It’s time for the year when there are celebrations and happiness all around. And Christmas is about sharing this joy and happiness with friends and family. It also means Fruit Cake to us. I baked my first Christmas fruit cake last year, which was an egg free recipe from Divya of Easycooking. All my friends and family enjoyed that to the last bit. That was the easiest recipe, which didn’t require soaking the fruit in alcohol or juice for weeks in advance.

This time, I planned to start the preparation quite earlier and soaked the fruit for mincemeat a week before baking the cake. Deeba of PassionateAboutBaking is a real inspiration to me, while it comes to baking cakes. She’s just marvelous and so are her recipes. And I am quite happy that I picked her recipe for the fruit cake this time.

I halved the original recipe and also replaced half of the butter with extra virgin olive oil, thinking if I could cut down few of the calories. I know, I shouldn’t be talking about calories during this time of the year, especially when there is so much around to indulge in.

So, if you don’t like replacing butter with oil, please feel free to indulge in more and keep all the nice promises you made to yourselves for the January.

Ingredients

Mincemeat

100 gm raisins, chopped if desired
100 gm currants
50 gm dried apricots
50 gm dates, seeded and chopped
50 gm almonds, chopped
50 gm dried apricots, chopped
50 gm dried cranberries, chopped
50 gm cashew nuts, chopped
1 cup fresh orange juice
Juice of 2 limes
Zest of 2 oranges
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp nutmeg powder
1 tbsp cinnamon powder

Fruit Cake

500 gm mixed fruit,nuts,peel mincemeat
200 gm plain flour
70 gm unsalted butter, room temperature
80 ml extra virgin olive oil
100 gm sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup caramel syrup {Made with 1/2 cup of sugar caramelized.  Add some water and heat gently to liquefy. Cool.}
1 tsp instant coffee
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt {skip if using salted butter}
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions

1. For the mincemeat, mix all the ingredients together. Cover and chill in fridge for at least one week.
2. For cake, mix the mincemeat with flour and toss it thoroughly, so that dry fruit is covered in flour well.
3. Beat sugar with butter and oil until pale and fluffy.
4. Beat in eggs one at a time. Mix in caramel, coffee and vanilla extract.
5. Add baking powder to egg and butter mixture and mix well.
6. Add in flour and nut mixture to make a smooth batter.
7. Transfer the batter into a 9 inch spring form cake tin and bake for around 1 hour 20 minutes in a 140 Celsius preheated oven.
8. Let cool in cake tine for 10 minutes and then invert on to a wire rack to cool completely. The longer you keep the cake, the better the flavor becomes.