Pigeon Cottage Kitchen

My mother used to bake on Mondays so that when we got home from school there would be a slice of something nice to eat with a glass of cold milk to fill the hunger gap between homework and supper. She would make lemon curd, plum jam or mincemeat tarts on large white enamelware plates edged with blue, sponge cakes and Lincolnshire tea bread you could slice and spread with salted butter, or top with a thick piece of crumbly Lancashire cheese. Sultanas, currants, raisins and mixed peel are soaked overnight in dark brown sugar and strong Assam tea, simply mixed with flour and an egg and, after about an hour in the oven, you’ve got this moist tasty treat. She died on the 14th of March, the day before Mother’s Day this year, so I thought this would be a fitting tribute to her for #TheFridayRecipe this week.

Ingredients

• 115g sultanas
• 115g raisins
• 55g currants
• 55g chopped mixed peel
• 115g dark Muscovado sugar
• 225g self-raising flour
• 290ml boiling water
• 2 Assam teabags (good quality tea is important for the finished flavour)
• 1 egg, beaten

To make…

• Make the tea and allow it to cool slightly. Remove the teabags.
• Soak the fruit and the mixed peel and sugar in the sugar and leave it overnight.
• Heat the oven to 170C.
• Line a 900g (2lb) cake tin with a baking parchment liner.
• The fruit should have absorbed pretty much all the tea, stir in the beaten egg and sift in the flour. Fold it all together carefully and pour it into the parchment liner.
• Bake in the oven for entire of the oven for and hour and a quarter until a skewer comes out clean. Cover loosely with tin foil after 45 minutes if it looks like the top is burning.
• Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool on a rack in the tin for 10 minutes. Lift it out of the tin and leave to cool completely. It will keep for a few days wrapped in foil, if it lasts that long!

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