Healthy fruity cake

If, like me, your New Year’s resolutions fell flat by day six, you might be thinking about giving the whole “new year new me” commotion another go this February. After all, with the exam stress, cold wintery mornings, and your brain still feeling just a little fuzzy from the New Year, January is clearly not the time of the year give up the things that make you smile.

Now in all reality, February is hardly a warmer month—or a less depressing one, and whilst I’m hardly going to be giving up wine for green juice, I might just be able to indulge a little in this fruit cake.

Vegan, sugar free, and oil free—it sounds like enough to send you running back into late 2015, when a girl could eat a cake during the festive season without checking to see if was part of the elimination diet. But believe it or not, this cake is actually really good, especially when served with lashings of butter and cream—because the ‘new you’ can wait until March.

Ingredients
125g dates
100g prunes
150g raisins
100g sultanas
100g currants
50g blueberries or cranberries
25g ground almonds
175g wholewheat spelt flour
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
A grated rind and the juice of half an orange.
3 tablespoons of water

Instructions
Heat the oven at 160°C.

Grease the sides of a 2lb loaf tin, and line the bottom of the tin with greased parchment paper.

Cut a piece of foil large enough to fold over the top of the tin.

Put the prunes and dates in a small saucepan with 300ml of water and simmer with saucepan lid on for 10 minutes. Leave to completely soften whilst you measure out and mix together your dried fruits.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.

Mix in the dried fruits and ground almonds.

Pour the prune and dates and their liquid with the juice, orange rind and the 3 tablespoons of water into a blender and blend to a puree.

Make a well in your dry ingredients and pour in the wet ones, then fold everything together thoroughly so that it is moist. Place into the loaf tin and level the top.

Cover the loaf tin with the foil and place into the oven for one hour.

After cooking, leave the loaf tin to cool down. Then run a knife around the sides, and turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.