This cake can be made anytime during the year especially if you need to bake a cake at the last-minute when you have not much time. I baked 2 cakes this christmas – last minute cake to give as a present to my neighbour and relatives, the other was a traditional brandied christmas cake.
I put a lot of time and thought into planning my recipe for both the cakes weeks before christmas and it was worth the effort. I was asked if the cake was store-bought and I was happy to tell them that it was in fact, Homemade!😇. Receiving good compliments on my recipes is what makes me motivated to post more recipes here and all credits to everyone of you making this happen. Do share your thoughts and tell me how you spent your christmas this year in comments below if you can spare a minute of your time.
Thank you and have a Happy New Year 2018! 😊💫☃
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1hr 10 minutes
Requirement: 20 cm / 8in round deep cake tin or springclip tin greased and lined (or use a ready made cake liner)
Ingredients
Dried Fruits: Raisins – 100 g
Black currents – 20 g
Candied Cherries – 10 pieces, halved
Orange juice – 3/ 4 cup, of 2 large oranges
Unsalted butter, softened – 200 g + extra for greasing
Brown sugar (fine) – 200 g / 1 cup
Plain Flour / Top flour – 225 g
Large whole eggs – 4, at room temperature
Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp
Baking powder – 1 tsp
Ground cinnamon – 1 tsp
Nutmeg – 1 tsp
pinch of salt
Nuts:
Cashew nuts – 70 g, chopped
Almonds, slivered – 20 g
Directions
1. Place the dried fruits such as raisins and currants together with cherries, orange juice into a deep pot. Bring it to a boil on high heat. Turn on the heat and simmer for approximately 15 minutes.
Leave it to cool or if you have time leave it overnight or as long as you can. Coat the nuts in 3 tbsp of all-purpose flour and set it aside.
Preparing the baking tin:
2. In the meantime or on the day of baking, butter a 20 cm round cake tin and then line both the bottom and the sides with baking paper making sure the paper peaks over the top by about 5cm. Butter again the base and the sides. Set aside.
Preparing the cake mixture:
3. In a large bowl, put all the rest of the ingredients such as sugar, butter, flour, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt except for dried fruits and nuts. Initially, use a wooden spoon and give it a good mix, otherwise using a hand mixer could make the flour fly around everywhere making a mess.
Now use the hand mixer and make sure to mix everything really well, around 1.5 – 2 minutes on medium speed. Once its mixed well enough, detach the beaters from the hand mixer and remove any cake batter on it.
4. Add the dried fruit mixture along with its syrup. Mix with the wooden spoon. Then mix in the nuts coated in flour. Give a good mix.
Preheat the oven to 140°C/Gas Mark 1 or for 10 minutes.
5. Spoon the cake mixture into the cake tin, level the top using a spatula and bake in the centre of the oven or if using a convection oven place on the lower rack for 70 minutes checking in between once after 45 minutes.
It is cooked when a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. I could do this without removing the cake tin out of the oven. Do not worry if it has turned light brown on top and needs more time to cook. Just in case the top has turned dark brown in color before its cooked, cover the top with a parchment paper.
Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin. If you wish to decorate the cake you can do so after its completely cooled.
Packing as present. Forgive me for my bad photography skills.
More on Baking or Cakes
Traditional Christmas cake – Fruit Cake
Cocoa -Easy Cake(Vegan)
Stay Healthy!
