Tea Loaf & Rosie's Muses

I just had to share with you my first daffodil that opened in my garden the other day. It must be signs of spring on the way! I really love to see spring flowers and blooms after long dark winter nights and what we have to look forward to with lighter nights and warmer days.

Tea Loaf

Close up on a slice of fruit cake

There’s something quite alluring about the simple pleasures in life don’t you think? For me it has to be a good cup of tea and the occasional slice of homemade cake. Put the two together and I’ve come up with yet another Tea Loaf recipe. My original recipe I posted was called Fruity Tea Loaf when I first started blogging. There is a slight difference to my last recipe as you will note, but both taste equally delicious. You can soak the fruit in whatever tea you prefer, ensuring you make it strong. This makes the fruits soak up all that lovely moistness and flavour from the tea overnight for the next days baking. I always have mixed dried fruit in my cupboard so I tend to use these in my bakes for simplicity. Talking of simplicity, this really must be one of the easiest of bakes to make with no fuss. With all those flavours and moist fruits, no one would ever know you haven’t slaved over making this cake.

Tea Loaf

Ingredients
275 ml (½ pint) of strong tea (I like to use hot tea)
225g (8 oz) mixed dried fruit
25g (1 oz) glace cherries, chopped into quarters
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
100g (4 oz) melted butter – cooled slightly
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g (9 oz) self-raising flour
125g (8 oz) dark brown sugar
1 large egg

You will need a 900g (2 lb) loaf tin greased and lined with baking paper.

Method

The night before, soak all the dried fruits including the cherries in a bowl with the tea, (I like to soak mine in hot strong tea). Cover over with cling film and leave aside until the next day.

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.

Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly. Stir in the finely grated zest of lemon and orange into the tea mixture. Next beat in the cooled melted butter, sugar, vanilla extract, egg and flour. Spoon into the prepared loaf tin and place into the preheated oven and bake for about 1 hour 20 minutes or until golden brown and or when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin before turning out. You can wrap the fruit loaf up in foil and store in an airtight tin for a couple of days before eating if you’re baking this to serve at a later date.

Note: If the top of the tea loaf is becoming to brown when baking, cover the top over with baking paper to help it from burning.