Light Fruit Loaf

I'm not generally a fan of fruitcake - too heavy and rich for me, and too high a chance of coming across nuts. But this isn't like ordinary fruitcake! It's light and sweet and low in fat, and gets most of its sweetness from the fruit - which makes it healthy cake in my book, meaning I can eat lots of it ;-)

Light Fruit Loaf

Makes: 12 slices
Takes: 20 mins preparation + 1 hour 10 mins cooking time

Ingredients

1 oz (25g) butter or margarine
1 3/4 oz (50g) caster sugar
4 medium eggs
6 oz (175g) self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 medium carrot, peeled and grated
3 1/2 oz (100g) ready-to-eat apricots, chopped
3 1/2 oz (100g) raisins
3 1/2 oz (100g) sultanas

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 130oC (fan oven)/150oC/Gas Mark 2.
2. Cream together the butter/marg and sugar then add the eggs and stir well.
3. Sift in the flour and baking powder and stir to combine then fold in the carrot, apricots, raisins and sultanas.
4. Pour into a greased and lined 1 lb (450g) loaf tin. Bake for about an hour and 10 minutes, till a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.
5. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely before slicing.

You can freeze the whole cake or individual slices - great for packed lunches! It is a bit crumbly 'cos there's a high fruit:cake ratio so you might want to stick a napkin in that lunchbox too... But it tastes really good :-)