Malt loaf

Ingredients
tea (without milk)
dried fruit or mixed peel
malt extract
brown sugar
self raising flour
1 egg

Equipment
bowl
spoon

small loaf baking tin
baking paper

oven:
time in oven: 1 hour +

preparation time:
making cake mix

They made malt loaf on The Great British Bakeoff. I thought - I always wanted to have a go at that... The first attempt went horribly wrong, so this is my amended version. It's not really like shop malt loaf, but it's OK.

Cooking process

Make the tea (as a drink). Soak the dried fruit in it for a bit.
Mix all the ingredients together. With the tea and the malt extract (and no fat), this is a very sloppy mixture, so this is easy to do.
Line the baking tin with baking paper (reasonably essential, as this is a sticky cake!). Spoon (or pour!) the mixture into the tin into the tin.
Put the tin in the oven. This needs to cook for about an hour (see below). Test the cake by putting in a skewer and see if it comes out clean. But don't look at the cake too early. Opening the oven door reduces the over temperature, and that can make the cake collapse.
Turn the cake out from the tin and let it cool.

Comments

This is malt loaf because it's made with malt extract. This is a specific ingredient (it can be used to make beer!) If you can't get it, then replace with sugar, or something like Golden Syrup, or molasses, but it won't be malt loaf!
I used mixed peel rather than, say, sultanas, because I prefer them. They have to be soaked in a small amount of tea. The original recipes said do this for 24 hours, or heat them in a micro-wave, but I couldn't be bothered, and it seemed to work OK.
The first attempt didn't work, as I was working from a couple of recipes which specified a cooler oven, and less time. Then I found this recipe for a tea bread (which used all sugar rather than malt extract) with this oven temperature, and an hour and a half baking time. In fact I cooked it for 1 hour 5 mins, and it seemed fine. (The first attempt was completely under-cooked.)
Since tea breads (and malt loaf) have no fat, apart from the egg, they are traditionally eaten sliced, with butter.