Recipe: Christmas Fruit Cake

Christmas is around the corner and I decided to do try out something that I always wanted but have not been doing (due to laziness). When I had a day on my own during a weekend, I decided to finally get things going! I bought the ingredients a day before to save some time.

I always wanted to make a Gingerbread Man and a Christmas Log cake. Although I did not managed to make a log cake yet, I managed to bake some really simple and cool Gingerbread Man, which I will talk about it and share the recipe in another post soon!

In the end, I happened to stumble over a Christmas Cherry Cake recipe which looks simple and good. I replace some of the ingredients and quantity for my liking and it appears that my parents love it alot!

Unfortunately, the cake was cut before I could turn it into a Christmas Cake. I shall make one more soon and will take a good picture of it to share! =)

Till then, enjoy the recipe =)

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Christmas Fruit Cake

Ingredients
200g caster sugar
225g butter (room temperature, cubes)
2 eggs
115ml orange juice
225g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
100g sultanas
300g dried mixed fruits
200g halved glace cherries

Method

1. Preheat oven to 140 degree C. Grease a 23cm x 13cm (9 x 5 inch) loaf tin and line with greaseproof paper.
2. Cream butter or margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add beaten eggs and orange juice and mix well.
3. Sift flour and baking powder. 
4. Reserve 75g of flour mixture and toss with sultanas and cherries (this will keep them from sinking to the bottom of the cake). Add the rest to the mixture and blend. 
5. Then add floured raisins and cherries to dough and mix until just combined. 
6. Pour mixture into prepared tin.
7. Bake in preheated oven for 2 hours. 

Tips:

1. Reduce the sugar amount if you do not want it to be too sweet as the mixed fruits/sultanas/glace cherries are usually pretty sweet
2. The recipe was further adjusted as the original recipes turned out to be sweet and contains too much fruit mix to keep the cake together.
3. Temperature is lowered to have a lighter brown top layer.
4. Sprinkle icing sugar after the cake is totally cooled, which can take quite a while.