Ginger Fruit cake

I had some mixed candied fruits soaked in the rum and brandy syrup leftover from christmas. As my husband loved the christmas cake I decided to make the same cake with a  little bit of a twist. I added some candied ginger powder (the candied ginger got all used up in my Christmas cake)
The end result was a cake that looked and smelled delicious - the ginger powder helped in adding the zing to the cake and the brown sugar and the caramel syrup gave the cake a lovely dark brown color and not to forget the well soaked fruits in alcohol resulted in, I  am proud to say, an almost perfect cake.


Ingredients.
200 gms flour
200 gms brown sugar
100 gms butter
11/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp dried candied ginger powder
4 eggs
! cup mixed fruit soaked in rum and brandy
1 tsp caramel syrup


Method
Heat oven to 140 C.
Cut a sheet of waxed paper and line a 8 inch square baking tin. Butter the waxed paper and the short ends of the pan; set aside.
 In a medium saucepan, combine the soaked mixed fruit, vanilla essence, half of the brown sugar, caramel syrup and the butter.
Bring to a boil, and simmer for 5 minutes.

 Let the mixture cool to room temperature.

Next mix together the flour, baking powder and baking soda and add it to the liquid fruit mixture.

Make sure that you mix it well so that the flour is evenly distributed - a good way is to rub in the flour with your fingertips. This ensures that the flour is mixed evenly with the fruits.

Now beat together the eggs and the brown sugar with an electric beater for about 10 minutes till light and frothy. 

Fold in the fruits and flour mixture into the eggs.

Beat well with a hand mixer for 2-3 minutes. Make sure that there are no lumps in the mixture..

 Pour cake batter into a prepared pan. 

Bake in the preheated oven for about 50 minutes, then increase the  temperature to 170 C, and continue baking the cake for 25 to 30 minutes more, or till a wooden toothpick inserted in  the center comes out clean. 

Remove cake from oven and allow to cool completely in the tin before taking it out.