Porter Cake (Fruit Cake with Guinness)

Family recipes are a gift and something to treasure. Mostly they are handed down with care and attention, including amendments or improvements so the next generation can continue to evolve and make the recipes their own. Not so with my mum. Ingredients such as ‘a lump of butter’ appear in her recipes and when questioned on what size a lump is all you get is, “Oh you know. A lump.” I spend my time trying to decipher them and keeping my fingers crossed that it will all turn out ok.

One recipe which is a Christmas staple is my family’s ‘Porter Cake’. Basically a boiled fruit cake with Guinness which tastes amazing. There is something about soaking the fruit in lots of butter and Guinness that not only creates a fantastic smell but also a wonderful liquor that the rest of the ingredients get mixed into. My husband thinks the sound it makes when stirred is great!

I was talking to my mum about it, as I was due to make it, and mentioned that the fruit drops in the cake most of the time on me. She then proceeded to ask me some questions about how I make it and I confirmed that I follow the recipe she gave me. Then the bombshell – the recipe was more a guideline than an actual representation of how she makes it! So I put too much Guinness in and not enough flour. WTF?! It’s already bad enough that the recipe calls for 4 or 5 eggs. She found this all rather amusing needless to say.

So I’ve experimented a little bit, not too much as following the original recipe made a pretty good cake, and below should mean you won’t fall foul of dropping fruit. I’ve left in the 4 or 5 eggs though as it wouldn’t be a family recipe for me without something a little vague, with the same going for the cake tins you need. I urge you to make this as it can all be done in one large saucepan and makes a welcome Christmas gift.

Ingredients

330ml Guinness (roughly)

350g raisins

350g sultanas

75g candied peel

75g glace cherries, chopped (I use the natural colour glace cherries as I don't like the lurid red of the other ones contrasting with the darker fruit in this cake but up to you)

200g brown sugar (I use whatever I have - light or dark or a mixture of the two)

250g butter

450g plain flour

2 tsp bicarb of soda

4 or 5 large eggs

1.   Get a large saucepan.

2.   Put the butter, sugar, raisins and candied peel in. Turn the heat on low and bring to a simmer.

3.   Turn off the heat and let the mixture cool. This allows the fruit to soak up the moisture and absorb the flavours. It needs to be left at least a couple of hours.

4.   Preheat the oven to 150°/GM1.

5.   Add the chopped cherries (I just cut them in with kitchen scissors) and then the eggs. Add the plain flour and bicarb. Mix well. Now this mixture might need a bit more flour, a bit less, depends on how much moisture the fruit has soaked up and if you used 4 eggs or 5.

6.   The difficulty with the recipe is that it was clearly put together for a random mammoth sized cake tin that is now lost in the midst of time. I sometimes make one round cake and one loaf cake, or 3 loaf cakes. Sorry – it’s another issue with this recipe – no set tin size. Just shove it in and I’m sure it will be ok. It always is for me.

7.   Cook for anything from 1 hour to 2 hours. If it's a loaf cake test after 45 minutes but if you have a mammoth cake tin you’ve put the whole mixture in then you’ll need about 2.