Australian Fruit Cake - a family recipe

A family recipe for Australian fruit cake - a moist, fruity cake baked in a loaf tin. This cup-measured recipe can be enjoyed by those on a dairy-free or vegan diet with a few tweaks.

Australian Fruit Cake - a family recipe

Name: Australian Fruit Cake - a family recipe
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 1 h 15 min
Total time: 1 h 25 min
Cuisine: Australian
Ingredients: 125g (1 stick + 1 tablespoon) butter; 1 cup (teacup) water; 1 cup (teacup) sugar; 1 cup (teacup) sultanas; 1 teaspoon ground mixed spice; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon; 1 teaspoon ground ginger; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup (teacup) plain flour; 1 cup (teacup) self-raising flour; 1 egg (or flax egg - see notes), whisked; 1 pinch salt

Get ready to enjoy the moist, fruity delight of my family recipe for fruit loaf.

My mum has a recipe book she filled from the late 1950s, through to the late 1970s.

It's a bit yellowed in places and has a few cooking stains, but it's full of so much inspiration.

There are handwritten recipes, notes, and recipe clippings torn from newspapers and magazines.

This recipe is handwritten and called Australian fruit loaf.

She can't remember where she got it from, but many of her family emigrated to Australia, so she thinks it may have been passed to her by a cousin.

I guess I'll never know, but if brings back lots of lovely childhood memories of watching her make this tasty fruit loaf to memories or spreading it with lashings of butter.

Mmmmm!

What's different about this recipe?

Scales are traditionally used to measure ingredients when baking in the UK, but this recipe uses cups.

Not cup measures, but teacups.

The sort of cups that have their own saucer.

If you don't have one, you could pick one up in a charity shop.

Prefer to measure using cups measures or scales?

Fanny Craddock, the chef and household name in the UK from the late 50s to the 70s said a British teacup is 5 ½ oz or 155g for flour, 7 ½ oz or 212g of caster sugar.

You can't argue with Fanny!

Boiled fruit cake

This simple Australian fruit loaf is also known as a boiled fruit cake.

It's known as a boiled cake because the butter, sultanas, sugar, spice, and some water are boiled in a pot.

Once the mixture is cool, the dry ingredients are added.

Your house will smell divine as it bakes.

Ingredients for Australian Fruit Loaf Cake

Here are the simple ingredients you need to make this teacup-measured twist on a classic fruit cake.

butter
water
sugar
sultanas
ground mixed spice
ground cinnamon
ground ginger
bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
plain flour
self-raising flour
egg

Variations to Australian Fruit Cake

Here are a few tweaks you can make to this recipe.

Nutmeg - instead of mixed spice
Raisins - instead of sultanas
Cranberries - for a Christmas twist
Mixed dried fruit - instead of sultanas
Orange zest - for an extra fruity burst

Can you make Australian Fruit Loaf vegan?

It's super easy to make this fruit loaf cake suitable for a dairy-free or vegan diet.

Just use vegan butter and a flax egg instead of a regular egg.

Block vegan butter is better for this.

To make a flax egg, grind flax seeds (linseeds) and measure 1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds with 3 tablespoons water and pop it in the fridge for half an hour until it's gloopy.

You can use this in place of one regular egg.

How long will sultana fruit loaf last?

Not very long as it's so good!

But seriously, you can keep it wrapped in baking paper in a cake tin for up to a week.

There's no need to put it in the fridge.

If it does get a little dry later in the week, try toasting slices and serving with a slathering of butter.

Can you freeze fruit loaf cake?

Fruit loaf cake is best frozen in slices.

Simply wrap each slice in freezer-friendly baking paper, then pop them in a freezer bag or tub and freeze until you fancy some cake.

Defrost in the fridge.

Have you tried any of my other vegan loaf cakes? They are so good!

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How to serve fruit loaf

This moist fruit loaf is good served just as it is, with a cup of coffee or tea.

However, it's absolutely lush served slathered with butter.

As I said before, it's also really good toasted and spread with butter, which melts into the cake. Mmmmm!

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Remember and say hi. I'm always happy to chat and answer questions.

fruit loaf, fruit cake, sultana cake, raisin cake, Australian fruit loaf, Australian fruit cake

dessert

Australian

Yield: 8 slices

Author: Jacqueline Meldrum