English cupcake with oranges chocolate and dried fruits

We will need a 24 cm baking dish, parchment paper, a small saucepan (1.5-2 liters) or a saucepan, a spatula for mixing.

1. If the dried fruits are dirty or have been pretreated, they must be washed and dried. Cut large dried fruits (dried apricots and prunes) into strips, put them in a saucepan. To the dried fruits, add butter cut into small cubes, honey, chocolate broken into small pieces, alcohol and spices.

You can use any aromatic alcohol, such as cognac, whiskey, rum, liqueur.

I usually take whole spices (except cinnamon) and grind them in a mortar or blender. This way they reveal their fragrance better.

Oranges also need to be washed, remove the zest from them and squeeze out the juice.

The zest can be removed in the following ways:

• grating an orange on a fine grater;
• carefully removing the zest with a knife, but after that it will need to be finely chopped;
• or a special device for removing the peel;

at the same time, you need to remove only the orange part of the crust, the white part adds bitterness.

Add the zest and juice of oranges to the pan.

2. Bring the resulting mixture to a boil and cook for 10-15 minutes on low heat, stirring constantly. The mixture will look like a very fragrant chocolate-colored porridge.

3. The mixture should be cooled to room temperature. Mix the eggs one by one.

Mix flour and soda separately. Add the flour to the pan and mix very well so that there are no dry lumps of flour left. Leave the dough for 10-15 minutes so that gluten and soda start working. Flour will begin to bind all the ingredients creating a viscous mass, and soda will react with honey and orange juice creating bubbles of carbon dioxide.

4. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees. We line the baking dish with parchment and spread the dough on it. The dough will turn out to be quite liquid.

The cupcake is baked from 1 to 2 hours, depending on your oven. The finished cupcake needs to be checked with a skewer.

*According to the classic recipe, the cupcake is lubricated and soaked with alcohol every day for a week, acquiring an armat and rich taste. Before serving, it is sprinkled with powdered sugar or covered with icing.