Hello everyone, here's a picture of an Irish tea cake which I've just made, it's fat free and low sugar. There are many regional variations. It was also often made for Halloween so now is an appropriate time for it. With a traditional brack the dried fruit is soaked in the sugar but the Yorkshire tea bread similar recipe adds the sugar to the flour mix and this is what I've done with this one so the sugar and fructose are not all combined. I make them both ways and what this recipe taught me was how to make dried fruit softer sweeter etc for a normal fruit cake. What I do is soak the fruit overnight if I want to make one first thing or for at least 2 hours and I added a teaspoon of honey to the fruit plus some mixed spice just to give the fruit slightly more flavour. I'd liked to have shown a slice as well but as we only have the facility for one I chose the whole cake as it shows how big it is, how well it rises and you can see the fruit does not sink and this cake has only 55g of sugar. Obviously you can use ordinary flour instead as in the original recipe.
Here's the recipe:
350ml tea
300g dried fruit sultanas, raisins and currants
280g of Gluten free flour I used Doves farm (either S/R or plain and add 1 tea spoon baking powder)
1 Bramley apple diced, peeled and cored
1 egg
1 tea spoon runny honey
55g brown sugar
1 tea spoon mixed spice
Method:
Add boiling water to a couple of good quality tea bags add the tea spoon of honey add little mixed spice and leave to infuse, remove tea bags and add to the dried fruit and leave for at least 2 hours
Put the flour in a food processor and add all the other ingredients and whiz up into a thick batter if it is more like dough add a little more water so it is a thick batter, spread the mix into a greased 20cm cake tin, cover with tin foil and bake 150C for approx 90 mins until it is cooked through. I usually check it with a skewer after about 75 mins and remove the tin foil for the final 15 mins. I've a 20 cm tin with a clip and removable bottom so you just undo the clip when you take it out of the oven and leave it to cool. You can spread butter on it but I like it as it is. The original recipe calls for more sugar (75g) but this is just perfect for my taste buds as somethings are too sweet for me. The apple is also optional but they're in season now and I love cooked apples.
Gluten free fruit cake 
