Gran's fruit cake

It's frosty in the morning. The fire is constantly going. Your hands feel like they don't exist after a 15 minute lap with the dog. This all means one thing. It's time for tea and cake. And for cake and tea. Ohhh and just another cuppa thanks.. Cake? Ohhh no I shouldn't. Toasted with butter? - oh go on then. What's for Lunch? ermmm cake?

My Gran always has this fruit cake in her pantry. Ready to go for 'elevensies' or a visitor popping round. My Gran lives in England and actually she might not have that cake available all the time anymore but she did when I was a kid and living over there. Or it sure felt like she did anyway.

The other day I got a craving for that cake, and somehow we had a glut of dried fruit in the pantry. I dug around in my mothers recipe folder and found that recipe - and then I added some vavavoom to it - coz I'm like that with cake - and now 2 cakes and 3 days latter - its almost all gone. AND I'm planning on making more.. and you should too.

To make 2 large loaf cakes you need:
500gs of self raising flour
300gs of brown sugar
250gs of butter
4 eggs
1 & 1/2 cups of milk
1 tablespoon of mixed spice
150gs dried figs, roughly chopped
150gs dried dates, roughly chopped
150gs of raisins
150gs of cranberries
raw almonds

Then:
Melt the butter on the stove.
Combine all the dry ingredients in a super large bowl. Add the wet ingredients, including the slightly cooled butter.
Combine all the ingrediants and divide the batter between two well greased loaf tins. Decorate the top with the almonds, you could seriously cover the whole thing it will taste so good! Pop in the oven and bake for an hour/until a cake tester comes out clean.
You can halve the ingredients for one cake no worries too.