Fruitcake

For this year's Christmas I wanted to make my first fruitcake. Actually, my mother in law wanted one, so of course I wanted to have a go at it :) You need quite a lot of ingredients, so I made more. The recipe was supposed to be for one 24cm round baking tin, so I thought it would be enough for a 18cm tin and a 16cm tin. Well, I made those two and still had enough dough for two 12cm tins and four cupcakes.

The different fruits and nuts are only suggestions. If you do not like one of them, just replace it by another one. You can also use less or more different fruits. Actually, I did not want to include the plum preserve, but instead of sweet orange jam I grabbed the bitter one and so the whole dough was a bit bitter. So some plum preserve I had did make the job to sweeten the cake again :)

What you need:

1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped dried dates
1/2 cup chopped dried figs
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup chopped dried plums
3/4 cup apricot brandy
3 cups flour
1/2 cup ground walnuts
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 1/2 stick softened butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
4 large eggs
zest and juice of one lemon
zest and juice of one orange
1/4 cup apricot preserve
1/4 cup orange preserve
3 tbsp. plum preserve
1/2 cup chopped almonds
more apricot brandy

First, place raisins, dates, figs, apricots and plums into a bowl and pour the brandy onto them. Place a lid on the bowl and let stand for several hours, better over night.

Then, beat butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add the eggs one by one and mix after each addition. Now, drain the dried fruits, but do not discard the brandy! Pour the brandy into the butter-sugar-egg mixture, along with the zests and juices of the lemon and orange and the preserves. Mix until all is combined.



 

Add flour, ground walnuts, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves and slowly mix until combined. Finally, fold in the chopped almonds and dried fruits. Fill the mixture into a (or several) lined baking pan and bake on 150°C for one and a half to two and a half hour, depending on the size of the pans. The muffins were done after 40 minutes, while the 18cm cake took 1 3/4 hour.

 

When the cake is done and cold enough to touch, take it out of the pan and turn it upside down. With a skewer poke holes into the bottom and spoon a bit brandy over it. Wrap tightly into cling foil and store. This cake is delicious fresh, but if you want to be traditional and store it, just unwrap it every 2-4 weeks to poke holes into the bottom and spoon brandy over it again. The recipe (from the Harry Potter Cookbook) says it can even be stored for years that way. One was given away a week after being baked, another one will be given away two weeks after. So, after Christmas there will be still two plus one muffin left. I am really curious how well it will keep and for how long I can stand it, having a cake around and not eating it :)

As you can see, I only roughly chopped the dried fruits. You can, of course, chop them into finer pieces if you like :)

When you are ready to eat it, or give it away, you can leave it plain simple, or - as usual - decorate it. For my first give-away, I brushed the top with melted honey (heat some teaspoons of honey in a small pot, to make it more liquid and thus easier to handle) and stuck nuts and dried fruits onto it. Then, brush some more liquid honey over it and hope that it will hold your decoration in place :) 

Of course, you can ice your fruitcake, or cover it with marzipan. I will let you know what I did to the other cakes :)