A dark, moist fruit cake in which dried fruit is first simmered in porter or stout with butter and sugar, then baked into a dense, spiced loaf. Kept wrapped for days so the flavours deepen, it is a Christmas and celebration favourite.
A traditional Irish dark fruit cake made with porter or stout (Guinness is common today). Porter — a dark, malty beer that emerged in 18th-century London — is most often boiled with the dried fruit, butter and sugar so the fruit plumps and some of the alcohol cooks off, leaving malty-sweet fruit; some versions instead soak the fruit in the beer. Prized for keeping well, it was traditionally baked in the weeks before Christmas and stored for the holidays, growing richer with age.
Dense, dark and sticky, every slice is studded with porter-plumped raisins and sultanas that burst with malty sweetness. Warm spice and a faint toasty bitterness from the stout keep it from cloying. It improves with age, growing richer and more fragrant by the day.
Pre-boiling the fruit in porter hydrates and plumps it while the alcohol evaporates, leaving concentrated malt sugars that keep the crumb moist. The dark stout and brown sugar also drive browning and a deep colour during the long, low bake.
Variations
Made with Guinness or other stout, brushed weekly with whiskey or brandy to mature, or studded with mixed peel and cherries
On the Palate
Where Porter Cake sits in the Irish flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 10
How it's made
8 steps · 20 min
- 13 min
Put the mixed dried fruit, butter, sugar and porter into a saucepan.
- 26 min
Bring to a gentle boil and simmer a few minutes until the fruit plumps and the butter melts.
- 315 min
Remove from the heat and let the fruit mixture cool to lukewarm.
Watch outLet the boiled fruit cool to just lukewarm before the eggs go in — still-hot batter will scramble them the second they hit.
- 44 min
Beat in the eggs one at a time so they do not scramble.
Watch outBeat the eggs in one at a time, fully blended before the next — this stops the mix curdling and keeps the crumb even.
- 55 min
Fold in the flour with mixed spice and a pinch of salt until just combined.
- 62 min
Spoon into a lined cake tin and level the top.
- 7120 min
Bake low and slow until a skewer comes out clean, around two hours.
Watch outBake low and slow, around two hours — it's done when a skewer pushed into the center comes out clean with no wet batter clinging to it.
- 85 min
Cool fully in the tin, then wrap and store for a few days before slicing.
