Christmas Fruit Cake

One of my friends invited me to her home for Christmas and I planned to bake a cake for everyone. I generally make Christmas cake by soaking dry fruits in Rum. Since there were a few kids around I decided to make the cake alcohol free. Also this recipe doesn't need you to soak the dry fruits in advance and therefore doesn’t need prior planning. Bake it, when you need it!

Ingredients

• 1 and 1/2 cup roughly chopped dry fruits (plum, black raisins, apricot, cherries, orange zest, almonds)
• 250 ml. of orange juice
• 250 ml. apple juice
• 3 tsp. rum flavor
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 100 gm. butter at room temperature
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. spice powder ( 1 tiny piece of cinnamon, 2 cloves and 1tiny piece nutmeg ground to a fine powder)

Procedure

In a sauce pan mix half of orange and apple juice and stir well. Add chopped dry fruit mixture to it and simmer them in a low flame till all the juices are dried up. Turn off the heat and allow it to cool. Now add 1tsp. of rum flavor to it and mix well.

Take out two table-spoons of fruit mixture and smear them with a spoon of dry all purpose flour.

In a separate bowl sift  all dry ingredients ( flour, baking powder and spice powder) together.

Now in a big mixing bowl cream butter with sugar till fluffy. Now add egg one by one and continue to beat until completely integrated. Pour the rest of the apple juice and 1 tsp. rum flavor to it and mix once again. Now add dry flour and dry fruit mixture to this batter and gently fold into it.

Grease a 10 inch nonstick loaf pan and spoon the cake mixture. Sprinkle the dry fruits that you have separated out on top.

Bake it for an hour in a preheated oven at 375F.

Remove cake from oven and place on cooling rack. In a cup mix rest of the orange juice with 1 tsp. rum flavor. Baste the top with this mixture and allow to cool completely before you turn it over. 

Store the cake in an airtight container or eat fresh.