Alcoholic Boiled Fruit Cake recipe

This week's recipe has a very round-about history.  It all started when my father, who was a creative, but not very hygienic, good or interested cook, but a great gourmand, saw a box of books falling out of a delivery truck. Opening the box, he discovered it contained numerous copies of Nigel Slattery's "Simple Flavours".  Instead of keeping them all and distributing them amongst family and friends as a lot of people would, he revealed his very Presbyterian upbringing (usually extremely hidden) by ringing the publishing company up.  They sent someone round to collect the books and gratefully gave him one copy in thanks.  He gave me the book, hoping I would cook him something from it.  I discovered Michelle Day's Fruit Cake recipe, which he enjoyed very much.  Later, someone told me I actually knew her, and that her kids went to the same school as my kids, but as I never put names and faces together, I don't know if this is true.  Anyway, I gradually began to play with the recipe and give it a Jamaican slant by adding lots of alcohol.  (  I always have a bottle of dried mixed fruit in the pantry, which can contain anything from sultanas to cranberries, raisins, currants, orange peel, cherries, and chopped prunes.  They soak in the dregs of bottles of alcohol, which does not have to be expensive, by the way, plonk will do - port, sherry, tonic wine, whisky, brandy: all unite in my bottle of fruit.  This mix goes into most of my fruit cakes, and occasionally into desserts). Then, a close friend had to change to a gluten free diet, and I adapted it again.  This is the latest version.

Alcoholic Boiled Fruit Cake.

Ingredients:

5 cups of  soaked, dry fruit
300 g butter
2 cups raw sugar
2 tspn bicarbonate soda
2 cups alcohol
2 teaspoons nutmeg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 dash cloves
4 well beaten eggs
2 cups plain flour - wholemeal or plain, gluten free or not.

Method:

Put fruit, butter, alcohol, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and alcohol into a pot and boil until sugar and butter have dissolved.  Watch it!  The bicarbonate of  soda can fizz out of the pot if you don't stir and turn down the heat!  Cool for about an hour.

Now stir in spices and eggs.  Fold in flour gradually.  I rarely remember to do this and often get flour lumps as a result, which do not taste or look nice.  (Warning:  the mixture can look very runny.  Don't worry).

Pour into a greased tin which has been lined with baking paper.  Bake at 170 degrees for an hour, or until cooked through.


It lasts well, is yummy, moist and moreish, and easy!  Sometimes I make tiny little ones as Christmas cakes for gifts.  I like having one in the house when I am expecting visitors. Sometimes, I ice them.  When someone I know is not partial to traditional fruit cakes, I just use sultanas and somehow, the alcohol convinces them it is not a fruit cake.  Try it!

I rarely get colds but I got a horrible one, so cooking and eating out was erratic.

These are some of the home made meals we had:

 Fried bream with rice, coconut and carrot salad and a wonderful sweet coriander salsa.

Vegetable soup:

Baked capsicums stuffed with rice and tuna

 

 

 

Greek style lamb on Turkish bread, with orange and Pomegranate hommus and salad

 

 

We also taste-tested this amazing melon, called "Piel de Sapo", which is beautifully sweet and seems to be a green version of the yellow one we often ate  in Spain.

Bob continued experimenting with poached eggs.  He has decided that avoiding egg holders and swirling vinegared boiling water gives the best effect.

We have had a few meals out though.

Coco's Café in Yarragon, Victoria was very good.  A pea and ham soup with bread,

then a Florentine biscuit

 


and a Bread and Butter Pudding went down very well on a cold day.

 

In Eagle Junction, Brisbane, Bob had his favourite eggs Florentine

 

while I had a very nice garden salad and one of their fantastic juices  beetroot and ginger.  How healthy I am getting!

Box Hill Central, for a vast choice of Asian foods.

In Brisbane, I have just discovered Adrift café and gift shop in Chelmer, where I admired their  felt animals and enjoyed a lovely, slightly chilli bowl of chicken and vegetable soup,

 

 

At home,  we enjoyed  dried anchovies fried with peanuts, garlic, chilli and spring onions, a mushroom and ginger stir-fry and rice..

 

 

l love going to Box Hill Central, in Melbourne- all those wonderful market  stalls, Vietnamese butchers and seafood shops, Asian grocers and eateries.  So much choice!  I always come home with something nice.  This week, we ate at the Grain Asian café and had a sticky rice bundle

 

Prawn dumpling soup and

 

pork and prawn wonton soup

 

 

We inspected without buying duck blood and duck tongues, silky chicken with their black skins, pigs' trotters.  We bought a lovely piece of pork for a roast at home and some Chinese pork sausages for a gift.

 

The roast was very much appreciated and the sausages will be.

