Mrs Robin’s Fruit Cake Recipe

Mrs Robin’s boiled fruit cake is the sort of old-fashioned bake that’s passed down a family rather than copied from a book. It’s a one-pan, one-bowl method — dried fruit, sugar, margarine and water simmered briefly together before the flour and eggs go in — which makes it forgiving, reliable, and easy enough to bake on a weeknight. The full ingredients, timings and step-by-step method are in the recipe card below.

Also worth a look: Chocolate Birthday Cake Recipe · Vegan Upside Down Fig Cake Recipe · Vegan Classic Chocolate Cake

Mrs Robin’s Fruit Cake

A traditional boiled fruit cake recipe with margarine, mixed dried fruit and mixed spice. Forgiving, freezer-friendly and even better a couple of days after baking.

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr 15 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr 30 minutes mins

Course Dessert

Cuisine English

Servings 12 slices

Ingredients

  

• 125 g margarine
• 175 g sugar (dark brown, light or white)
• 175 g currants
• 175 g sultanas
• 50 g candied peel
• 225 ml water
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda level
• 1 tsp mixed spice heaped
• 2 eggs beaten
• 125 g plain flour (whole wheat or white)
• 125 g self-raising flour (whole wheat or white)
• 1 pinch salt

Instructions

 

• Place the margarine, sugar, currants, sultanas, candied peel, water, bicarbonate of soda and mixed spice in a pan. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 1 minute.
• Pour into a large mixing bowl and leave to cool to room temperature.
• Line an 18cm square or 20cm round tin (or a loaf tin, if you prefer) with greased greaseproof paper.
• When the mixture is cool, add the beaten eggs, both flours and the salt. Mix well, then pour into the tin and give it a little shake so the mixture settles into the corners.
• Bake in the centre of a moderate oven (180°C / gas mark 4) for 1 hour 15 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack. The cake improves if left to stand for a day or two after cooking — if you can wait that long.

Notes

A forgiving boiled-cake formula — you can swap the currants, sultanas and candied peel for any dried fruit as long as the total weight stays the same.

Tips and variations

This is a really old boiled-cake recipe which is great for using up whatever dried fruit you have left over. You can swap around the currants, sultanas and candied peel as long as you keep the overall weight the same — raisins, glacé cherries, chopped dates and dried apricots all work well.

The cake improves if left to stand for a day or two after cooking — if you can wait that long. Wrap it in greaseproof paper then foil and keep it in an airtight tin at room temperature. It will keep well for up to a week, and it also freezes beautifully for up to three months. If you’ve stocked up for a baking weekend, the butter can go in the freezer as well — see can you freeze butter?.

You may also enjoy our blog on what 30g of sugar looks like — a useful reference for thinking about how much sugar is really in home bakes like this one. Planning a bake for the Easter Sunday tea table? See how many days until Easter 2027 for the date and a 10-year Easter calendar.

Who was Mrs Robins?

It’s a question we’re asked a lot, and for many families the trail leads back to the same place. Mary Watts — who, with her husband Graham, created, produced and directed Yorkshire Television’s much-loved cookery series Farmhouse Kitchen in the 1970s and 80s — has explained that “Mrs Robin” was in fact her own mother. The recipe itself came originally from a family friend, always known at home as “Mrs Blackburn’s cake” — her husband was a Brigadier held as a prisoner of war during the Second World War. Mary Watts printed the recipe under her mother’s name in the show’s companion volume, The Complete Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook (1984), and from there it found its way into thousands of British kitchens.

If your own family’s copy arrived by a slightly different route — a school friend, a WI stall, a wartime billet — you’re not imagining it. Versions of this cake, and this story, have travelled and blurred at the edges for decades, and more than one reader has their own account of exactly who Mrs Robins was. We’re grateful to Mary Watts for sharing the fullest version we’ve found, in a comment on fellow baker Sue Nicholls’ blog.