Sultana & Lemon Fruit Cake

I had most of a lemon left over after making my gigantic Christmas cake and this recipe looked intriguing. I love lemon cake. And this one's heavy on the raisins and light on the candied peel which also bodes well. I also found the idea of boiling the raisins appealing. Historically most of my issues with fruit cake have been textural, rather than a flavour thing. So getting the raisins nice and soft and going relatively light on the candied peel all seemed rather promising. Next time I'd just run the raisins under some cold water or something to make sure they're cooled off properly before adding them to the batter. They were still quite warm when I put them in and that seemed to melt the butter in the batter and deflate it a bit. The cake still turned out fine, but I'd be interested to see if cold raisins would yield an even better result.

Sultana & Lemon Cake

From Edmonds Cookery Book

Ingredients

• 3 c. sultanas
• 250g (salted) butter, softened
• 1 c. sugar
• 3 large (or 4 medium) eggs
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 2 c. cake flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 c. candied lemon peel¹
• 1/4 c. lemon juice
• 1/4 c. milk

Directions

1. Add water to the sultanas to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool.
2. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Mixing well after each addition.
4. Mix in lemon zest.
5. Sift flour and baking powder together and fold into egg mixture.
6. If the raisins are still warm, run them under some cold water to cool them down.
7. Once the raisins are cool, stir them into the batter along with the candied peel.
8. Stir in milk and lemon juice.
9. Pour batter into a buttered and floured 8" round cake tin.
10. Bake at 325°F (160°C) for 90 minutes.
11. Remove from oven, cover with a clean cloth, and leave to cool in tin.

Edmonds left the recipe off there. Having tried it, I think a simple lemon glaze would go very well with this cake. It's fine as it is, but I do think just a bit of glaze on top would improve it. My grandma always used a clear glaze (of granulated sugar and lemon juice) on her lemon bread and it works beautifully there. For this particular cake, however, I feel like a white glaze (using icing sugar) would be more appropriate.

Lemon Glaze

Ingredients

• 2 c. icing sugar
• 1/4 c. lemon juice

Directions

1. Whisk sugar and juice together until smooth.
2. Pour over cooled cake and enjoy.

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I ended up using candied citron peel for mine because my only options were mixed peel or citron. Given the options, I figured citron would be the closest option. If I'd had more time and energy, I would've done up a batch of homemade candied lemon peel and used that. The citron peel seems to have worked out reasonably well, although it does add little green spots to the otherwise yellow cake². ^Back
I might be tempted to try making it with golden raisins (or a mix of golden raisins and sultanas) next time just to play up the yellow tones even more. ^Back