Low Cholesterol Fruit Cake

My hubby is rather partial to my home made cakes and biscuits, but a recent cholesterol scare saw those treats removed from his diet.  I looked for some healthy alternatives and found a recipe amongst my mothers cook books. I have changed a couple of the ingredients and you could experiment with others. With the mixed fruit I used a combination of currants, sultanas, dried apricots, glace ginger and a few nuts--hazelnuts, almonds all the fruit and nuts need to be finely chopped. Even though this cake has a lot of fruit remember it has no butter or eggs so still very economical to make

Ingredients

• 500gm mixed dried fruit, your choice
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 cup apricot nectar ( I have also used pear juice)
• 1 cup mashed cold pumpkin, Jap pumpkins are good
• 1 2/3 cups SR flour--I used a mix of SR and Wholemeal SR flour
• 1 teaspoon bi carb soda
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice, you could use powdered ginger if you like

Method

• Prepare a 21x14cm loaf pan, grease and line
• combine fruit, juice and honey in a medium pan
• bring to boil then simmer uncovered for 3 minutes
• place mixture into a large bowl and cool
• stir pumpkin and sifted dry ingredients into fruit mixture
• spread into pan and bake on a moderate oven 160degrees for 1 1/4 hours or till a skewer comes out clean
• leave in tin till cold.
• this cakes freezes very well, is beautiful spread with a little butter ( or margarine!)