Christmas Fruit Cake

Course: Dessert                         

Cuisine: International

Preparation time: 20 minutes+waiting time         

Cook time: 60 minutes 

Servings: 2 cakes

Ingredients

• 2¼ cups of all purpose flour
• 3 large room temperature eggs
• 1½ cup of molasses
• 1 cup of water
• 1/3 cup or 82g of butter
• 1½ teaspoon of baking soda
• 1½ teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)
• 2½ cups of raisins, currants, cranberries (See Notes)
• 1½ teaspoon of ground ginger
• 1½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon of ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• ½ cup or 75g of candied orange peels
• 90g of nuts (See Notes)
  

Directions

1. Chop all the dried fruits to the size of raisins and keep them aside.(See Notes)
2. In a pot, add the butter, molasses and water. Now, turn on the flame and heat the mixture till all the butter melts.
3. To this mixture, then add the ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and stir in all the spices in the mixture. (See Notes)
4. Add in all the raisins, currants and cranberries and bring the mixture to soft boil. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes and turn off the flame. Let the mixture cool.
5. Meanwhile in a bowl, take the flour and add the salt and baking powder to it. Mix all the ingredients to form an even mixture. Sift in all the dry ingredients and keep them aside
6. Chop all the nuts and the orange peel and keep them aside.
7. Preheat the oven at 320F or 160°C.
8. As the dried fruit and sugar mixture is no more hot and just warm(takes about 1 hour), crack in the eggs one by one followed by mixing it along with the remaining mixture. (See Notes)
9. Once you have added in all the eggs, add the nuts and chopped orange peels to the mixture. (See notes)
10. Also, add the vanilla extract at this point if you plan to add it.
11. Add all the dry ingredients to the mixture and fold them along with the wet ingredients.
12. Fold till you do not see any more white powder but be careful not to overdo.
13. Grease the baking tin with butter and pour in the mixture in the baking tin. (The dimensions of my baking tin is 28cm x 12.5cm x 6.5cm)
14. Pour the mixture in the baking tin and bake the cake till a toothpick comes out clean.(takes about 45 -60 minutes depending on the oven)
15. Remove the cake from the oven and store it for couple of days before serving. (see Notes)

Notes

• You can use any kind of raisins and currants according to your choice. But remember to keep the total weight of the dry fruits constant. I have used dried apricots, candied ginger, mejdool dates, currants, golden raisins(kishmish) in this cake.
• You can remove any of the spices or substitute with your favorite spice.
• It is important to cool down the mixture else you will cook all the eggs when you add them to the dry fruit mixture.
• It is important that the eggs are at room temperature. If you add the eggs from the refrigerator they might suffer a temperature shock and curdle.
• You can use any nuts according to your choice. I have used equal proportions of cashew, almonds and pistachios.
• Though you can eat the cake immediately after baking, the cake tastes best when left to mature for a couple of days.