Jane's Cherry Cake

250g tin cherries drained
125 g dried apricots chopped
125 g dried figs chopped
125 g chopped nuts (walnuts, almonds or pecans)
150 g plain flour
2 ¼ tsp baking powder
165 g sugar
3 eggs
1 egg white
¼ cup vegetable oil
60 ml brandy
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract

Combine cherries, apricots, figs, nuts, flour, baking pdr and half the sugar. Beat egg & egg whites with remaining sugar then stir in the oil, brandy, almond & vanilla extracts. Stir egg mixture into the fruit mixture. Bake in a lined & buttered tin @ 180 for 40 – 45 mins. Cool on a rack for 15 mins before turning out. Keeps up to 4 days in the fridge……………if you can resist eating it for that long!

Enjoy!

Jane

PS re February book group.
Looks like its a day trip book group, not a sleep over, in February at Moy's on the Central Coast.

March book

Title: The Boat

Author: Nam Le

Location: Sue Ellyard's house

I'm the fifth reserve through Hornsby library, which means I'll have to buy the book, I fear.

There's a transcript of a Peter Mares ABC interview at:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2273652.htm

Blurb from Penguin is
The Boat will take you everywhere.
In 1979, Nam Le's family left Vietnam for Australia, an experience that inspires the first and last stories in The Boat. In between, however, Le's imagination lays claim to the world.
The Boat takes us from a tourist in Tehran to a teenage hit man in Columbia; from an aging New York artist to a boy coming of age in a small Victorian fishing town; from the city of Hiroshima just before the bomb is dropped to the haunting waste of the South China Sea in the wake of another war.
Each story uncovers a raw human truth. Each story is absorbing and fully realised as a novel. Together, the make up a collection of astonishing diversity and achievement.
'Nam Le is extraordinary, a writer who will be heard. The Boat will be read for as long as people read books. Its vision and its power are timeless.' - Mary Gaitskill
'Wonderful stories that snarl and pant cross our crazed world... and extraordinary performance. Nam Le is a heartbreaker, not easily forgotten.' - Junot Diaz
'A fearless new Australian voice that accepts no geographical limits; these are stories of leaping power and the most breathtaking grace and intimacy.' - Helen Garner

February book is Christos Tsiolkas The Slap, a bit of a door-stop of a book so get reading! Should make for interesting discussion at Moy's where the is the possibility of a sleepover meeting.

January book is Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, which I can highly recommend. January meeting is at Jane's.