Boiled Fruit Cake

I was too late to make a Chrsitmas Cake this year - don't know why, I suppose I just got fed up after the mammoth Christmas Pudding session.  Anyway, just knocked together this dead simple recipe from the 'Joy of Baking' site.  The spicy loaf is baking as we speak, and the flat smells wonderfully Christmassy.  I might even be moved to decorate the tree, a job usually left to a last-minute panic on Christmas Eve.  First, we must venture out to the patio where it is waiting, and knock the 8 inches of snow off it.  I will report back on the recipe when we eat it, later in the week, but so far, it's smelling good! Tasting note: we broke into this on Christmas Day, giving it nearly a week to mature.  It was soooo good, much better, in my opinion, than the traditional fruit cake made months in advance.  In may have helped that we returned from a snowy walk by the river Thames, which was freezing over in parts, it was that cold, so fruit cake and tea went down a treat! photo courtesy of Joyofbaking.com