No need to soak fruits and nuts for months in advance or take half a day to make this Christmas cake. Shortcuts are the way to go when you have missed the long route. I’ve been seeing many posts on my Twitter and Facebook timeline about soaking fruits in booze months ahead of Christmas. It looked quite lovely, I must say. But I didn’t think I wanted to bake the cake. Turns out, I did. What did I do then? Just cook out the fruit mixture in juice and simply add the booze!
I’ve adapted the recipe from here. With a few tweaks it works quite well. I tried keeping it as easy as I could with only a few steps.
Adding melted butter to the tutti fruitti
Blanched almonds are optional but they look so pretty!
Yield:
One round cake
Prep time:
20 mins
Baking time:
45-50 mins
Ingredients:
Flour – 1 and 1/2 cup
Baking powder – 1 and 1/2 tsp
Cinnamon powder – 2 tsp
Ginger powder – 2 tsp
All spice powder – 1 tsp (optional)
Butter – 1/2 cup (100 gm) melted and cooled
Eggs – 2 lightly whisked
Brown sugar – 1/2 cup (white sugar is ok too but you won’t get that brown colour)
Tutti fruitti – 1/2 cup
Raisins/sultanas – 1/4 cup
Dates – 1/4 cup chopped
Dried cranberries – 1/4 cup
Walnuts (or any nuts) – 1/2 cup chopped
Orange – 1 (zest + juice)
Blanched almonds – handful
Brandy or rum – 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp
Apricot jam – 2 tbsp (optional)
Method:
Mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon powder, all spice and ginger powder together in a mixing bowl.
Heat a saucepan and add the tutti fruitti, raisins/sultanas, cranberries and dates along with the zest and juice of the orange.
Let it cook on medium heat for 10 minutes.
Transfer to a bowl and let it cool completely. It should take 10-15 mins. Add the brandy/rum.
In the meanwhile preheat your oven to 160 degrees C and line your round cake tin with parchment paper.
Add the melted butter and mix.
Whisked eggs and sugar goes into the tutti fruitti mixture, and mix well.
Now tip the flour mixture and nuts to this and gently fold it in.
Spoon the batter into the cake tin and line it with blanched almonds if you like. You can skip the almonds too.
Let this bake for 45 minutes before you check if it’s done.
Use a toothpick to check if it’s baked and take it off the oven.
If you have apricot jam, heat 2 tbsp of it in a saucepan with some rum/brandy and brush it over the cake.
