Sultana rum cake

You know that thing I have told you about, where all of a sudden Paul starts to moan that I never make him x, y or z, without ever having expressed an interest in them before? This time, out of the blue, he asked for fruit cake. I do love a bit of fruit cake - preferably the rich sort where the tiniest possible amount of eggs and flour glue together a dense slab of very boozy dried fruits - but it takes forward planning and usually I'd rather buy it. This is not that sort of cake. This is the sort of fruit cake you can knock up in less than an hour after lunch to have with a cup of tea in the afternoon: a lighter, more sponge-textured (in the good, cake way, not the bathroom product way) affair. I weighed the eggs in the shell and went from there to make just a little craving-satisfying fruit cake.

Sultana rum cake (makes about 8 slices)

30g mixed peel
50g sultanas
2tbs spiced rum
130g butter, softened
130g golden caster sugar
2 large eggs (which, as it happens, weighed 130g in the shell)
30g ground almonds
100g self raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line the base of a 6" springform pan with baking parchment and grease the base and sides.

Soak the peel and sultanas in the rum for as long as you can wait. Mine only had about 15 minutes so weren't as plumped as they could have been.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Fold in the ground almonds and flour, then the fruit and any rum that hasn't been properly absorbed. Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin. Bake until well risen, golden and a skewer tests clean (about 35 minutes). Cool before slicing.