The camera doesn’t lie; my cake really did turn out as black as soot. It is a very fruit-heavy recipe; after 2 days of soaking the fruit, citrus zest, lemon and orange juice, amaretto, brandy, spices and black pepper, the flour, margarine, sugar and eggs are added. It is then slow-baked in the oven for 2 and 3/4 hours or until a skewer comes out clean.

Friends, there never was a clean skewer. So after 2 hours in the oven on gas mark 2, I reduced the heat down to the S setting (what does that S stand for, anyway?) and left it in overnight. In the morning, there was still no gleaming skewer. However, the cake had turned a very dark shade of black and curiously, is not in the least bit burnt in spite of appearances; it never smelled burnt and the bits I sampled to check were not in the least burnt. I did cover it with foil; maybe long, slow cooking with foil on top of them turns cakes a very dark shade? So I cooked it for a further 2 and a half hours on gas mark 2. Poking it with a skewer *still* wouldn’t produce clean results, but I gave up, deciding it was hot enough and had been in the oven long enough to be thoroughly cooked. I doused the entire thing in further alcohol (rum and amaretto again) and here it is, ready to mature for a couple of weeks in baking parchment and foil.

It smells and tastes rather like a Christmas pudding and in spite of its long tenure in the oven, it utterly moist and crumbly. I think I may have inadvertently made a Christmas Pudding in the shape of a cake…

…the black pepper, amaretto and cranberries were my own special variants on the original instructions though it does appear to have made the cake a little bit hot and spicy! I’ll let you know how it goes and if it is a success I will post the recipe here.