Christmas fruit cake, needs no introduction, loaded with dry fruits soaked in orange juice and flavored with warm spices. The best bake one can do during festivites.
Christmas fruit cake, the mere thought of it you get a picture of rich,dark color cake studded with colorful fruits. We love fruit cakes at home, atleast me and hubby. Both the kids dont like anything in their cakes, nothing should be seen on top or inside the cake.
Last year, we had a small surprise party for our friends birthday. I made a gift basket with this christmas fruit cake along with some other bakes for each of them. The cakes were such a hit with them, i baked them again on demand. The only prep in this bake is, soaking of fruits and nuts, which I would recommend for atleast 2-3 days, i usually do it for 3 days.
When i baked these in october, i had stock of palm jaggery syrup in hand, so i used 1/2 cup of syrup and 3/4 cup sugar for the recipe, the cake had a beautiful deep color. Unfortunately while baking for the blog, i didnt have the syrup in hand. I baked with normal brown sugar, will try to make it again with the syrup and try updating the recipe. It is one of my fool proof recipe and a perfect gift for this festive season, loaded with dry fruits, nuts, warm spices and lotssss of love.
Christmas Fruit Cake | No Alcohol | Eggless
Equipment
- Convection oven
- Bowls
- Spatula
- Baking pan
- Measuring cups and spoons
Ingredients
Cake batter
- 2 & ½ cups Whole wheat flour i used normal chapathi aata
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup brown sugar preferably dark brown sugar (pls see notes)
- ¾ cup oil i used sunflower oil
- 1 cup buttermilk you can also use 1/2 cup yogurt and 1/2 cup water
Dry fruits & nuts soaking
- 1 cup fresh orange juice juice from 6-7 nos fresh oranges
- ¼ cup chopped almonds
- ¼ cup silvered pistachios
- ¼ cup chopped macademia nuts
- ¼ cuo chopped cashewnuts
- ¼ cup raisins
- ¼ cup cranberries
- ¼ cup chopped dried pineapple
- ¼ cup choppped dried mango
- 3 nos dried figs, chopped into chunks
- 2 tbsp candied ginger
- 10 nos glazed cherries
The Spices
- 1 inch cinnamon stick
- 4-5 nos cloves
- 4-5 nos cardamom, seeds only
- ½ tsp dried ginger powder
Instructions
Let us soak the fruits
- Squeeze around 6-7 oranges to get 1 cup of juice, you might get another 1/4 cup extra, which you can gulp after the hard work of chopping and soaking.
- Take all the fruits mentioned above.I have chopped almonds and cahewnuts into 3 pieces each, macademias into halves.
- Take all the chopped dried fruits and nuts in a glass container, add the orange juice to it. Mix well, cover it with a lid and refrigerate until you make your cake or atleast a minimum of 24 hours and maximum 3 days.
Spice powder
- Take all ingredients mentioned under 'Spices" in a spice grinder and grind it to a fine powder. I used my mortar-pestle and hand pounded to a almost fine powder.
Let us make the Fruit Cake
- On the day of making the cake, remove this soaking fruits from the refrigerator and keep it on the counter an hour ahead of baking.
- Preheat the oven to 170C and prepare two, 5 inch cake pans, line it with parchement paper or grease it with oil and dust it with flour. I used two, 5 inch pans and one 4 inch pan and got totally 3 medium sized cakes.
- In a large bowl, sift together, whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda. Sifting the dry ingredients is important to get a uniform flour mix and also a airy and light flour that gives a soft and fluffy cake.
- Add the spice powder and brown sugar to the flour mix and mix well to get a uniform mix
- In another bowl, take oil, buttermilk and tip in all the soaked fruits with its juice, add 1/4 cup of water to the container, mix and pour that water too in to this wet ingredients. Whisk well using a balloon whisk.
- Now, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in 3 batches and using a spatuala mix to form a smooth batter. Do not mix vigorously, mix in single direction,gently.
- Divide the batter amongst the prepared pans, tap the pans twice to release any air.
- Bake the cakes in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Remove the cakes from the oven, let it sit for 5 minutes in the pan. Then using a blunt knife slowly loosen the sides of the cake from the pan, unmould the cake onto the wire rack and let it cool completely. Slice and enjoy.
