Sweet Chocolate Fruit Cake

I just invented this cake for the fun of it today, based on various other cakes, and it’s scrumptious – moist, sweet, chocolatey, fruity . . . oh, try it. It’s good.

This quantity makes a small cake in a loaf tin, but it’s easy to make it bigger.

Ingredients:

4 ounces (110g) margarine
4 ounces (110g) caster sugar
2 eggs
4 ounces (110g) self-raising flour
2 heaped tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons milk
½ cup (125mL) mixed dried fruit
Heaped ¼ cup (60mL+) desiccated coconut (shredded coconut)
Golden syrup

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 C (350 F) and grease a loaf tin (pan).

2. Cream margarine and sugar.

3. Add eggs to margarine and sugar, and mix until incorporated.

4. Sieve (sift) flour and cocoa and mix until incorporated.

5. Add milk, dried fruit and coconut and combine until mixture is even.

6. Place about half of the mixture in the loaf tin (pan) and spread it out evenly. Drizzle golden syrup (generously, but not completely covering the mixture) over the top of the mixture, then add the rest of the mixture, smooth out and repeat drizzling of golden syrup.

7. Bake in 180 C oven for half an hour.

8. After cooking, turn cake out onto cooling rack and immediately flip over so that the top of the cake is facing upwards. The top of the cake will be extremely soft and may stick and tear if allowed to cool onto the cooling rack.

9. The cake should be left to cool for a while as the hot fruit may burn the mouth, but it can be enjoyed warm once it has cooled a little – that’s what I did!

I have no plans to ice the cake but I’m sure it would be superb with a vanilla cream cheese icing or even just a drizzle of basic glacé icing.