An old fashionned kind of cake

I don't know much about fashion, I don't follow it especially, I don't get it when people say things like "Pink is the new Black". I still have some sweater or t-shirts from my colleage years, that I wear around the house (because they are too big now), and I buy the clothes that I like and that I believe fit me, no matter what the last trend is. Because let's face it, whatever is "in" one day, will be "out" some other day. So I have no problem being "old-fashionned".

The same works for music, nothing like a good old Beatles album or an Aretha Franklin CD to make me sing along and cook in rythm (yes I do use my spatula as a microphone when I'm particularly chearfull, and no one is around to witness it, of course). I wasn't even born when those singers were big, and not that I don't like some of today's music, I don't listen to it because it's "trendy", specially if I'm wondering if the singer actually swallowed the computer, because it sounds so fake.

In the kitchen, some cuisine can be considered as "old-fashionned". Just watch a 70's cookbook, or the movie "Julie and Julia", to see all the aspics that are suggested. Who would serve an aspic at a dinner party today? Probably no one, though I actually like them. Now for this cake, a candied fruit one, it has a bit of a "dated" side to me, maybe because the kids don't really like it around here, but when I did it for some "older than me grown ups" last week, they loved it.

Like any good old recipe, it keeps great, and I even think it's better the day after. You can play on which kind of candied fruit you are using, depending on your taste, aswell as the tea you are using for the raisins. Even when flouring the candied fruits, mine always drop to the bottom, so if anyone has a better trick, I'd be glad to hear it.

Candied Fruit Cake (based on "les Cakes de Sophie" de Sophie Dudemaine)

3 Eggs
125gr of Icing Sugar
125gr of Butter
160gr of Flour
1 Tablespoon of Baking Powder
1/2 a Teaspoon of Salt
100gr of Dried Raisins
170gr of Candied Fruits (cherry, orange, lemon...)
2 Tablespoons of Rhum
1 Bag of Tea (Apple/Cinnamon for me)

Preheat your oven to 240°C. Butter a cake tin.

Hydrate the raisins with hot water and the bag of tea, add the rhum and let them sit for about 30 minutes. Dice the candied fruits and roll them into flour.

In the bowl of a standmixer, cream the sugar with the butter, than add the eggs one after an other. Add the flour mixed with the baking powder and the salt, combine well for a few minutes.

Drain the raisins (but keep the tea/rhum aside), dry them in a kitchen paper and flour them too. Add the raisins and the candied fruits to the cake batter, combine with a spatula this time, not to much, and pour it into the cake tin.

Place in the oven for 5 minutes at 240°C, and than for 40 minutes at 180°C. When it comes out of the oven, pour some of the tea/rhum on top of it and let it cool completly before taking it out of the tin. You can have some when it's cold, but it's better one day after.