasonably well wrapped.