Recipes your mother taught you

We always made this on a Friday night ready for Sunday tea (if everyone kept their hands off it!!)

350g mixed fruit
sugar (quantity to come)
300ml cold black tea
450g wholemeal flour
2 tsp mixed spice
1 egg

1. Soak the fruit and sugar in the strained tea overnight.
2. Next day heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.
3. Add all the other ingredients to the fruit and tea mixture and beat well.
4. Pour the mixture into a prepared loaf tin and bake for approx 1 ½ hours until firm to the touch.
5. Allow to cool and place in a cake tin for 24 hours before cutting. You will end up with a lovely moist fruit bread.
6. Serve thinly sliced with butter spread on it or plain. Scrummy.

Bread Pudding
By iVillager momheatem

There are tones of recipes I could give you from my mother. Amongst my favourite are bread and butter pudding, spotted dick, jam roly poly and bread pudding. I’m posting the bread pudding one because it is so easy.

bread
1 egg
couple of handfuls of currants
cinnamon
sugar
milk

1. Take some bread (which can be going stale if you have some to use up) and soak it in water.
2. This is the messy part. Once soaked squeeze the bread until you have got as much water out as possible. It feels horrid!
3. Add the egg to the wet bread, with the currants, some cinnamon and some sugar. Just use your discretion. If you like dried fruit add as much as you like. If you like sweet things add as much sugar as you like. There is no need to weigh any ingredients with this recipe - it is literally a case of chucking it in a bowl.
4. Mix it all together - using a little milk if you so wish - but don't let the mixture become too soggy. Place in a tin or pyrex dish. Sprinkle sugar on the top and bung in the oven at about 200C/375F/gas mark 6, or 180C/350F/gas mark 4.
5. Leave it there to cook for a couple of hours or so until it is nice and crusty on top, browned, and the sides of the pudding have come away from the sides.
6. Cool it off and hey presto – you have a dead easy and cheap snack.