Quick and Easy Christmas Fruit Cake

Easy Boiled Fruit Christmas Cake

With Christmas just around the corner, here’s a quicker and easier version of the traditional Christmas cake or Christmas fruit cake but without any rum or any other alcoholic drink. I’ll tell you how to adapt it though, to make it with rum.

It’s a quick Christmas cake. It requires no prior soaking of the fruits, no vigorous beating and no heavy-duty equipment. Usually, the mixed dried fruits that go into the Christmas cake are first rehydrated by soaking them for a few weeks in an alcoholic liquid like rum. The prior soaking moistens and plumps up the fruit. But in this recipe, boiling the fruits in a flavourful liquid plumps them up, that too in just a few minutes. Also called a boiled fruit Christmas cake, this is a super delicious, moist, and aromatic fruit cake. This recipe is so easy, it’s like a one-pot Christmas cake.

It’s also a recipe you could modify to suit your taste. You could decide on your own choice of fruit and nuts to make the cake. For instance, instead of some of the dry fruits I have picked, you could use some other ones like cranberries, figs, dried pineapple, etc. And you could also settle for some different nuts like walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans.

And if you’re looking for another delicious cake for this Christmas or any other time of year, how about a soft and tasty date and carrot cake?

Ingredients

Mixed dry fruits – 400g – 500 g

For 500g:

70 g dates, chopped (½ cup)

70g candied cherries, chopped (¼ cup + ½ tbsp)

100g (½ cup + 1 ½ tbsp) golden raisins

100g (½ cup + 1 ½ tbsp) black raisins, chopped

100g (½ cup) tutti fruti (candied peel)

60g dried apricots, chopped (10 Nos.)

30g (¼ cup) cashew nuts, chopped

50g (½ cup) almonds, chopped

¾ cup orange juice (from 3-4 oranges)

3 tbsp water

1 tbsp orange zest (zest of 1 small orange)

220g (1 ¾ cup) maida (all-purpose flour)

130g (½ cup + 2 tbsp) sugar

170g (¾ cup + ½ tbsp) salted butter

3 eggs

¾ tsp baking powder

2 tsp rum extract / vanilla extract

Spice Mix:

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp dried ginger powder/grated ginger

¾ tsp grated nutmeg

8 cloves, finely ground

Caramel Syrup:

½ cup sugar (105g) + 2 tsp water

¼ cup water

Diluted jam (optional):

1 ½ tbsp any fruit jam

2 tsp water

Procedure

1. Prepare the caramel by heating ½ cup sugar +2 tsp water in a thick-walled vessel on a medium flame without stirring. Wait till the sugar caramelises almost completely and then gently tilt the vessel to swirl the caramelised sugar around until it caramelises fully and is golden brown. Continue swirling it around without stirring it with a spoon for a few more minutes till it begins bubbling vigorously and becomes dark brown. Turn off the heat and carefully add in ¼ cup of water with continuous swirling of the liquid in the vessel. Once the caramelised sugar has mixed properly with the water, turn on the stove again with the flame on medium. Let the caramel come to a boil, then lower the heat, and let it simmer for 2 minutes. Take the caramel off the heat and let it cool completely. It will thicken on cooling.
2. Next prepare the golden raisins, black raisins, and dried apricots for boiling them. Chop larger size raisins into 2 parts. Remove the seed from the apricots and chop the flesh into small pieces around 1cm in size.
3. To a large vessel (in which you will later mix the cake batter as well), add the golden raisins, the chopped black raisins, and the chopped apricot. To this mix, add in the orange zest, butter, sugar, orange juice, the water, and caramel. Instead of caramel, you could add 3 tbsp of molasses. (To make this a rum and fruit cake, replace half of the orange juice with rum.) Turn on the heat with the flame on medium, and stir everything well, till the mix comes to a boil. Turn the heat down, and let the mix simmer for around 5 – 6 minutes with occasional stirring. Take it off the heat and let it cool to room temperature or almost room temperature. (This could take 1 ½ hours or more.) The mixture will thicken considerably on cooling.
4. In the meanwhile, chop the almonds, cashew nuts, dates, and candied cherries, get the spice mix ready, and prepare the pan for baking. Grease the baking pan. Use a double lining of parchment paper for the sides and bottom since the cake we’re making is a dense one that has to be baked at a lower temperature for a longer time and could start getting burnt before it’s completely baked. See that the level of the parchment paper around the sides is around 1 inch above the rim of the pan.
5. Sift the flour and baking powder. Add in the spice mix and stir the dry ingredients well.
6. Transfer the eggs to a bowl and whisk them lightly with a fork.
7. To the cooled fruit mixture, add the dates, candied cherries, and tutti fruti. Mix everything.
8. Stir in the whisked eggs and the rum extract (or vanilla extract).
9. Add the flour mix in two portions, mixing well after each addition. Don’t beat vigorously or over-mix.
10. Finally, stir in the almonds and cashew nuts. The batter should be wet and sticky and have a dropping consistency. If you find it’s too dry, stir in around 1 tbsp of water.
11. Transfer the batter to the prepared cake pan. Level the top and tap the pan on the work surface a few times to get rid of any trapped air bubbles.
12. This dense and heavy cake needs to be slow baked for a longer time. So bake the cake at 160C (325F) in the centre of the oven for 50 minutes. Then, lower the heat to 150C (300F), and continue baking the cake for around 30 – 45 minutes longer. My cake took a total of 1 hour and 25 minutes to bake: 50 minutes at 160 C and 35 mins at 150C. After 1 hour and 10 minutes from the start, cover the cake with a piece of parchment paper or aluminium foil to prevent the top from burning. (Since ovens and baking times differ, I suggest testing the cake with a skewer after around 1 hour and 15 minutes. The skewer should come out clean. If it feels too sticky, bake the cake for a further 10 minutes and repeat the test, baking the cake till it passes the skewer test.)
13. After taking it out of the oven, let it cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.
14. Unmould the cake and if you’re ready to cut and serve the cake, you could brush the top (and also the sides if you want) with the diluted jam. (This is an optional step meant to seal the cake and prevent it from drying quickly and also give it a glaze and a more appealing look). For a rum cake, you could brush it with rum. Give the jam/rum layer around ½ hour to set. You could then serve the cake.

Enjoy!

Storing the cake:

But if you want to bake the cake in advance and serve it after a few days, to make sure it stays moist, here’s what you could do.  For a rum cake, poke holes across the top of the cake and then pour 3 – 4 tbsp of rum through the holes and cracks in the cake. For a non-alcoholic cake, you’ll have to skip this step. But for both kinds of cake, once it cools completely, wrap it tightly in cling film or parchment paper and then in aluminium foil, and store it in an airtight container. Instead of using an airtight container, you could transfer the wrapped cake to a plastic bag.

But don’t ever wrap the cake directly in foil. The acid in the fruit cake will corrode the foil and this in turn could spoil the taste of your cake. And as long as it lasts, keep it wrapped in parchment paper and foil.

When stored properly, the cake will stay moist and good for around 8 to 10 days at room temperature. After that, you could store the wrapped cake in the fridge where it will keep good for around a month.