Pumpkin Fruit Cake

This is called Trombone Cake by my grandmothers. What is this you ask? What on earth is Trombone Cake? I asked myself this question too, then I asked my mum, who shrugged, then I asked Wikipedia™ and Google™. It seems that Trombone Cake is Pumpkin Cake. It's Gramma Trombone Pumpkin cake. It's a type of squash, very similar to Butternut Pumpkin (technically also a squash rather than a pumpkin...). Made into a cake. 

Hmm. It's by now that I should mention how much I hate pumpkin. It's an utterly despicable food, honestly. It's a running joke with friends and I how much I hate it. I don't care that it's sweet, or that you find it delicious and great as soup. I just don't, nor will I ever, like it. Mum, I feel now with benefit of time and distance, I can confess that when we lived in Kalgoorlie and I was very young and made to eat everything on my plate? Because think of the starving children in Africa? Remember? Well, I used to visit the chickens in the backyard right after dinner with whatever food I couldn't manage to eat (pumpkin featured a lot, sometimes scrambled eggs) stuffed into my cheeks like a chipmunk to empty into the chookyard for the chickens... I wish I was sorry, but my god it was pumpkin. Sorry. Pumpkin.

I ended up making this cake a little differently than the original recipe suggests. It asked for a 'packet of mixed fruit'. I spent a very long time in the supermarket aisle staring at the 'packets of mixed fruit' hoping for clarity and enlightenment as they were, predictably, all of varying size and volume. I had a tiny sad moment as I thought to myself that this would have been a perfect excuse for me to call my Nanna and ask what size a packet of mixed fruit she or her mum meant. I decided to buy just a one kilogram bag of dried fruit. I left that on the tram home by accident, so it was a great start to the evening of cooking yes it was. 

I dug through my pantry and found two already opened boxes of currants and a few of those little snack-sized boxes of sultanas. I figured that given I'd never really know what amount of dried fruit I needed, it wouldn't matter that I randomly threw in whatever I found into the mix. I measured it all of course, so in case the recipe worked I'd have a good reason why! Further down I then read that I need to cream the butter and 'a small cup of sugar'. A small cup of sugar. It really was one of those days. But you know what, it all came together in the end, so I present to you my Nanna's Trombone Cake Pumpkin Fruit Cake. I ate only a few crumbs of it before deciding that I could still taste the pumpkin (the cooking and mashing of which stunk my house out no end by the way, it was a nauseating affair). From all accounts, it's quite delicious. 

Trombone Cake

1 cup of sugar

115g. butter

2 eggs

1 cup warm mashed pumpkin (butternut squash)

1 tbsp. of golden syrup

2 cups self-raising flour

450g. mixed dried fruit

1 tbsp. vanilla essence

Pinch salt

Preheat oven to 170°C

Beat the butter and sugar, then add the eggs and mix to a cream (ready when pale and aerated). 

Add golden syrup, mashed pumpkin and mix with an electric beater for 5 minutes. 

Add the dried fruit, sifted self-raising flour, salt and essence. 

Pour into a greased and lined round cake tin, and bake for about 60 minutes, but check it from 45 minutes with a skewer to see if it's ready. Turn out from tin after about 15 minutes, and leave to cool on rack. 

~

For those of you who are not in Australia, please find here a selection of Measurement & Temperature Conversion Charts which should help with the accuracy of your own cooking.