Sunday, December 12, 2010

Light Fruit Cake

Fruit Cakes, unlike any other typical cakes, require abit more time, effort and patience. With the careful attention, you can be assured of the special feeling of fulfilment when lifting a freshly baked fruit cake out of the oven. Especially when Christmas is round the corner.


In preparing a fruit cake, make sure you do the extra step of lining the tin in double layers as well as wrapping layers of newspaper around the outside of the tin due to the long cooking time. Lastly sit the tin on layers of newspaper in the oven.

I had a request for a fruit cake from a colleague of mine for her mother as her mother loves fruit cake. I promised her I will do it one day for tasting when I have abit more time and when the baking mood is back. I managed to get it done one day and here's the recipe I wish to share that differs from the one I used to make. However the appearance of my cake differs greatly from the picture in my cook book (Baking: A commonsense Guide). I wish I could reach that standard one day : ( My cake turned out very crumbly.. and broke into pieces once I cut it.

Preparation time: 40 min
Total cooking time: 3 hrs

185g unsalted butter, softened
115g caster sugar
3 eggs
160g sultanas
100g currants
60g chopped glace apricots
45g chopped glace figs
250g chopped glace cherries
80g macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
185g plain flour
60g self raising flour
125ml milk
1tbsp sweet sherry

For all the dried fruits, I simply bought a packet of mixed fruits from the supermarket to ease the hassle of buying individual packs and weighing them all.
That comes to about 605g in total. And as I couldn't find sherry nor rum, I replaced it with orange juice and I also replaced macadamia nuts to walnuts and almonds both chopped.

1. Preheat oven to 160 deg C and grease and line a deep 20cm round or 18cm square cake tin.

2. Cream butter and sugar together until well combined. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition.

3. Stir in the fruits and nuts.

4. Sift in half the flours and half the milk, stir to combine then continue with the rest of the flour and milk followed by sherry (my juice)

5. Spoon the mixture onto the tin and tap the tin to remove any air bubbles.

6. Wrap the outside of the tin and layer the rack with newspapers. Bake for 1 3/4 hours. Remove from oven and wrap tin in a tea towel until cool. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

(note: top of the tin may need to be covered during baking if it colours too much)

Pls spread the word for the festive season and visit my fellow blogger's blog :)

www.passionbaker.blogspot.com/2010/11/aspiring-bakers-2-christmas-dec-2010.html

MERRY XMAS EVERYONE!

5 comments:

Small Small Baker said...

Your fruit cake looks great! Love the generous amount of nuts and fruits. Have you heard of the Aspiring Bakers event started by me? Do join us with this fruit cake cos this month's theme is christmas. :)

Merry Christmas to you too!

Angel @ Cook.Bake.Love said...

Merry Christmas to you in advance.

Ur fruitcake is so colourful and pretty. U remind me to soak the pack of mixed fruits, sultana and raisin in rum which I have bought long time ago to prepare for this big day. I should have done it much earlier.

To me, fruitcake is a must-have for Christmas. I can't wait to make one for my family (though they don't really like fruitcake :P)

Missy said...

SSB: Oh i havent.. good to let me know. will have a look! and tks for your sweet comments..

Cookbakelove: tks! yes fruit cake is a must have... and the beauty of home made cakes is you can reduce the sugar amt. whereas those outside is really too sweet for me..

Kitchen Corner said...

This light fruit cake looks nice! I use to make fruit cake 6 months in advance to store in the freezer then feed them by brushing with liqueur every week. But I didn't manage to make it on time this year so my fruit cake can only be served during Chinese New Year. Thanks for sharing your recipe, I would love to try it out as my dad loves fruit cake very much. Cheers!

Missy said...

Thanks Kitchen Corner
it does take some effort to bake nice and tasteful fruit cake.. but i didnt know you can store it for 6mths in freezer! wow. thats amazing.