Homemade Dundee cake and Midleton Very Rare whiskey

What do you eat with a great bottle of Irish whiskey? Fruit cake might seem a bit frivolous to some and even brand you as, well . . . a bit of a fruitcake, but I can highly recommend it.

The whiskey was a Midleton Very Rare, bottled in 2005, belonging to our neighbour a few doors up. She’d been agonising whether to drink it or sell it. Without sounding self-interested it was hard to advise but she happily came to the conclusion that she would crack it open and invited us round to try it.

But what to nibble with it? Remembering the rich flavours of the only other time I’d drunk it I suggested fruit cake so we had a late tea at 7pm digging into her 82 year old mother’s homemade Dundee cake the recipe for which apparently came from a Creda cookbook (Creda being a popular oven range back in the '60s.)

The whisky was utterly delicious - better than I remembered, or maybe a better bottling. Super-smooth, rich, but not too rich with a dash of vanilla and complex fruit cake flavours of its own. At only 40% it didn’t need any dilution. Happily I don’t think our neighbour regretted opening it which was fortunate since it’s now fetching up to £200 a bottle.

You could obviously drink it - or that style of whisky - with Christmas cake too so maybe one to remember for next year.

Photo updated on 13/3/22 ©TalyaAL at shutterstock.com

Simnel cake and Orange Pekoe tea

Simnel cake, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is the traditional British Easter cake (although at one time it was baked to celebrate Mother’s Day).

It’s a fruit cake, sandwiched and covered with marzipan and decorated with little marzipan balls though these days you’ll often find them adorned with sugared easter eggs and yellow fluffy chicks as well. If you’re anywhere near a Betty’s Tea Room which has branches in York, Harrogate, Ilkley and Northallerton, if I remember right, that’s the sort of place to buy one though traditional bakers and large department stores like Fortnum & Mason in London will sell them too.

It’s the kind of cake with which you could perfectly well drink a glass of sweet sherry or Madeira but I’m going for a regular - or perhaps not-so-regular tea - Orange Pekoe. It’s not, as the name suggests, infused with orange, but describes a premium grade of tea which tends to have particularly large fragrant leaves. Of course, any good quality black tea such as a Ceylon tea would be enjoyable too.

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