If you were listening in to Gardens Hour today, this is the fruit cake we were eating in the studio. It’s a recipe from my Mum. You can put fresh fruit on top of the cake when you serve it. I put slices of mandarin orange on mine today. I’ve served it with slices of peach and pineapple too. Very moist and tasty. Can be served with cream or custard as a pudding, it is very versatile. Perfect for picnics too.
INGREDIENTS
285g SR flour
85g butter, softened
110g golden caster sugar
180g mixed dried fruit
1 tsp. mixed spice
1/2 tsp. bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
280ml milk
7″ round cake tin
METHOD
Mix flour and butter together. Add sugar, mixed fruit, spice and bicarbonate of soda. Mix well.
Beat egg and milk together. Mix in with dry ingredients.
Turn into a well-greased cake tin.
Cook at gas mark 4, 170C oven for 1 hr 15 minutes. Check after 1 hour and put foil on cake if it is getting too brown.
Citrus Trees Update
I’ve started to move my citrus fruit trees out of the greenhouse into the garden for the summer. I’ll start them off in a shady position until the plant cells have become accustomed to the outdoors. After about four days, you can gradually move them into full sun. Moving straight from greenhouse to bright sunshine can cause
leaf scorch.
Bramble Garden 
Karen the recipe of the fruit cake of your beloved Mother, say hello from me with love and memories, it is very easy to make and in the photo it looks exquisite: thank you very much for it. Your citrus fruits look fabulous and fantastic, overflowing with health, I love them. Take advantage. I hope you find yourself more recovered and with more strength and you have already finished the antibiotics. I’m slowly getting strength but with this heat in Madrid, today we are at 40ºC, there is no one to raise their heads. Tomorrow and the past the temperatures fall but on Monday they rise again. Karen love and a lot of health for your family and for you. Take care and rest. Very loving greetings from Margarita.
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Thank you Margarita. I’m just catching up. Finished the antibiotics and praying the chest infection stays away. Xx
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Karen pray with you so that the infection of the chest stays away and you do not have any sequel left. A lot of encouragement and that you recover completely very soon. Lots of love and health and strength. Take care. Greetings from your friend Margarita.
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Thank you 😊 xx
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Citrons were used for fruitcake a very long time ago, but are so rare nowadays that most of us just use lemon peel. Of the forty cultivars of citrus I used to grow, the kosher ‘Etrog’ citron was one of my all time favorites. . . even though I never actually grew it. The stock plant succumbed to the bad frost of 1990, and I tried unsuccessfully to acquire another kosher stock plant. I never did. I grew another ‘ornamental’ citron, which happened to be one of my least favorite of the citrus.
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Cake looks good – so do the photographs
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Thank you Derrick 🙂
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