Leon’s ‘More-fruit-than-cake’ fig and red wine cake

I never used to see the point of dried fruit – it all tasted the same; it had a weird, leathery texture; and (in essence) if it didn’t come in a tiny, red cardboard box in my packed lunch, I wasn’t interested.

I’m not sure how, or even when, that changed, but suffice to say, these days I eat buckets of the stuff. I started with dried apricots (dusty-skinned, sometimes spotted with brown, an occasional acidic back-note) and graduated to the big guns: treacly, jammy-gutted prunes and brown figs with their crunchy caviar insides. My weekly basics shopping list reads thus: milk; eggs; scallions; ginger; prunes.

My worship at the altar of fruitcake has much deeper roots, which reach their way down to the annual Christmas cake, baked and iced by my Great-Aunt Claire and housed in a big, square tin in my Granda’s kitchen, just above the cutlery drawer. Every time I put my nose round his kitchen door, I would nip down the steps into the room and cut myself a little wodge of the cake with one of his ivory-handled knives, the blade worn down into a ‘c’-shape, a sort of cake-scythe.

So it was an auspicious moment when I came across the ‘More-fruit-than-cake Cake’ in Leon’s third book, which deals with cakes and baking, in my local library. I’m not usually that keen on the Leon books (all jumpy, jittery graphics and jolly-hockey-sticks), but this sounded and looked fantastic: a cake with a damp, dense centre, flecked with yellow fig-pips and sludgy with red wine. I had dried figs at home (bien sûr) and red wine (ditto); I had spelt flour, I had eggs (see: weekly basics). I didn’t have butter, but I did have vegetable oil. It’s no big deal to sub one for t’other, is it? Well, it would have to do.

The recipe instructs the reader to simmer the dried figs in the red wine with sugar and some spices. This was the most glorious moment of the whole process – inhaling that spicy, sweet concoction, I could have easily gobbled it as was. But no! I would restrain myself, chop it up, and make a PROPER cake batter.

The batter was mixed, poured into a loaf tin, and set in the oven to bake. It baked. It may have over-baked a tiny bit (I was nervous of its wobbly nature upon my first check, but realise now that it would have continued to cook in the tin when removed – such a schoolboy error). I removed it from the tin and restrained myself for a whole fifteen minutes, to let it cool before trying.

The first cut, if not the deepest, was certainly the most eager; and, to be honest, it resulted in a bit of disappointment. The cake was okay – there was the occasional pleasing crunch from the figs – but it was very, very crumbly, and felt oddly dry on the palate, whilst moist to the touch.

I tried to swallow my disappointment (and the rest of my slice), and boxed the cake up neatly for later. Of course, later on, and fully cold, its fudgy glory was revealed, and my next slice was glorious – sticky and dense, just as I’d hoped. The rest of the cake didn’t last long.

The lesson here? Well, actually, there are a few. Firstly: don’t overbake. Secondly: don’t sub oil in for butter, or at least, not all of the butter – it makes the cake very crumbly and hard to cut. Thirdly: let cakes cool completely and utterly before cutting and eating, especially cakes made with dried fruit.

…I should point out that I’ve made the same mistake with a date and almond loaf before – cutting a soggy, warm, crumbly slice and dismissing it as disgusting, before my inherent greediness drew me back for a second, cold slice. I should have known better, this time round.

Leon’s more-fruit-than-cake Cake, almost

I halved the quantities of the recipe to make it fit my loaf tin, and replaced the butter with oil, which actually worked fine, but I suspect the cake’s fudginess would be enhanced by using butter. The recipe below includes my tweaks

• 188ml red wine
• 188g dried figs, diced into smallish pieces
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (the original recipe also called for ¼ teaspoon of ground cloves, but I didn’t have any, so I left this out)
•  60g flavourless oil (the original recipe called for butter and I would stick with that if I were to do this again…to get a denser, fudgier result)
• 125g light brown sugar (the original recipe called for honey, which I rarely have in the cupboard)
•  Half an egg, beaten gently
• 100g spelt flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1. Preheat your oven - 160°C or 150°C if, like me, you have a fan oven that nukes everything. Get your tin ready – I used a 2lb (approx.) loaf tin
2. Combine the red wine, chopped figs and cinnamon in a saucepan and heat on the hob until simmering. Give it a few minutes at a gentle simmer so the fruit absorbs the syrup, then take off the heat, stir in the oil and sugar and set aside to cool (so your egg doesn’t scramble when you combine the ingredients for your batter in a bit)
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb together, then pour over the fig/syrup mixture and mix gently until just combined
4. Pour into your tin and bake for 30-40 mins – test with a skewer and keep baking for five minutes more at a time until the skewer comes out clean.
5. DON’T CUT AND EAT UNTIL IT HAS COOLED, or you will be disappointed.