Bibliocook's post Pumpkin Harvest reminded me of the pumpkin fruit cake recipe in my folder of collected recipes from various magazines. I have no idea where this came from but it would have been in the eighties when I first made it.
Pumpkin Fruit Cake
Ingredients
125 grams butter
2/3 cup caster sugar
1 tablespoon Golden Syrup
2 eggs
Grated rind 1 orange
1 cup cooked and drained mashed pumpkin
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup plain flour
pinch bicarb soda
375 grams dried fruit.
Method
Cream butter and sugar.
Add eggs one at a time, then golden syrup, orange rind.
Stir in Pumpkin
Fold through sifted flours, bicarb soda and fruit.
Bake in a moderate oven 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hours.
The baking time will depend on the tin used. For this I used a lamington tin as I wanted a slab cake. Baked at 180 degrees in a fan oven it was ready in 40 minutes.
Any mix of dried fruit can be used. Because I don't like a lot of currants I used 200 grams raisins and 175g mixed fruit.
The pumpkin was steamed and then mashed. Steam pumpkin with skin on and remove before mashing.
This cake doesn't keep well so cut leftovers into serving size pieces and freeze for another day.
