Mma Potokawne's bribery fruit cake

Recipe time

The cold weather has been almost unbearable this winter in our area. Not just wind chill but actual temperatures 25-30 below zero. Then have a brisk (read hard) wind blowing at the same time, it caused us to want to crawl under the blankets and .... read. 

My choice of a book was NO. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. It was set in a small country in South Africa. Just reading about the hot dusty dessert helped to make me feel a bit warmer.  The book is like a potato chip, you can't read just 1. There is a series of 14 .. and thanks to Paper Back Swap on the internet, I will soon have them all. Waiting for the last one to arrive in a couple days.

One of the characters bakes a fruit cake that she uses to bribe workers to fix things at the orphanage. I became curious about that cake. Finally I used duckduckgo.com to find a recipe for it. Aha!! There it was.  The first cake was so good I baked a second one before going to bed. It is NOT like the fruit cakes you receive near Christmas.  More of what we would call a coffee cake but different. It really goes better with tea. And- Red Bush Tea is the choice in the book. I checked the Frontier Herb catalog and they have it!! In many varieties. I am ordering the plain red bush tea in the morning. 

Hope you enjoy the cake as much as we do... and don't skimp. When it calls for butter, use butter!! Not margarine. Calories are the same in butter and margarine, but there is a BIG difference in texture and taste.

Mma Potokawne's Fruit cake