Luxury Fruit Cake - 2 ways
In all these years, I have not shared my favourite fruit cake recipe on this blog. So when Food Lover's Market asked me and a few other incredible foodies to bake a festive fruitcake using their legendary 1 kg bucket of luxury festive cake mix, I finally had a good excuse to share my recipe with you. I've baked this recipe so many times to make mini fruitcakes for Christmas gifts. It works a dream for large cakes or little ones by simply adjusting the baking time. This cake promises to be spicy, packed with fruit and nuts, moist and extra boozy as the batter is laced with brandy and sherry. It really is a goodie. I may have gotten a tad tipsy [and napped hard] after licking the leftover batter out of the bowl...I chose to bake bundt fruit cakes with 2 ideas on how to decorate them. The first option is chocolate glacé icing with maraschino & fresh cherries. The second, orange flavoured royal icing with candied orange and fresh rosemary. Both flavour combinations work so well with this cake. Feeling the Christmas feels yet? Happy baking!|FACEBOOK GIVEAWAY!| Guys, go check out my Facebook page as I will be running an exciting competition with Food Lover's Market. The prize is worth R5000!!!
Ingredients
- 1 kg bucket Food Lover's Market Luxury Festive Cake Mix fruitcake mix
- 100 g candied citrus peel
- 300 g glacé cherries roughly chopped
- 400 g salted butter cut into blocks
- 500 g dark muscovado or treacle sugar
- 1 Tbs (15 ml) mixed spice
- 1 tsp (5 ml) ground ginger
- 2 c (500 ml) brandy
- 1 1/2 Tbs (22.5 ml) bicarbonate of soda
- 5 large eggs
- 1 c (250 ml) Old Brown Sherry
- 1 c (250 ml) milk
- 480 g (800 ml) cake flour
- 100 g walnuts chopped
- 100 g blanched almonds chopped
Instructions
- This mixture fills 2 large bundt or standard 24 cm cake tins, or 4 medium bundt tins. It can easily make 24 mini (12 cm) bundt cakes, mini loaves or muffins.
- Preheat the oven to 150 Degrees Celsius.
- Grease cake tins very well with cooking spray.
- In a large pot, add the fruit cake mix, candied peel, cherries, butter, sugar, spice, brandy and half of the bicarb. Allow butter to melt and bring mixture to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered for 20 minutes - stir occasionally. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
- Whisk the eggs, sherry and milk together.
- Sift the flour and remaining bicarb together.
- Fold sifted flour, chopped nuts and egg mixture together with the boiled fruit mixture and stir vigorously until evenly combined.
- Pour into greased baking tins and bake as follows:
- large bundt tin: 1 hour 35 minutes
- large cake tin: +- 2 hours
- medium bundt tin: 1 hour
- medium cake tin: 1 hour 35 minutes
- mini cakes: 25 - 30 minutes.
- Turn cakes upside down on cooling rack and allow to slip out of the tin.
- Allow to cool completely.
- Decorate with glacé icing and cherries. Dust with edible gold dust.
- Or decorate with royal icing, halved candied orange slices and fresh rosemary sprigs. Sprinkle with edible gold stars or whatever you can find ;-)
- Keep in a cool area stored in an airtight container to retain moist crumb.
Royal icing:
- Whisk 1 egg white together with +- 30 ml orange juice. Gradually whisk in 1 1/2 c (375 ml) sifted icing sugar until smooth, combined and viscous. Add more juice if too thick.
Candied Orange:
- Preheat oven to 160 Degrees Celsius.
- Heat 1 c (250 ml) castor sugar together with 1 c (250 ml) water. Heat gently to allow sugar to dissolve, increase heat and once simmering, add 2 thinly sliced oranges. Make sure the slices are well submerged in the liquid. Simmer gently for 7 minutes. Gently remove the slices and place onto baking-paper lined baking tray.
- Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, simmer the syrup until reduced to half and slightly golden.
- Drizzle a teaspoonful of syrup onto the baked sliced oranges and bake for another 5 minutes or until golden.
- Allow to cool completely. Serve whole or break in half.
Notes
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!