Spiced Fruit Tea Loaf

Put the dried fruit and the muscovado sugar into a large bowl.

Pour the hot tea over them.

Stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Cover and leave overnight, at least 8 hours, until the fruit has swollen and almost all the tea has gone.

The soak is the whole recipe. Dry fruit stirred straight into a batter draws its water back out of the crumb in the oven, and the loaf bakes dry around wet fruit.

Heat the oven to 160C/325F.

Oil a 900g loaf tin and line it with baking paper.

Beat the egg into the soaked fruit.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, mixed spice and fine salt together in a second bowl.

Stir the orange zest through the flour.

Fold the flour mixture into the fruit until the last dry streaks disappear, and no further.

Stop there. There is no fat in this batter to shorten the gluten, so anything beaten smooth bakes out rubbery — the same restraint the buttermilk pancakes in this collection ask for, for the same reason.

Scrape the batter into the tin, which it should fill to about 2cm below the rim.

Level the top.

Bake for 60-70 minutes, until the loaf is dark and risen, split along the top, and a skewer pushed into the centre comes out clean.

Lay a sheet of foil loosely over the tin after 40 minutes if the top is already dark. Muscovado and dried fruit colour long before the middle has set.

Cool in the tin for 15 minutes.

Turn it out and cool completely on a rack, at least 2 hours.

Wrap it and leave it a day before cutting if you can. It slices cleanly once it has settled and tastes fruitier on the second day.

Cut thick slices and spread them with the butter.

Keep it wrapped for up to a week. It is one of the few loaves here that is better for keeping than for eating warm.