Cake not pie

I have had a jar and a half of fruit mince maturing at the back of my kitchen cupboard for a very, very long time. For a few years I made mince pise each Christmas - and they were tasty.  But they were very fiddly, and I lost enthusiasm around about 2012.  In particular, handling short, buttery pastry in the heat of an Australian summer is not much fun.

So there the mince lurked, in the darkness.

In response to the persistent pleas of my space-loving housemate to actually use some of the many things in the cupboard, I decided to sort out that mince. And discovered it is actually not that easy to find a non-pie recipe for fruit-mince.

Eventually I found this blog entry for a Fruit Mince Crumble Cake. Even though the blogger didn't have a great result with her cake, it looked pretty appealing to me. The cake was excellent and very well received by my family on a cold autumn evening.

Fruit Mince Crumble Cake

(from Better Homes and Gardens - December 2008)

Crumble

1 cup spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
125g unsalted butter, cold

Cake

1 1/2 cups spelt flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
160g unsalted butter, cold
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
400g jar fruit mince
100g sweetened dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 24cm round springform cake tin and line base with baking paper.
2. To make crumble, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg into a bowl. Using your fingers, rub butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Set aside.
3. Combine flour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl. Rub butter into this mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Lightly beat the eggs in a small bowl and mix with the milk. Add to the flour mixture and and stir until combined. Spoon mixture into prepared tin and smooth out to make an even layer.
4. Spread fruit mince over the cake batter - the layer does not b=have to be even, but make sure that most of the batter is covered by the mince. Sprinkle cranberries over the mince and top all of this with the crumble mix.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of cake. Stand tin on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before removing from the tin and cooling completely on the rack.

This cake is best served warm, and it is excellent with custard.
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