Fruit cake is one those divisive foods. People seem to either love it or hate it. For me, it’s love. What’s not to love about fruit.
Thomas and PK requested this recipe.
Christmas is coming. I use this as my Christmas cake and any time of the year fruit cake. It’s quick, easy and never disappointing.
Many times I have made it as a food gift. Put onto a pretty plate and wrap in cellophane. If Christmas is overwhelming you, remember this as a gift.
This is a boiled fruitcake. Anyone can make it. No special equipment. Just a saucepan, a wooden spoon and a cake tin, lined with baking paper.
This is how I do it.
Ingredients
125 g diced Australian dried apricots
125 g unsalted butter
125 g sugar
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup fortified wine (muscat or sherry is good)
1 heaped dessert spoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 3/4 cups self-raising flour
1 large free range egg
1/2 cup Pecan nuts
Method
Put the first eight ingredients in a medium saucepan. Put saucepan over low heat, bring to boil. Gently simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off and allow to cool to room temperature.
- Fruit Cake susies-scraps.com
Prepare a 20cm springform cake pan with baking paper. Tear off a square, fold in half, then quarters, fold into a wedge, into eights then sixteenths. Hold the paper over the cake pan, line up the point of the paper with the centre of the pan. Using kitchen scissors cut through the folded edge up to the edge of the pan. now open the paper and fit to the pan.
After you have made the snip in the paper, it will look like this.
Then, once you open it up, and before it goes into the pan, it will look like this. Thank you Simone for your comments. I hope this shows the paper cutting better 🙂
Set the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
Add the bicarbonate of soda, mix in well. Mixture will begin to foam. Now add the flour and egg. Mix well. Pour into prepared pan.
Decorate with the nuts. Bake for approximately 50 minutes. Cake will pull away from the side of the pan and recoil a little to touch when ready. Remove from oven. Cool before turning out.
For an iced cake, you may wish to incorporate the pecans into the cake, before cooking, so that you can ice it at the end.
If you wanted your cake to have a richer taste and longer keeping qualities, sprinkle a couple of extra tablespoons of brandy over the cake when it comes out of the oven.
If you would like a quick icing alternative to traditional marzipan and fondant icing, make an icing with 1 cup pure icing sugar, 1 softened tablespoon of butter, and a few drops of almond essence, and a little water to mix to a smooth paste.