 

 

In Traralgon, we popped into Adie's Café and Restaurant for lunch.  Service was slow because of an unexpected staff shortage, but the food was good:

poached eggs and bacon, hash brownies and bacon

prawn and salad tortilla with hash brownies.

We bought a bottle of their pickled samphire to try out when we get home.

A Bakewell Tart from Brissie

We had a day trip to Warwick, Queensland, for the Knitting and Jazz Festival,  and intended to try out the local cuisine.  Our first stop was at a cafe called Mussels which incorporated a bakery, Mamma Lucia's,  for a cup of coffee and one of the very large range of cakes. 

Unfortunately, we had to wait and wait and wait and wait.....  I know they had an unusually large number of customers due to the Jazz and Jumpers Festival, but the wait was incredible, and there was no apology for the wait.  The pastry on our choice was not worth the wait - a bit chewy. 

 

We were intending to come back for lunch, but the poor service and the sight of the simply enormous plates of fried parmigiana and chips put us off.

Later on, when we tried to find a nice place for lunch, all the other cafes seemed to have long waiting times.  We ended up having Asian food in the food court.  Passable, if oily. 

 

The Jazz and Jumpers Festival didn't appear to have considered the fact that the town couldn't cater for feeding the visitors.  Pity.

In another trip, we stopped for a very late lunch at Café 109 in Dunkeld, Victoria.  They apologised for only being only being able to offer 2 types of soups, a range of  baked pies, pasties and sausage rolls, or quiches, as well as a large range of cakes and biscuits.  How nice to find somewhere in a fairly remote location which actually doesn't get flummoxed if you are late for lunch and offers you a range of choices.  We opted for the minestrone soup with toasted cheese on bread

 

and followed up with lemon meringue pie and chocolate biscuit.

All very nice indeed, with lovely service to boot..  A few restaurants I have been to lately could learn from them.

We also went to a birthday party in Mt. Gambier, South Australia, where lucky Mr. One Year Old had this very cute cake:

Apart from that, we have done a lot of home cooking:

(Steak and onions)

 

 

(Grilled lamb and burritos)

 

(Beef, vegetable and noodle soup)

(Asian mushrooms and rice)

 

(Spaghetti marinara)

 

(Apple cake)

 

and this week's recipe:

 

Bakewell tart

 

(disclaimer:  this is nothing like the tarts I had in Bakewell, England.  It is my interpretation - a tribute)

 

 

Ingredients:

 

1 packet sweet short crust pastry

125g butter

125g caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond essence

3 eggs

125g ground almonds

raspberry jam

30g flaked almonds

 

Method:

 

Grease a pie dish and line with pastry.  Place a sheet of baking paper on the pastry, pour dried beans or rice on top and bake at 190 degrees for 10 minutes.  Remove paper and beans and bake another 10 minutes or until gold.  Cool slightly, then spread jam on the base of the tart shell.

 

Use an electric mixer to beat butter, sugar and essences until light and fluffy.  Beat eggs in one at a time.  Stir in ground almonds.

 

Spread mixture over jam, then sprinkle the top with flaked almonds.

 

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes until the mixture is risen and brown

 

Dust with icing sugar and serve warm or at room temperature, with cream if preferred.

Same same different

I bought 750 g of lamb mince and couldn't decide what to do with it.  Looking into the fridge and spice cupboard, I decided to make a sort of  kofta.  Then I decided I had made too much, so ended up making 2 meals for 2 different days  which used the same ingredients differently.  The first night, we had lamb kofta, 1/2 sliced red capsicum, 1/2 Roma tomato, sliced lengthways, and 1/4 large fennel,sliced,  with a cucumber yoghurt sauce on burritos.

 

The second night, we had lamb meatballs, couscous with red capsicum, onions and fennel, and the cucumbers and yoghurt sauce:

Lamb Kofta/ lamb meatballs

Ingredients :

750 g lamb mince
3/4 cup couscous
I small onion
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Ground salt
Ground black pepper and green pepper
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground dried chillis
1/4 teaspoon ground mustard seeds
1/ teaspoon rosemary
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 egg, beaten
I clove garlic, chopped finely
1 handful of parsley, chopped
4 pre- soaked bamboo skewers

Method:

Pour 3/4 of hot water on couscous and leave, while preparing the rest.
Mix together other ingredients, then mix in the couscous.
For koftas:  place 1/2 of the mixture on  skewers, squeezing each into a sausage shape.  Grill for about  10 minutes or until cooked, turning occasionally.
For meatballs:  preheat oven to 180 degrees. Roll into walnut sized balls and place on a tray lined with baking paper.  Cook for about 15 minutes or until cooked.

