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 while we were swimming at La Caleta, Fitz the dog took advantage of our absence to climb onto a chair, put his two front paws on the kitchen table and unabashedly sample 3/4 of this freshly baked cake (which was to be our snack on returning from the swim.)
Among the dried fruits that make up the cake are dried apricots, dried figs, cranberries and golden raisins, as well as Andalusian rais ins, the pasa de Malaga.

It was the Phoenicians, founders of Cadiz (then Gadir) in the 11th century BC, who brought the "Muscat of Alexandria" from Egypt , giving rise to the cultivation of pasa and raisin muscatel.
After harvesting, the bunches of grapes are sun-dried in "paseros " (grape dryers) placed 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 highlights.

For a 22 cm cake tin 

- 225 g flour
- 3 eggs (2 whole eggs + 1 yolk)
- 170 g salted butter
- 170 g brown sugar
- 50 g dried apricots and figs
- 40 g blond raisins
- 40 g pasas raisins
- 30 g cranberries
- 1 tablespoon yeast
- 1 vanilla pod
- One scoop of tea (for example, green tea with almond and pistachio chips, Christmas tea or orange and cinnamon tea)
- 1 glass Moscatel de pasas
- 1 tsp orange blossom
- 1 orange
- Citrus zest (depending on season, orange, lemon, tangerine)

⚠️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 :

- Macerate your raisins in a bowl of tea and Moscatel de pasas
- Preheat oven to 150°C
💡 For a deliciously melt-in-your-mouth cake, bake for at least 1 hour at low temperature.

Second step:

- Whisk together the 2 whole eggs and the egg yolk.
- Cream the butter, then add the sugar and whisk until creamy.
➡️Ajoutez 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 drained dried fruit and raisins to the cake batter, floured to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the tin.
- Mix the squeezed orange juice and orange blossom into the cake batter.
- Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured cake tin.
- Bake in an oven preheated to 150°C, for between 60 and 80 minutes, depending on your oven and the program you've chosen.
- When removed from the oven, allow the cake to cool before unmolding.

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.