I like to have a slice of fruit cake once in a while. So, I thought of making one for Christmas this year. Hopefully it will taste good. It's now sitting in the fridge for the flavours to be macerated. Hmmmm....keeping my fingers crossed!
Ingredients
1 kg of mixed dried fruit - sultanas, raisins, cranberries, red cherries
90 g of orange peel
250g of dried apricots-chopped
100g of strawberry jam
2 tbsps honey
60ml of brandy - I have used VSOP Cognac
500g butter - softened at room temperature
400g brown / Demerara / Muscovado sugar
6 eggs
625g plain flour -sifted
1 tsp cinnamon (optional)
1 tsp nutmeg (optional)
4 tsps allspice (optional)
Round baking pan size - 25cm/10 inch pan
or
Square baking pan size - 22 cm/9 inch pan
Method
- Mix together dried fruit, orange peel, dried apricots, strawberry jam, honey and brandy. Let the mixture macerate for about 1 week or longer if you like. This mixture was left in the fridge for 1 month.
- Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon everyday.
- Preheat the oven to 140 degrees.
- Lightly grease your baking tin and line the base and side.
- Use a hand mixer or KA, beat butter and sugar till combined.
- Gradually, add in eggs (one at a time) and beat well, after each addition.
- The mixture may look curdled but it's normal.
- Use a spatula and stir in sifted flour in 2 batches.
- Stir in the fruit mixture and mix well. It's a little hard to move the spatula around but do make sure you have mixed them well.
- Scoop the batter into the baking tin and level the surface. Tap the tin several times to remove any air bubbles in the mixture.
- Wrap the baking tin with brown paper/ newspaper around the outside of the tin and tie it with a brown string.
- Place the baking tin on several pieces of folded newspaper/baking paper - in the middle rack and bake for about 2-3hrs.
- Use a skewer -inserted into the centre of the tin, to check if the cake is done or not at around 2 hours and periodically after that, if it's not done. The skewer should come out clean.
- Leave cake to cool in the tin by covering the top with a piece of non-stick baking paper and foil.
Storage: When it's cooled down, remove from the tin, wrap tightly in greaseproof paper, then plastic wrap and aluminium foil and store in the fridge for about 1 week before serving.
You can freeze it for up to a year.
ENJOY!
I have used a smaller sized baking tin (thanks to hubby) and with the extra batter, I have used individual foiled tins and baked them at about 1 hour. The big one was baked for about 2 hours only.
* How do you line the baking tin?
Grease the pan and line with a layer of brown paper first at the side and then 2 layers of greaseproof paper on top of the brown paper. Line with greaseproof paper at the base. Line with brown paper/newspaper on the outside of the pan and secure it tightly with a string.
Recipe is adapted from thescarfer.net and my own preferences.
