Easy recipes for any cook: from cheat's meals to cooking from scratch

Vegetarian recipes

The ultimate chicken-and-corn pot pies

40 minutes

Cake recipes

Easy fruit cake

3¼ hours

Easy fruit cake

Serves 12

Difficulty Easy

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cooking Time 3¼ hours

Ingredients

200 g glacé cherries, quartered
4 T brandy
2 t cocoa
1 t instant coffee
2 cups boiling water
1 kg fruit cake mix
1½ t bicarbonate of soda
300 g sugar
125 g butter
3 large free-range eggs, beaten
360 g cake flour
1½ t baking powder
a pinch salt
1 t mixed spice
1 t ground ginger

Method

Preheat the oven to 140°C. Soak the cherries in half the brandy for 30 minutes.
Dissolve the cocoa and instant coffee in the boiling water.
Place this mixture, the fruitcake mix, bicarbonate of soda and sugar in a saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes.
Remove from the heat and add the butter and soaked cherries. Stir well and allow the mixture to cool.
Grease a 23 cm cake tin and line the base and sides with about 10 layers of brown paper or baking paper. Make a “lid” using heavy tin foil.
Add the eggs to the cooled mixture. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, mixed spice and ginger together and add to the mixture. Stir well, then pour the batter into the cake tin and put the tin foil on top.
Bake for 3¼ hours or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool and pour the remaining brandy over the cake. Remove from the cake tin and wrap in tin foil. Store in an airtight container for at least a week before serving. If you’re going to keep it for longer, add a bit of brandy weekly to keep the cake moist.

Cook’s note: Ice with royal icing if you like.

“I can’t remember a Christmas without one of my mom’s delicious fruit cakes with extra cherries and almonds. She’d start assembling the ingredients in mid-November, bake and splash brandy over the cake for almost a month before Christmas for a rich, moist cake. My siblings and I are all grown up, so now she makes three small loaf cakes, one for each of us. There’s always space for a sliver of this cake, be warned though, it won’t just be one slice!” – Liesl Nicholson

Hot-and-sour soup

Pot bread

DIY LemonGold® Creams

Bacon-and-egg breakfast pie

Asian beef shortrib with miso pumpkin

Creamy tomato and harissa lentils with brinjals

Creamy pulled chicken-and-mushroom lasagne

Chocolate cake with caramel and almond brittle

Baby marrow and fennel salad

Abi’s ultimate potato bake

Family favourite fish pie

Black garlic mushrooms

Pear-and-ginger cake

The ultimate chicken-and-corn pot pies

Easy fruit cake

Easy fruit cake

Ingredients

Method