My this recipe is the easiest one I know for fruit cakes, no soaking of fruit in wine and no need of fermented brown sugar, all simple and easy just to make your evening tea lovely….. this is a perfect blend of nuts, dry fruits and normal fruits……..
Ingredients:
FOR FRUITS
- 1 cup mixed dried berries/ baking candy/ dry moist fruits
- ½ cup sultanas
- 2 tbspns orange juice
- 1 tbspn lemon juice
FOR BATTER
- 113 g/ ½ cup butter (unsalted)
- 50 g soft brown sugar
- 50 g caster white sugar
- 50 g raw caster sugar
- 3 x 700 g eggs/ 3 large eggs
- 1 tspn vanilla essence
- 1 tspn coconut essence
- 2 drops of yellow food colour
- 1 ½ cups plain flour/ 190 g plain flour
- 50 g almond meal (crushed almonds)
- 1 tbspn heap full of desiccated coconut
- 1 ½ tspn baking powder
- ¼ tspn salt
- Some lemon zest
- Some orange rind julienned
- ¼ cup/ 60mL whole milk
FOR TOPPING
- 4 walnuts
- Some flaked almonds
- 4 banana slices
- Some dry fruit candy
Procedure:
-Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
-In a bowl combine all the ingredients given for fruits and mix. Keep aside until needed.
-Now prepare the batter. In a deep mixing bowl or an electric stand mixer beat sugar and butter for 2 minutes. Add eggs one by one with constant whisking. At this point your mixture may curdle but don’t worry it will be fine after adding dry ingredients.
-Add all the essences and food colour and mix.
-Now it’s time to combine your dry ingredients.
-In a bowl, combine coconut, almond meal, orange rind and lemon zest.
-Now sift in all-purpose flour, salt and baking powder together. Mix well.
-Now mix in fruit into the flour mixture.
-Fold in your flour mixture into your batter.
-Add milk and mix.
-Pour this mixture into a loaf tin lined with greased parchment paper.
-Top it with some walnuts, almonds, fruit and banana slices.
-Bake for 45 – 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
-Allow to cool for 30 minutes.
-Cut a slice and serve with a cup of tea or coffee.