FRUITY TEACAKE AND RASPBERRY ALMOND BITES

My daughter-in-law is arriving this afternoon with two grandsons, Aiden and Alex. I thought I would do some baking to stock up the goody tin!
I do like a nice teabread. I have made several versions in the past but this sounded nice with the orange in.

FRUITY TEACAKE
300g mixed dried fruit
225ml hot tea
juice 1 orange plus zest
50g butter
100g soft brown sugar
1 egg
222g self raising flour
4 tbsp demerara sugar ( I used 2)

Place the dried fruits in a bowl and pour over the hot tea, orange juice and zest. Cover and leave for at least 4 hours or better, overnight.
Heat the oven to 180C/160Cfan. Grease and line a loaf tin. Beat together the butter and sugar until creamy then beat in egg followed by flour. Stir in fruit. Spoon the mixture into the tin and smooth the surface. Sprinkle all over with the demerara sugar.
Bake for 1 hour until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool in tin then turn out. This cake keeps really well.

RASPBERRY ALMOND BITES
2 large egg whites
150g icing sugar
pink food colouring- optional
70g ground almonds
mascarpone
raspberry jam

Whisk egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually whisk in sugar. Add colouring if used. Fold in ground almonds. Cover 2 baking sheets with baking parchment, using a dab of the mixture to secure corners. Use spoon to make circles about 5cm wide. Leave for about 10 minutes until a skin starts to form.
Heat oven to 180C/160Cfan. Place baking sheets in oven leaving door ajar to allow steam to escape and cook for 20 mins until just crisp. ( I forgot to leave oven ajar and my oven would keep peeping anyway!and they
were OK.) Leave to cool. Ease off the paper. Spread half the biscuits with jam and the other half with the mascarpone and sandwich together.