Cucumber and yoghurt sauce:

Ingredients:

1grated Lebanese cucumber
1 small tub natural/ Greek yoghurt.
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
Salt
Pepper
A dollop of olive oil.

Method:

Mix all together.

Vegetable Couscous:

Ingredients:

olive oil
1/2 red capsicum, diced
1 small onion, diced
1/4 large fennel, diced
1 cup couscous
1  1/2 cup boiling water
Pepper

Method:

Heat olive oil in pan.  Add vegetables and cook on medium heat until tender.  Turn off heat.
Pour in stock and then add couscous and stir.  Leave for about 4 minutes stirring occasionally until soft, but with seperate grains.

Other dishes cooked this week were banana cake, grilled oysters, potato and leek soup (courtesy of a friend's recipe):

and turmeric fish with vegetable couscous:

By the way, this turmeric fish is very tasty and very simple. I used white snapper, cut into chunks and mixed it in a bowl with a sprinkling of turmeric and curry powder, salt, pepper, shredded coconut and natural yoghurt.  Heat some olive oil and heat the fish mixture, stirring constantly until cooked through.

Of course, the ladies who lunch lunched.  We went to the old favourite, New Farm Deli and Café where we tried the poached egg and mushroom

salmon omelette

omelette and fennel

orange and almond cake

and berry muffin.

We also discovered the very trendy, Leaf, where we shared a quick baba hanouj and toast, thick chips and dip, and toasted cheese on bread.  Nice!  Plus, we could sticky beak at the cooks preparing the evening's meal.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

The ladies who dine had a knitting day, and all contributed to morning tea ( sourdough fruit bread and some beautiful little cakes), lunch (potato and leek soup with yoghurt and chopped chives, Spanish sourdough bread,and little caramel tarts) and lots of tea and coffee.  Since I was contributing the breads, I decided to try out Brewbakers in Albion.  The parking availability in the area is atrocious, but the bread was straight out of the oven and very good.  Judging from the amount of customers buying and dining there, the shop is considered well worth the stress of driving round searching for a park.

Another bakery I tried out this week was Sol Breads in West End.  This time I tried the cheese twists and the olive and thyme heat sourdough.  The cheese twists are delicious.  The sourdough here is heavier and drier, and I prefer it toasted to fresh.

I had lunch with a friend at Sakura Sushi, where the sushi train offered a good variety

 

(though the edamame were a bit too cold)

 The crab balls were good

 as was the grilled salmon on rice.  I also enjoyed a spiced  beef sushi plate and a packaged mocha.
Diners can help themselves to free tea and water.  They were very tolerant about us chatting on and lingering, so I appreciated the hosts.

We also had a day out at Mooloolaba with friends.  We tried out Bella Venezia restaurant in Mooloolaba, which was quite cosy, with helpful staff.  We tried the duck and mushroom risotto, which was apparently good:

the seafood risotto, which was a bit of a disappointment:

 and the fish of the day which was very good:

As well as that, we ordered wine by the glass since we all wanted different wines and there was a good variety.  After, we went for a stroll along the foreshore amongst the pandanus palms, eating ice-creams from Gelatissimo, before the bad weather rolled in.

Another day, we tried to get into Aspley oriental forYum Cha but got fed up with huge queues and waiting, so ended up at the Oriental Yum Cha in Fortitude Valley instead where we got in immediately.  This time we had steamed Char Siu Bao

pork and black bean sauce, steamed dumpling, steamed wrapped king prawn :

Lo Mai Gai

 

 

 and, the only disappointment, mango pudding, which was fairly tasteless:

 

,
This week's home meals included the left over oxtail stew with additions to make a pasta sauce.

Then, we had  vegetarian minestrone soup and sourdough bread:

Quick Vegetarian Minestrone soup:

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 can mixed beans
I can chopped tomatoes
 2 garlic cloves, chopped
fist sized piece of pumpkin, chopped into chunks
1 onion chopped into chunks
2 celery sticks, chopped into chunks
I large handful of French beans, topped and tailed and chopped into chunks
2 cups chopped cabbage
vegetable stock to cover
salt and pepper to taste
oregano to taste
2 bayleaf
grated parmesan cheese

Method:

Heat oil and sauté garlic and onions till soft. Stir in other vegetables, canned tomatoes, and juices from can of beans, then add stock and seasonings and heat to boil.  Turn down and simmer until just tender.   Add beans, check taste, and adjust if necessary.  Heat through, then serve with parmesan sprinkled over the top.

We also had black bream with kale and tomato:

and seasoned chicken wings and baked vegetables with beans.

 

Oh!  And we had microwaved apple stuffed with cranberries, pistacchios, cinnamon and brown sugar for dessert one night.