How to make Vinegar Loaf

Don’t be fooled by the name, you certainly won’t taste any vinegar in this delicious rich fruit loaf. Vinegar Loaf is delicious homemade fruitcake for Christmas – it’s quite like a dark genoa cake.

The recipe for this cake has been handed down through our family for many years – in fact I’ve got no idea where it came from originally.

How to make Vinegar Loaf

Makes two loaves.

You’ll need a big bowl, it makes a lot of mixture. Line two loaf tins with greaseproof paper, baking paper or tin foil. If you use greaseproof or foil, grease and flour it to stop the cakes from sticking.

Ingredients and Method

In a big mixing bowl:

1.5lb Plain Flour (but I always use self raising because that’s what we have in the cupboard!)
8oz Margarine
4oz white baking fat (Trex) or lard

Rub the fat into the flour as if making pastry, to make fine breadcrumbs.

Add to the flour mix:
12oz Sugar – brown or white
1lb Sultanas or your choice of dried fruit
2 big tubs of Glace cherries – cut them in half to make them go further

In a little pan:

11fl oz of Milk – 300ml
2 teaspoons Baking powder
1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
2 Tablespoons vinegar

Warm it through so that it’s hand hot. It will froth as the ingredients react with the vinegar.

Finish mixing the vinegar loaf:

Tip the wet ingredients into your bowl of dry ingredients. Mix it all thoroughly. Don’t forget to make a wish while you stir it!

Split the mixture equally in the loaf tins. You can sprinkle sugar on top to give it a sugary crust, and save some of your glace cherries to sit on the top too.

Bake for about 1 ¾ hours on 160 celsius. When it looks cooked, push a skewer or similar into the centre and make sure that it comes out dry. If the skewer has wet cake mixture stuck to it it’s not quite cooked. Put it back in for another 5 or 10 minutes.

Keep in a tin or box, it keeps quite well for a couple of weeks – if you can keep your hands off it….

Grandad always ate it smothered in butter, and I believe it’s also nice with cheese. And me? I just like it. All of it!

Making Vinegar Loaf with Grandma

My grandma baked all through the year. In the ‘olden days’ they had to because there was no Mr Kipling. If you wanted a cake you had to bake it yourself.

Every year at Christmas she carried out the tradition of making enough home baking to sink a battleship. Christmas saw a table full of everything that you could imagine. There were mince pies and jam tarts with pastry that melted in your mouth. Not ordinary shortcrust, but made with lemons and left to stand overnight in the icy cold conservatory before baking. Coffee and walnut cake, lemon meringue, fairy cakes, bakewells, Victoria sponge. And my favourite, the vinegar loaf.

I always used to make a bee-line to help with the vinegar loaf – it was an annual tradition. The house would be warm and cosy with the coal fire roaring. My grandad sat in front of the fire, toasting his toes and doing crosswords.

Meanwhile grandma ran backwards and forwards, putting just the right amount of coal on the fire in the front room to get the oven behind it in the kitchen to the perfect temperature.

She was a terribly messy baker. When she died, we picked our way through her recipe book that doubled as a Christmas card list, separating the pages that were stuck together with cake mixture. ‘Recipe’ is a bit of an overstatement. Each was little more a list of ingredients – you had to have been there to know what to do with them.

I always get the urge to bake when it’s cold, dark and wintery. My biological clock is particularly tuned to the Christmas baking event. I’ve since made vinegar loaf many times, and every time it takes me right back to that warm kitchen and Christmases of the past.