Recipe - Banana Fruit Cake

Three fourths cup Butter
2 cup Brown sugar
4 Eggs
2 One half cup Allpurpose flour
1 cup Walnuts; chopped
3 cup Candied fruit
2 cup Dates; chopped
1 tablespoon Orange juice
1 teaspoon Orange rind; grated
One half teaspoon Orange extract
1 teaspoon Baking powder
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1 teaspoon Salt
One fourth teaspoon Ground nutmeg
One fourth teaspoon Ground cloves
1 teaspoon Ground cinnamon
1 One half cup Mashed bananas

Recipe by: Rose Murray, The Christmas Cookbook Great Canadian Prepare two 2
Litre (9" x 5") loaf pans. Preheat oven to 300 F. In a large bowl combine
the fruit, dates, pineapple and walnuts. Dredge them with One fourth cup of the
flour. Sift the remaining flour together with the baking powder, baking
soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Set aside. Cream the butter, add
the sugar and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs,
one at a time. Beat in the orange rind, orange juice and orange extract.
Mash the bananas with a fork. (A food processor will tend to liquefy the
bananas and this will change the texture of the cake.) Alternately stir the
bananas and the flour mixture into the creamed mixture. Stir in the floured
fruit and nuts. Turn into the prepared pans and bake for 2 hours and 15
minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of each cake comes out
clean. Cool in the pans for 20 minutes, then turn out onto racks. Yields
about 5 pounds of cake.

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini