Porter Cake

I don't often take much interest in beer and food pairing. Let's face it, at the rate I shovel food into my gob there's not much time for drinking. Still, I've always been taken with cooking with beer, so when my birthday rolled round and it was time to take cake to work my thoughts turned to porter cake.

The recipe is slightly tweaked from a BBC cook book:

175g butter
300g raisins
75g dried cherries
75g dried blueberries
zest and juice of one orange
175g light muscavado sugar
200ml Fuller's London porter
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 beaten eggs
300g plain flour
2 tsp mixed spice

Heat oven to 150 degrees C.
Butter and line the base of a 20cm round cake tin.
Put the butter, fruit, zest, juice, sugar and porter in a pan and bring to the boil then simmer for 15 minutes.
Cool for 10 minutes then stir in the bicarbonate of soda. It will fizz!
Stir in the eggs, then sift in the flour and spice and mix well.
Pour in the tin and bake for 1hr 15min to 1hr 30min.

And there you have it, stuff it in your face as quick as you like and get the beer at the same time! Lovely.