Nice fruit cake loaf recipe?

[Caspianberg]

I’m looking to make a nice light fruit loaf.
Not a dense Christmas cake type thing, but something nice to have with Tea.

Just baked Mary berry’s Bara brith fruit cake to try and it’s so horribly sweet I can’t eat it!
Feels like such a waste of time as I soaked the fruit in earl Grey tea last night, then made and baked this morning and it’s inedible

ps can I even feed it to the birds? Or not due to sugar?

@Turophilic - I don’t know. But the Mary berry one I baked this morning had load Sid tea soaked fruit in and it was a weird dry texture also which I assumed was due to lack of fat?
As a comparison I made Mary berry lemon drizzle after and it’s lovely

Have you dumped it OP, what about if you have it with a good strong cheese

Or even a blue cheese if thats your thing

This is the best one! www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/fruitcake/

@soupfiend - not yet. Going to try it warmed with salted butter for breakfast ( well dh is first..). I have mature cheddar we could try

@Caspianberg I know what you mean, like the mr Kipling Manor House cake! I've been looking for a decent recipe for ages too. If the Mary Berry one was decent you could take some of the sugar out? Most cakes can have the sugar content reduced (type 1 diabetic here!)

I love the name of this, like something out of good housekeeping in the 80's.

this is delicious
Bara Brith recipe | Delia Smith

This looks delicious!

I make this Mary Berry mincemeat loaf cake, it’s easy and delicious.

It really is. I picked that recipe because I wanted one that used marmalade and whisky. The almonds on top are so good.

I tend to make up my fruit cake recipe.
Basic rich cake ratios of
Equal quantities (by weight)
Of flour, butter, sugar and eggs. Roughly the same on dried fruit but add to taste by eye. Aim for a soft dropping consistency, if its too wet then add a few more of flour.
If you like a light cake use white sugar not brown, and not too much fruit. if you use self rasing it will be a lighter and crumblier cake than if you use plain which is a denser more slicable cake that is what my mum used to make.
Can either cream butter and sugar then slowly add beaten eggs, beating well between each addition to avoid curdling, then lightly stir if flour and fruit which is the recipe I grew up with,
I tend to do an all in 1 mix as I am lazy, chuck in everything except the fruit, beat with a hand mixer till it looks right, stir in fruit and chuck in a tin. This is easier if the butter is quite warm (but not melted)
Cook fairly slowly til a skewer comes out clean.

Have recently discovered reverse creaming, which I have yet to try with a fruit cske but don't see why it wouldn't work.
It's when you mix flour and butter (so easy in a food mixer) then stir in sugar then add egg.
It is easier than regular creaming as it won't curdle, but something in the science of it makes it lighter than the all in one method. Don't ask me what though 🤣

I haven't tried her recipe but i do like bara brith, but it's more a tea loaf to eat spread with butter than a fruit cake. Texture definitely different. I also like it with cheddar, which is my preferred way to eat fruit cake too!

https://www.visitwales.com/things-do/food-and-drink/welsh-food-and-recipes/bara-brith-recipe

I see this traditional Welsh recipe for bara birth is almost the same but uses less than half the sugar of the Mary berry one. So maybe it really is just too much of that one ingredient throwing it off

And yes maybe a white sugar recipe will be lighter for a ‘tea cake loaf’

I was given this recipe for marmalade tea loaf by a friend. I love it and have made it many times. I boil the fruit in tea rather than just water and I also add mixed peel because I love it in a fruit cake. You can also freeze the loaves for later.

For a more everyday fruit cake I use a tried and tested recipe from the BeRo book, for a rubbed in fruit loaf, from memory the quantities are:
4oz butter rubbed in to
8 oz flour (either self raising or plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder, you can substitute some ground almonds for 2 oz of the flour if you like), then add
3oz golden caster sugar and
2 beaten eggs
then add whatever fruit, nuts, flavourings you like - I like to use 4 oz chopped dried cranberries and orange zest, or sultanas and lemon zest, sometimes some mixed spice and or vanilla too
If it needs loosening add a little milk

Bake in a loaf tin at 170 degrees for about 40-50 mins

This type of fruit cake doesn't keep that well, but never gets a chance to hang around in our house...

It's too late for the cake you've already baked, but in future try using only 2/3 of the sugar in recipes.

I've always found Tiesen Lap a good cake...even husband likes it and he really detests anything sweet!

www.visitwales.com/things-do/food-and-drink/welsh-food-and-recipes/teisen-lap-cake-recipe

Does this change the texture and structure at all?

Im a bit clueless at baking but dont like overly sweet things either

I’ve been making this one for years, it’s delicious.
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=421636228011110&id=207309386110463&set=a.207313022776766]]

No change to texture in my experience but I don't bake to competition level 😁

I also don't like overly sweet food - sometimes I use coconut sugar which seems to be less sweet than caster sugar.

I hate shop bought cakes, they're so sweet it burns your mouth!

In a fruit cake - by which I mean a dense fruit cake like Christmas cake rather than a tea loaf - there is so much fruit in relation to flour and sugar that the usual structure issues don’t apply. Basically the cake batter is there to glue all that fruit into something you can slice.

With that sort of cake you can reduce the sugar dramatically - the flour and egg will do the binding.

A tea loaf (bara brith, fruit bread etc) you have two main types.
One is a traditional cake base - creaming butter and sugar - so dropping the sugar more than about a 1/4 can affect the texture.
The other type has you mix the wet stuff, mix the dry stuff, combine the two. That’s more forgiving of significantly reducing sugar.

(I used to do this stuff for a living. Sorry if it’s more information than you wanted)

I thought that was really interesting, @Turophilic. One way I would think to get a much less sweet result, but less cake-like, would be to use a yeast-leavened dough or batter rather than an ordinary cake mix. If you use strong flour and develop the gluten by kneading, I assume it's then just a matter of preference how much sugar you add rather than essential to the texture. Takes longer to make from start to finish than a tea loaf, though!

Glad to be useful, Gaspode - after your heads up for Cabin Pressure I owed you one!

If anyone has time to watch This Morning on ITV1 today, they're going to be cooking a sugar free carrot cake on the programme. I expect the recipe will be online as well