Rum Fruit & Nut cake |Traditional Christmas Cake Recipe

Instructions

1. Soak the dry fruits in rum for 2 weeks. Make sure you soak them for at least 7 days before making to get most flavorful cake. If that is also not possible, please soak them before 24 hours.. Very important step!
2. The dry fruits should be soaked well and boozed up in the alcohol properly. Here alcohol act as preservative. Store in a glass jar. If you are in hot climate, make sure to keep in the refrigerator.
3. Now let's get into the cake batter.
4. First mix the wet ingredients. Put the butter and sugar in a bowl. Using a hand mixer or whisk beat them until creamy.
5. Scrape the sides as well.
6. Put one egg at a time and beat again until well combined. This way I added 3 eggs in the batter.
7. Next put the soaked dry fruits along with the liquid, just a 3/4 th of the soaked dry fruits. If you want to put more, you can definitely add.
8. Pour orange juice, lemon juice, lemon zest & orange zest. Beat again to combine.
9. At this point the batter will curdle because of using citrus food. But don't worry after adding the flour it will be absolutely nice.
10. Now mix in some of the dry nuts. Rest of the nuts for garnishing the cake.
11. Next put the dry ingredients straight in the mixing bowl on wet ingredients.
12. Put refined flour, almond powder, baking powder and nutmeg powder. The combination gives the perfect flavor to the cake. Now sift through the siever. If you get any chunks of the almond, just remove.
13. Now fold in. At this time we don't use blender or electric beater. If you use blender now, the air bubbles will go off and your cakes will not be fluffy and moist.
14. Just fold gently. This is the basic rule of any baking.
15. Preheat the oven to 160 c.
16. Now line a baking tin. Here I'm using 8 inch springform baking pan with removable bottom.
17. I folded the baking paper in double and keep 1 inch extra towards the top because the cake should be baked slowly in the oven for 70 - 80 minutes and the cake batter is also very dense.
18. So extra baking paper will help the cake to bake evenly from all the sides and center by preventing the burning.
19. Now put the batter in the prepared cake tin.
20. Now garnish with cashew nuts, cherries or assorted chopped nuts. As the nuts are mixed with flour, it won't sit bottom.
21. Pop in the oven for 80-90 minutes to 160 C in the preheated oven.
22. After done let it cool down in the oven for another 10 - 15 minutes and take out. Cool down completely in room temperature.
23. Check the cake by inserting a fork in the center. It should come out with little moist crumbs. The cake is completely ready.
24. Now traditionally in western countries they feed the cake with alcohol for couple of times. They also store the cake by wrapping with baking paper and place them in the cake tin or plastic bag and brush the cake periodically with alcohol. This way the cake stays good for several weeks to months and enjoy in the christmas eve.

• Servings : 10
• Ready in : 120 Minutes
• Course : Dessert
• Recipe Type : Dessert
• Ingredient : Almods, Black current, Blueberry, cashew, Cranberry, Egg, raisin, rum