Irish Porter Cake

Grease a 9-inch cake pan. If you want, line the bottom with parchment paper to ensure that it doesn't stick.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

In a medium pot, combine the porter, brown sugar and butter.

Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the butter melts and the brown sugar dissolves.

Add the dried fruit, increase the heat to medium-high, and bring it to a boil.

Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes.

Turn off the heat and let the mixture cool for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the temperature drops below 125 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves.

Once the porter/sugar/butter/fruit mixture has cooled, stir in the beaten eggs until thoroughly combined.

Add the fruit/egg mixture to the dry ingredients, and stir until it creates a thick batter, stirring carefully and thoroughly scraping up from the bottom to find any dry pockets of flour.

Pour the batter into the cake pan. Use a spatula to even out and smooth the top.

Transfer the pan to the oven and bake until the top is dark brown and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 90 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and set it on a cooling rack. Allow it to cool for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan.

Let it finish cooling on the rack before serving.