Fruit tea bread

Yesterday I discovered that I had a lot of dried fruits that desperately needed eating. My mum often made tea bread when we were younger, and this is her recipe. I have used the fruit that I had to hand, but any dried fruit in any combination tends to taste pretty good.

Ingredients

1lb dried fruit (I used raisins, currants, cherries and apricots)
8oz brown sugar
1/2 pint warm tea (I used decaf, as I can't have caffeine)
1 egg
2 tbsp marmalade
1lb plain flour (I only had 1/2lb so used that with 1/2lb self raising flour and also halved the amount of extra baking powder used)
4tsp baking powder

Method

Soak the fruit in the tea with the sugar overnight.
Add the egg and marmalade to the fruit and stir to mix.
Finally add the flour and baking powder and stir well.
Divide mix between two lined (or greased and floured) 1lb loaf tins.
Bake at 170c for about 50 minutes until the top is browned and the cake is cooked through.


I think the reason mum used flour and baking powder instead of self raising flour is because she used to make this with wholewheat flour, which she couldn't get as self raising. It seems to work equally well with self raising flour and no extra baking powder.