Time for a different kind of bake altogether: a yeasted fruit cake, which is a lovely afternoon snack somewhere between a cake and a bread. This one is from Lithuania and comes to us all via food writer Barbara Rolek: the same recipe seems to surface in lots of different US websites. I first spotted it on The Spruce Eats; I’ve halved and metricised the quantities, as well as tweaking a few things.

The result is a bit like a giant, fruit studded cinnamon bun. It’s great for slicing and storing in the freezer for a ready supply of snacks. The recipe doesn’t need excessive amounts of work, but it needs a lot of elapsed time – there are multiple rises which can each take a couple of hours, depending on the temperature of your kitchen. Start early.

A couple of caveats, especially if you’re looking at the photos:

• You can use pretty much any dried fruit you like. I couldn’t get glacé cherries, which looked nice in the original recipe. 
• The dough on mine came out very stiff indeed, so you may find you want to increase the amount of milk.
• I used bread flour, which was probably a mistake. I’d stick with plain flour next time.
• Also next time, I’d probably start by activating the yeast in some warm water (or milk) and sugar. The recipe doesn’t suggest this, but not doing it meant that my dough took an eternity to rise.

The dough

• 8g yeast
• 120g sugar
• 180 ml milk
• 550g plain flour
• 4g salt
• 60g butter
• 1.5 large eggs
• 180g mixed fruit
• 120g raisins
• 40g walnuts
• 30 ml rum

1. In your stand mixer, combine 300g of the flour, 60g of the sugar, the yeast and milk and mix until reasonably smooth. Cover and leave to rest for an hour.
2. Melt the butter. Add it to the mix with the eggs, the salt and the rest of the sugar and the flour. With the dough hook, knead for 5-7 minutes.
3. Add the fruit, raisins, walnuts and rum. Mix thoroughly.
4. Leave to rise until doubled in size. Expect this to take an hour or two.

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The filling

• 30g butter
• 60g sugar
• 6g cinnamon

1. Melt the butter. 
2. Mix with the sugar and cinnamon. Leave to cool somewhat.

Putting it together

1. Grease a loaf tin.
2. Flour a surface and roll out your dough into a rectangle. The width of your rectangle should be somewhat under the length of your loaf tin; the length around 1½ times the width.
3. Spread your rectangle of dough with the filling. Don’t go too close to the edges – you won’t want filling leaking out.
4. Roll up the dough into a thick sausage, ensuring the filling is sealed inside. Transfer the sausage into your loaf tin.
5. Leave to rise until doubled in size. Again, this could easily take 1-2 hours. If this hasn’t happened after a couple of hours, give up and bake it anyway.
6. Preheat oven to 200℃ fan
7. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce temperature to 175℃, then bake for around another 40 minutes.
8. Leave to cool on a rack. If you want, sprinkle with icing sugar (I didn’t).

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