Recipe for family meals :

It is many years since Hub-UK was first launched. It has been created from recipes contributed form all over the world, from professionals and amateurs alike. A great many of the recipes do not have any details as to who sent them in or from where they came. It would be a shame not to share them with you for this reason alone.

This Welsh recipe is one such recipe. If you know where it originated, or perhaps it is even yours, let me know and I will add the necessary credits and acknowledgements.

"The most indispensable ingredient of all good home cooking - love, for those you are cooking for" ~ Sophia Loren.

Ingredients

1/4 lb dried fruit
4 oz candied peel
1 pt warm tea
1/2 tsp mixed spice
2 lb plain flour
2 tsp salt
6 oz lard
1 oz fresh yeast
1/2 lb demerara sugar
2 eggs

Method

• Soak the fruit and candied peel in the tea with the spice. Leave to steep in a warm place and use the warm spicy, strained tea to mix the dough.

• Sift the flour and salt and rub in the lard.

• Cream the yeast with the sugar and a little of the spiced tea and then mix this into the flour, together with the eggs usng enough of the tea to give a firm, yet elastic dough.

• Knead well, leave to rise and knock back.

• Blend in the drained fruit and knead again.

• Shape the dough into loaves and set into greased 1 lb tins in a warm place to prove.

• Bake at 450°F / Gas Mark 8 for 15 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 375°F / Gas Mark 5 and bake for a further 45 minutes.

Serves 16