Fitz cake

 Fitz cake is a cake made with citrus zest and dried fruit, marinated in tea and Moscatel de pasas, a muscatel wine made from raisins ("pasas"). Named after the house dog - Fitz, its first taster - in spite of ourselves.

One day when we went swimming at La Caleta, Fitz the dog took advantage of our absence to climb onto a chair, rest his two front paws on the kitchen table, and devour three-quarters of that cake fresh out of the oven (which was supposed to be our snack when we got back from swimming).
Among the dried fruits in the cake are dried apricots, dried figs, cranberries, and golden raisins, as well as the typical Andalusian raisin, the pasa de Málaga.

It was the Phoenicians, the founders of Cádiz (then known as Gadir) in the 11th century B.C., who brought the “Muscat of Alexandria” from Egypt, which led to the cultivation of pasa and muscat raisins.
After the harvest, the grape clusters are sun-dried in “paseros” (raisin drying racks) placed directly on the ground. After three to four weeks, the must produced by the raisins is used to make Moscatel de pasas, a Muscat with mahogany hues.

For a 22 cm cake tin 

• 225 g flour
• 3 eggs (2 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk)
• 170 g salted butter
• 170 g brown sugar
• 50 g dried apricots and dried figs
• 40 g golden raisins
• 40 g pasas raisins
• 30 g cranberries
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 vanilla bean
• A tea blend (for example, green tea with almond and pistachio pieces, Christmas tea, or even orange and cinnamon tea)
• 1 glass of Moscatel de pasas
• 1 teaspoon of orange blossom water
• 1 orange
• Citrus zest (depending on the season: orange, lemon, or mandarin)

⚠️Tous your ingredients must be at room temperature, including the eggs (remember that eggs originally come out of the hen's ass, which rarely lays in a fridge).

Step by step

To begin with :

• Soak the raisins in a bowl of tea and Moscatel de pasas
• Preheat the oven to 150 °C
💡 For a deliciously moist cake, bake it for at least 1 hour at a low temperature.

Second step:

• Whisk the 2 whole eggs and the egg yolk.
• Cream the butter, then add the sugar; whisk the mixture until it becomes creamy.
➡️Add the eggs to the butter-sugar mixture, whisking constantly

Third step:

- Sift the flour and yeast into a bowl.

💡 S ifting the flour and yeast together helps avoid lumps and makes for an airier, lighter cake.

➡️ Whisk the flour by tablespoonfuls into the butter-sugar-eggs mixture until the flour is used up.

Fourth step:

• Add the dried fruit and drained raisins—which you’ve dusted with flour to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the pan—to the cake batter.
• Mix the juice of the squeezed orange and the orange blossom water into the cake batter.
• Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured cake pan.
• Bake in an oven preheated to 150 °C for 60 to 80 minutes, depending on your oven and the selected setting.
• Once removed from the oven, let the cake cool before turning it out of the pan.

Of course, there are many variations on the Fitz cake: Dried fruit according to taste (why not prunes instead of figs, for example), only tea instead of Pasas Moscatel, if you don't drink alcohol, 2 g agar-agar instead of sugar, 170 g silky tofu instead of butter, etc.