Treatloaf

Part two of Saturday's baking programme was to make a loaf to take to the barbecue that evening. The loaf I was to make turned out to be an orange and raisin loaf as the raisins in my cupboard needed eating more than the sultanas did. The key difference between the loaf and the cake in the previous entry on this blog is that the loaf uses slightly more drier ingredients and does not use any eggs.

I greased a loaf tin that was ten centimetres wide, sixteen long and around seven deep. Again the reason for the extensive greasing was to ensure that the loaf came out cleanly when cooked.

I first mixed eight ounces of flour with one ounce of margarine and then six ounces of raisins and four ounces of caster sugar into a bowl. The effect was to create a very dry mixture that looked colourful talcum powder. I added some further colour to the proceedings by grating an ounce of orange rind into the bowl.

I set the bowl to one side and in a measuring jug I squeezed the juice of half an orange and added enough milk to make the cocktail up to quarter of a pint. I added some much needed dampness to the to the mixture in the bowl by then adding the orange juice and milk and not stopping stirring it until all the dry ingredients had absorbed it. Once I had done this the mixture was ready and I poured it into the cake tin and cooked it for one hour on 170 degrees (180 if you don't have a fan oven). Again I used the skewer trick to be sure it was ready when I took it out of the oven.

The use of fresh orange was the key to this loaf as I find raisins a bit bland on their own when used in baking. Here the raisins provide enough texture while the oranges gave a tropical flavour to the loaf. Certainly the guests at the evening's barbecue must have agreed in some way as most of the loaf was consumed.

Glowing loaf- the loaf fresh out of the oven.