Porter Fruit Cake

When Mrs V and I went to Williamsburg back in October, I bought a growler of Williamsburg Alewerks' Washington's Porter. As with the best laid plans of mice and men, my original intention to drink said growler never happened, and so it sat in the fridge for the last few weeks. Wanting to both use the beer, being loathe to waste it, and also because I love cooking with beer as much as drinking it, I decided to use it for a few culinary projects.

Waking up with something of a hangover yesterday morning I decided I would make a fruit cake, which seems to be something of an acquired taste this side of the Pond. Traditional fruit cake from home starts off the night before baking with steeping the dried fruit in tea. My plan however was to ditch the tea and replace it with the porter. The recipe I used came from a small Czech language Irish cookbook I bought several years ago in Prague and I adapted it somewhat.

• 12 ounces sultanas
• 1lb dried black currants
• 8 ounces glace cherries
• 13.5 fluid ounces porter
• 1 cup soft brown sugar
• 3.5 cups plain flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons apple pie spice - cinnamon, nutmeg, clove

Firstly steep the dried fruit, sugar and spice in the porter overnight, or for 8 hours.

When the steeping is done, lightly beat the eggs and add them to the mix. Stir in the flour and baking powder to make a thick batter.

Usually you would just use a single large cake tin, but I used three disposable loaf tins, which I sprayed with oil before filling about half way.

Heat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for about 2 hours, or until you can put a knife in the centre of the cake and it comes out clean.

So there we have it, three fruit cakes for Thanksgiving, moist, dark and spicy......like a good porter!