Every year I pay a customary visit to my relative’s place to have her Christmas cakes. This year I also helped in making her delicious rich fruit cake. This is a variant of the typical plum cake in that it has a lot of other fruits as well. So, now I will take you all through the steps involved in making this cake. My collaborator in this article is Shekar Talkies. Who took all the photographs.
Preparation time :- 1hour
Ingredients required
For the Rich fruits (according to your requirement)
1. Tutti-fruity
2. Cherries
3. Candied peels
4. Ginger preserve
5. Plums
6. Raisins
7. Cashews
8. Cucumber seeds/ walnuts (Optional)
9. Cake seeds (Optional)
For Cake mixture (for 1kg cake)
1. 1/2 kilo Maida
2. 12 no of eggs / for eggless use milk(1.5l) +Oil
3. 1/2 kilo sugar (fine powdered)
4. 1/2 Butter or Margarine
5. Pinch of Salt
6. 500 ml Caustic Caramel / Burnt Sugar
7. 2 TSP of Baking soda
To begin with, mix all the fruits in a bowl and sprinkle some maida or some flour on top to ensure they don’t stick on the moulds.
Keep the above mixture aside and now start to mix the butter and sugar in a processor to ensure they are soft to a paste consistency. If you feel butter is expensive you can use the margarine. For healthier option, I always prefer butter. Sugar has to be powdered well so that there’s no granules in the paste mixture. Add a TSP of salt.
While processing keep adding the eggs and mix well
Ensure you whisk and beat the egg mixture well nefore you add to this mixture.
Meanwhile, seive the maida to a fine powder and grade them to third level.
Now keep adding this maida base on an alternate basis along with the whisked egg mixtures. Add 2 TSP of Baking soda. Let the processor continue beating the whole mixture until a soft paste (Batter) consistency.
Transfer the above mixture to a big vessel and add the first rich fruits mixtures to this.
Once after adding all the rich fruits and mixing them well, add the caustic caramel or burnt sugar (for the top layer turn brown after being baked) and mix them well.
Now, pre heat the oven prior to baking atleast 20 minutes before. The oven used for this cake was an old fashioned chamber oven where you do not set any time or temperature; you light up the oven and you let the cake to bake.
You can notice that the color being turned to this dark brown. Grease the moulds (add butter paper on the base) and add the mixture.
After 25 minutes, the aroma of the completely baked cake will spread throughout the place. You can check if the cake is baked by placing a knife in between.
Looks a smiley no?
Keep it and store in a cool and dry place for five days.
Less Salt More Love 