First fruit cake of the season

Each year around October we start making fruit cakes, it's like an autumnal ritual. We continue making fruit cakes until early December and usually the Christmas cake is the last one, perhaps by then we have had enough of fruit cake for the year.



I always start with the same recipe from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook, then usually change it, for example today I didn't have enough cherries so I added cranberries. Other variations are that I use 50/50 dark brown sugar and golden caster sugar and I always add extra cinnamon and mixed spice.



After a couple of hours in the oven the house was smelling amazing. Now we just need a reason to crack open the first cake and taste it.


The holes are the evidence, I picked out the hot raisins, delicious.