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Light Fruit Cake
1 cup sugar 1/3 cup butter 2 1/2 cups flour 1 cup milk 1 cup raisins 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon soda 4 teaspoons baking powder Cream the butter and sugar together. Sift the flour, soda, cinnamon and cloves together, reserving a little of the flour with which to dredge the raisins. Add the milk and dry ingredients alternately to the butter and sugar. Stir in the raisins, and bake in a muffin pan or as a loaf in an oblong pan.
A plain eggless butter cake with raisins, leavened hard with both soda and baking powder. The ingredient list and the method do not quite agree, so read both before you start.
- The missing clovesThe method tells you to sift cloves with the flour, but no quantity appears in the list. Use 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves, matched to the cinnamon.
- No eggs, by designNo eggs -- This is an eggless cake, and the leavening is correspondingly heavy. Expect a tender, slightly crumbly muffin-like crumb rather than the dense, sliceable texture of a classic fruit cake.
- Leavening is on the high sideFour teaspoons of baking powder plus half a teaspoon of soda for 2 1/2 cups of flour works out at about half again the usual modern rate, and heavy chemical leavening can leave a soapy, metallic aftertaste. Two to two and a half teaspoons of baking powder with the soda will lift it adequately, given there are no eggs to support.
- The soda needs an acidWith sweet milk and no molasses or sour milk, the soda has little to react with beyond whatever acid is in the baking powder. Substituting buttermilk for the milk gives the soda something to work on and improves the flavour.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350F: about 20 to 25 minutes for muffins, 45 to 55 minutes for a loaf, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Dredging the raisinsThis is the one step worth respecting. Tossing the raisins in a spoonful of the measured flour keeps them suspended instead of sinking to the bottom of a fairly loose batter.
- Pan and yieldThe batter fills a standard 12-cup muffin pan or one 9x5-inch loaf tin. As a loaf it will want lining with parchment, since the sugar and fruit catch easily.
- Butter measure1/3 cup of butter is about 5 1/3 tablespoons, or 75 g. Pack it into the cup without air pockets.
"Light" fruit cake is a period distinction rather than a matter of calories: dark fruit cakes were built on molasses, brown sugar, heavy spice and dried fruit soaked in spirits, while light ones used white sugar, sweet milk and pale fruit such as raisins, citron or candied peel. This version is stripped down further still, with no eggs and no spirits.