Christmas Fruit and Carrot Cake

This cake needs some tinkering still, but was deliciously Christmassy with some mulled cider.

Due to my poor maths skills, I miscalculated the amount of fruit I'd need for my Christmas cake and pudding by around 250 g (I don't know quite how). My Christmas fruit was a mixture of glace cherries, candied peel, dried cranberries, currants, raisins and sultanas steeped in cherry brandy, Cointreau and Amaretto.

I'd been hankering after a carrot cake for a while, so I thought I'd combine the two ideas and cook a fruity carrot cake. Unfortunately, the only recipe I liked the look of was in American cups and had some spices I didn't have in (ground cloves, nutmeg) so I altered, substituted and below is my metric rendering of the cake:

Ingredients

• 175g brown sugar
• 85g butter
• 200 ml milk
• 2 eggs
• 225g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsps cinnamon
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 140g carrots
• 250g steeped Christmas fruit

How to Make it

Cream the butter and sugar together (the better you do this, the better a cake seems to come out), then add the milk and eggs alternately with the flour and dry ingredients. Then add the carrots and Christmas fruit, pour into a 8 or 9 inch tin (I had a 9 inch which is why it's a bit flat!) and bake for 45 mins to an hour.

For the icing - I used 100g cream cheese and 100g butter and just added icing sugar until it looked like the icing I've seen before on carrot cakes. Not precise, I know, but it worked OK.

When I make this cake again I'll likely cut the quantity of milk. I thought it looked a rather wet batter and after an hour of cooking, the cake still came out a little damp for my liking.