- Wrap the fruit cakes in a cling wrap and let it sit on the counter for a day. If more than one day i usually refrigerate the cake and warm it for 20 seconds before serving
Notes
- Sifting/whsiking the dry ingredients together helps to get a homogenous flour mix and creates a lightness in the dense flour mix. If you are a beginner to baking, i recommed using a flour sifter to do this. A whisk also works well
- Do not beat the batter vigorously. Use gentle cut and fold method.
- If you are beginner to baking , i recommend lining your pan with parchment paper after greasing it. This helps to keep the loaf intact without sticking to the pan.
- Baking time varies from oven to oven. Microwave convection oven, takes a longer time than a stand lone gas oven/electric oven. So baking according to your oven.
- Resting time is very important to remove the cake intact from the pan. So have patience.
- Allow the cake to cool well before slicing it, to get a proper slice.
- For a deep amber color, use 1/2 cup of palm jaggery syurp and 3/4 cup of sugar in the above recipe or you can also add caramel to get a deep color.
Enjoy this loaded Christmas fruit cake with your family and friends. The cake stays good on the counter for a day or two. But i usually cling wrap them after a day and refrigerate.
More Christmas Bakes
If you have tried this recipe and like it, give it a star rating or let me know in the comments below. You could also share it with me on Instagram using #icampinmmykitchen and tagging me @priyasrinivasan.
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Wonderful receipe. Would be nice if you show the cooking in a video.
Priya that's a wonderful looking Christmas cake. I have something similar coming up with a bit of nattu sakkari for the ambur. Your cakes texture looks so good. Will surely want to try this too…
Lovely fruit cake . Yes most kids do not like anything in their cakes , but I love nutty and fruity cakes and this one looks like a keeper recipe !
Lucky friends who get these lovely cakes !
Such a beautiful fruit loaded cake Priya. This is a perfect bake for this season. For deeper colour try adding caramel surup. It would enhance the flavour too.
Such a stunning and gorgeous christmas fruit cake and love the all the dried fruits and nuts went it. Wish i get a slice of this cake rite now.
Can you bake me this cake, please? 😀 I would love to get something like this, than me making it and eating… hehe… The cake looks so tempting, and definitely with all that goodness in it and all the love, no wonder why it would taste amazing…
That is such a delicious looking Christmas cake Priya. Love all the nuts, spices and dry fruit in there — so perfect for the holiday season.
Wonderful Christmas cake Priya,looks gorgeous.Wish I can have a huge slice.
Such a neat and yummy fruit cake ,perfect for this season,one can never skip this!!
That's so nice, I hadn't tried with wheat flour. This looks like it's a perfect cake for Christmas.
the orange juice must have added an awesome flavor in this cake
Such a wonderful bake, so perfect for Christmas and New Year celebrations!!
This is so beautiful Priya. The orange juice definetely adds the flavour tothe cake. Perfectly baked
Loving this alcohol free, egg-free, wheat flour version fruit cake. It looks fabulous.
A healthy bake for sure. Alcohol free makes it good for the kids too.
The cake is loaded with nuts and dry fruit! Addition of orange juice and buttermilk is interesting.
Wow, eggless Christmas cake looks so delicious and moist with the addition of orange juice.Lovely share.
thought I commented earlier here… well, this wholewehat spice filled cake must have been so aromatic.. love all your wholewheat cakes ~
This season I didn't bake a fruit cake and now this cake of yours is tempting me alot
Very delicious alcohol free and eggless Christmas cake. I made the alcohol version this time. Will try this next season. I love Christmas cakes.
Shobha Keshwani recently posted…TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS CAKE / FRUIT AND NUT CAKE WITH ALCOHOL
A beautiful Christmas Cake, using wheat flour and oil. It sure makes a wonderful edible gift. I love the smiles on the faces of the receivers.Depending on what dried fruit we add, the fruit cake tastes different,
It looks so moist and delicious. I usually make Caribbean style fruit cake for the holiday season but as I always have fruit soaking, this is a cake I can make at any time of year. Will definitely try it out soon!