Christmas Fruit Cake without alcohol | Kerala Plum Cake recipe
Learn how to make Christmas fruit cake using eggs.
Servings 0
Ingredients
- All purpose flour/Maida 1 ½ cup
- Brown Sugar 1 cup minus 2 tbsp
- Butter 200 grams
- Eggs 4
- Baking powder 1 tsp
- Salt ¼ tsp
- Cinnamon powder ½ tsp
- Cardamom powder ¼ tsp
- Vanilla essence 1 tbsp
- Cashews 5 optional to garnish
- Walnuts 3 optional to garnish
Caramel
- Sugar 2 tbsp
- Water ¼ cup
Soaking
- Orange Juice 1 cup
- Mixed dried fruits 2 ½ cup
Instructions
- Extract fresh orange juice and use 1 cup of orange juice.
- Finely chop the dried fruits and nuts. you can use candied orange or lemon peel too.
- Soak the dried fruits in orange juice and keep it in fridge till you use them. I soaked previous day and baked next day.
- Take sugar for making caramel in pan
- Allow it to melt in low to medium flame
- It will melt, caramelize and change to brown in colour
- Switch off the flame and now add ¼ cup water and mix. Be careful while adding water. If it crystallize you can melt in low flame. Allow it to cool down.
- Add two tbsp of flour to soaked dried fruits.
- Mix it nicely and keep it aside
- Sieve Maida, baking powder, salt, cinnamon powder, cardamom powder 2-3 time and keep it aside.
- Take butter in a bowl
- Add sugar to it
- Beat it nicely till it is creamy adding vanilla essence
- Then add eggs two at a time and beat for 1 minute
- Now add the remaining two eggs and cream it nicely
- Then add the caramel sauce and mix it nicely.
- Now add the sieved flour in batches and mix it without any lumps
- Finally add the dried fruits
- Mix it nicely till everything is combined.
- Grease the baking tin with butter and dust it with flour.
- Fill the tin with batter to ¾th and tap the pan to release air. I filled one mini loaf and one bread tin with this batter.
- Add some crushed cashews and walnuts on the top
- Preheat the oven to 180°c for ten minutes and bake it the same temperature for 45-50 minutes till toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- Cool them in wire rack and remove the cake from tin.
- Enjoy the yummy fruit cake.
Notes
Baking time and temperature will vary depending on the oven. So closely watch after 40 minutes.
Cool the cake completely before slicing
Dusting dry fruits with little flour prevent them from sinking to bottom.
My mixed dry fruits contain raisins, currants, cranberry, candied citrus peel
You can also use figs, apricots, dates, plums, tutti fruti, cherries
You can use nuts like cashews, badam, pista, hazelnuts, walnuts. I used little nuts to garnish on the top
You can use nutmeg, dry ginger and clove powder also. You can prepare the spice powder by roasting them and grinding to powder.
Original recipe called for using more dried fruits and nuts. I used 2 ½ cups only for this recipe which I felt itself is more. You can reduce the quantity of dried fruits and nuts if you are not big fan of dried fruits like me.