Dundee Cake... in Bradford on Avon

A day trip to Bradford-on-Avon (a beautiful little town near Bath where some friends live) gave me a good excuse to try another recipe this weekend. As one and a half of the friends I was visiting (Dave, and his 3 month old son Ben) were Scottish, I thought a Dundee cake would be fitting. It's found on page 85 of Delia's Cakes - a page now suffering from several grease stains on my copy!


Putting it together was pretty straightforward as Delia went for an all-in-one method - the only faff was washing the glace cherries. It does take a fair old time to bake (one and three quarter hours was suggested) but this was no problem on Saturday night as Wimbledon kept me occupied. In the time the cake took to bake, Murray won two sets, lost one, and won one (phew!).

After an hour and a half (the Murray match was over, and I'd moved on to a fictional version of Wimbledon starting Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst) I checked on the cake and it looked very nearly done. I always find it tricky to know exactly when a fruit cake is ready - Delia said it should be firm and springy to touch (which sounded like something of a contradiction, and didn't help a whole lot!). I decided to give it 5 more minutes and made a cup of tea. 20 minutes later I sprang up from the sofa and ran to the oven. We've all been there. It wasn't burnt, but it was certainly a bit darker than I would have liked, and I cursed myself for not taking it out 20 minutes earlier.

We enjoyed a slice of cake with a cup of tea while all six adults present oohed and aahed at the incredibly cute baby (who, at three months, really was . In spite of the slightly overdone exterior, the cake was a hit - at least, it didn't put Jon & Gemma off ordering their wedding cake from us for next summer! I don't want to give anything away, but it sounds like it could be one of our most fun designs yet!

I digress. Dundee Cake is, for a fruit cake, pretty straightforward (no pre-soaking of fruit, or fiddly feeding) and it has a lovely crumbly texture and a fresh citrusy taste - not as rich as some of the other fruit cakes we will have to tackle nearer Christmas, and all the nicer for it in my opinion. It keeps well in a tin too, so once made you can have a slice