Irish Tea Cakes
- Ready In:
- 1hr 25mins
- Ingredients:
- 11
- Yields:
-
2 cakes
ingredients
- 225 g raisins
- 110 g currants
- 350 g sultanas
- 110 g mixed peel (candied peel)
- 225 g demerara sugar (or raw sugar)
- 1 tea bag (your favourite variety)
- 110 g walnuts, roughly chopped
- 275 ml boiling water
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 450 g self-raising flour
directions
- The day before you intend to cook this recipe, place all the fruit and the mixed peel into a large mixing bowl.
- In a medium bowl or large heat proof jug, measure out 275ml of boiling water.
- Jiggle the tea bag around in the water until you have a nice, strong brew.
- Add the sugar to the hot tea and stir until sugar is dissolved.
- Pour tea/sugar mixture over the fruit.
- Cover and leave overnight.
- The next day, set the oven to 170C/325°F.
- Grease two 450g/1lb loaf tins and line the base and sides with baking paper- also known as baking parchment or silicone paper.
- Add the chopped walnuts to the fruit mixture.
- Break the egg into a small dish, add the milk, and beat lightly.
- Add the egg mixture to the fruit mixture.
- Sieve the flour into the fruit mixture then mix well, using a wooden spoon- the mixture may seem dry at first, but keep mixing and it will come together.
- Using a large serving spoon, divide the mixture evenly between the lined loaf tins, then smooth the tops with the back of a spoon.
- Place on the centre shelf of the oven and bake for 1 1/4- 1 1/2 hours until a skewer, pushed through the centre of the cake, comes out clean.
- Be careful not to overcook- test after 1 1/4 hours.
- Remove cakes from oven and turn out immediately to cool on a wire rack.
- Serve warm or at room temperature, sliced and buttered.
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
<p>Above: Slideshow of our garden at Avalon Slideshow of our recent holiday at Woodgate Beach, South-East Queensland, Australia. Hi! I'm Kookaburra, from Australia. First, a promise. I will only post recipes on this site which I've made myself and to which I would personally give a 5 star rating - what you give them is up to you ;-) I look forward to receiving your feedback. If you look at my reviews, they're all 5 stars. That doesn't mean I give 5 stars to every recipe I try. I'm just not interested in giving poor ratings to anyone else's recipe because I accept that different people have different tastes. So, I've decided that I'll only review those recipes which I really love and which I'd make again and recommend to friends. If a recipe meets that criteria - even if it needs a bit of 'tweaking' to match my tastes, I'll give it 5 stars. If not, I'll just delete it from my recipe book and no hard feelings. I'm not advocating this as the 'right' approach. I just decided I needed a consistent strategy for rating and this is mine. I'm passionate about cooking - and eating! What I look for in food is something that 'zings' in the mouth. I like lots of taste - I'm not a big fan of subtlety. I don't often cook recipes exactly as written. I like to experiment and adapt things to my own taste. A retired marketing executive and academic, I live with my elderly (but thoroughly modern) mother in a tiny mountain village at the edge of the rainforest. I'm female, happily single, in my mid-40s and boast the Rubenesque figure of a passionate cook! Avalon, our 'story-book' cottage, overlooks a small lake. As I sit at my computer or work in the kitchen, I'm serenaded by a cacophany of native birds - including a very fat family of kookaburras! We have quite a large property and are lucky to have vegetable gardens and a variety of fruit and nut trees. I look forward to sharing recipes on Recipezaar with family, friends and friends I've yet to meet. last minute flight</p>