Cookbook Challenge 2013 - Week 37

This week I was away on holiday so not only was there very little cooking there was also very little chance for me to experiment with new recipes. But fear not, I still managed to sneak one in before I left! I thought that it might be nice to take a lovely homemade cake with us to enjoy with our holiday teas, and it obviously needed to be one that could travel well, there’s nothing worse than excitedly opening the cake tin to discover that all the icing has been daubed everywhere and there’s barely any left on the cake. To this end I chose a recipe that had been intriguing me for a while, Rachel Allen’s Ras-el-Hanout Spiced Fruitcake from Cake. The thought of cramming that wonderful combination of spices into a cake sounded amazing, and the fact that it was fat-free was an added bonus. The recipe really could not have been simpler, all you had to do was soak the fruits in some tea with the spices and then mix with the rest of the ingredients. The best part of making this cake was the aroma it created in the rest of the house, the smell of the spices was unbelievable – I didn’t really care what the cake tasted like at that point it was worth it for the smell alone. It was really difficult not to tuck into it once it had cooled but I was adamant that it would make the journey intact. A couple of days into our holiday we attacked it with relish (that is to say with delight, we didn’t have some kind of pickle with it – that would be weird!) with our evening cup of tea, and it was lovely. Now I’m not a big fan of fruit cake per se, but this one was incredibly light and moist and was the perfect antidote for a day of walking.

Recipe Count: 120
New Target: 156