Christmas Fruit Cake

Christmas cake is an English tradition that began as plum porridge. A traditional English Christmas Cake is made with rich, moist currants, sultanas (golden raisins) and raisins which have been soaked in rum.

I remember as a kid I used to wait for the cake which my friend used to bring at our house on the Christmas mornings and also going to the carols and being served with the cake.

I wanted to try and make Christmas Cake at home and while searching about how they are made, I came across a few recipes which were made without Alcohol. There are few without eggs too but I didn't wanted to play around with the texture of the cake while attempting for the first time.

Ingredients :

For Soaking dry fruits

• Orange juice - 2 cups

• Golden raisins - 1/2 cup

• Black Raisins - 1/2 cup

• Dried Cranberries -1/4 cup

• Cashews - 1/2 cup

• Almonds - 1/2 cup

• Candied Mixed Fruits (Tutti Fruitti) - 1 cup

For Caramel

• Granulated Sugar - ½ cup

• Warm water - ¼ cup + 1 tbsp

For Batter

• Soft Unsalted Butter - 1 Cup

• Brown Sugar - 1 & 1/2 cups

• Eggs - 5 (room temperature)

• All-purpose flour (Maida) - 1 & 3/4 cups

• Almond flour or Ground Almond - 1/4 cup

• Baking powder - 1 tsp

• Baking soda - 1/2 tsp

• Salt - 1/4 tsp

• Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

• Cloves powder - 1 & 1/2 tsp

• Cardamom powder - 1 tsp

• Cinnamon powder - 1 tsp

• Nutmeg powder - 1/2 tsp

• Ginger powder - 1 tsp

Method :

Step 1 : Soak dry fruits and nuts:

• In a large bowl, add the tutti fruitti, golden raisins, black raisins, dried cranberries, chopped cherries, chopped cashews and almonds. You can use any dry fruits and nuts of your own choice.

• Add 2 cups of orange juice to it and allow it to soak for minimum 2 days to a month in a airtight container. I kept it for 1 week and as here it isn't cold weather, I kept it in the refrigerator (just mixed them well once daily). You can replace it with grape juice or rum also.

Step 2 : Draining the soaked dry fruits and nuts :

• The dry fruits and nuts are soaked well and most of the juice get absorbed by the dry fruits.

• To drain the dry fruits: Drain the dry fruits and reserve the juice for later use. Dust it with 2 tbsp of flour and coat the dry fruits with the flour so that while adding dry fruits to cake batter it will not sink to the bottom.

Step 3 : To prepare Caramel

• In a pan, add 1/2 cup sugar with a tablespoon of water. Heat it and allow the sugar to melt completely. Boil it until the melted sugar becomes dark brown.

• Once it becomes brown, remove it from the heat and add 1/4 cup of hot water to it. Please be careful at this stage because the water tends to splash and can cause burns.

• After adding hot water, bring it back to the heat and stir for a minute. Remove from the heat and allow it to cool completely.

Step 4 : To make Batter

• In a large bowl, beat butter until creamy and soft.

• Add Brown sugar to it and beat well. Brown sugar gives the color to the cake, even though white sugar is also good.

• Add eggs one by one and beat well until everything combines together.

• Add vanilla extract and cooled caramel syrup and beat well for a minute.

• Add maida, almond flour or ground almond, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg powder, cinnamon powder, cloves powder, cardamom powder and ginger powder and mix well. Beat it for a minute.

• Finally add the soaked dry fruits and nuts along with 5 tbsp of orange juice which we used to soak the dry fruits and mix well.

Step 5 : Bake and Serve

• Preheat the oven to 150° - 130° Celsius for 10 minutes.

• Grease the baking pans with butter, place the parchment paper and pour the batter into the prepared pans.

• Bake it in the pre heated oven for 1.5 to 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Mine took 1 hour&45 minutes on 130° Celsius.

Notes

• You can use any fruits of your choice like apricots, figs, prunes, dried blueberries etc.

• Soaking it for longer as it gives more flavor and taste to the cake. If you want to do it on the same day, boil the dry fruits and nuts along with the orange juice/grape juice for about 5 to 8 minutes in medium heat and allow it to cool and add it to the batter

• My cake isn't as dark as a lot you find in markets. The reason being that those have Molasses added to them.

Molasses is the dark, sweet, syrupy byproduct made during the extraction of sugars from sugarcane and sugar beets.