Oh ladies, what am I like!?! I promised you this post weeks ago and I'm only getting around to it now. All the Christmas crafting is keeping me very busy and is taking up every spare minute that I have.
Fortunately the best thing about baking a Porter Cake instead of a full Christmas cake is that it can be made at the very last minute and doesn't need to be plied with booze every week for three months. It is also much lighter than a Christmas cake. It can be iced and decorated just like a regular Christmas cake but we don't have many fans of heavy icing in our house so we just leave it plain and sometimes serve it with a scraping of butter. Yumm
Ingredients:
- 283ml / 1/2pt Guinness
- 226g / 8oz Butter
- 226g / 8oz Sugar
- 226g / 8oz Raisins
- 226g / 8oz Sultanas
- 113g / 4oz Mixed Peel
- Grated Rind of 1 Lemon
- 453g / 1lb Flour
- 2tsp Mixed Spice
- 3 Eggs
- 1/2tsp Bread Soda
- Preheat oven to 150°C and line and grease a 20" round tin. (Above we just used a square one because we couldn't find the right one on the day...typical!!)
- Heat the Guinness gently with the butter and sugar.
- Stir in the cleaned fruit and lemon rind.
- Stir until the butter and sugar are melted and then leave aside to cool.
- mix all the dry ingredients together, except the bread soda.
- Beat the eggs and add the bread soda and then stir into the cooled fruit mixture.
- Make a hollow in the middle of the dry ingredients and stir in the fruit mixture.
- Mix well before transferring to the prepared baking tin.
- Cook for 2 1/2 to 3 hours covering with a piece of cardboard if you think it is browning too much on the top.
- When a skewer comes out clean from the cake, remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10mins before removing from the tin.
Rosie xx
