Christmas Fruit Cake

December 25, 2011 by Ashima

Merry Christmas (complete with a home-made dry fruit cake! 🙂 ) What I love most about the Christmas fruit cake is the hint of the mulling spices like cinnamon and nutmeg and the richness of the adundant dry fruits. Christmas and cake go hand in hand and though baking is not one of my stronger points, I didn’t want this Christmas to go by without a try. Most recipes that I found on the Internet were complicated for a baking novice like me. And then I came across a Nestle Milkmaid print advertisement in one of my magazines, which carried the recipe for the same! Here is the official recipe on Nestle’s wesite. I “followed the recipe to a T”, measuring each and every ingredient as mentioned except that I used a whole lot more quantity and type of dry fruits. Enjoy and Merry Cristmas again!

Christmas Fruit Cake

Preparation Time: 40 mins | Baking time: 1 hour | Serves 8-10

Ingredients

1 tin (400gms) sweetened condensed milk

100gms butter

75gms castor sugar

200gms + 1 tbsp (for dusting the cake tin) all-purpose flour (maida)

50 ml warm water

150 ml aerated soda

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp soda bicarbonate

½ tbsp cinnamon powder

½ tbsp nutmeg powder

250 gms chopped mixed dried fruits (cashew nuts, almonds, walnuts, pistochias, raisins, driend cherries, dried figs)

Method

Measure out all ingredients and keep them handy
Sift together the maida, baking powder, soda bicarbonate, cinnamon and nutmeg 2-3 times. Keep aside.
Line the bottom of an 8” round cake tin with butter paper. Grease the tin with ½ tsp butter. Dust a fine layer of maida.
Preheat the oven at 180º C.
Heat sugar in a pan till it melts and becomes brown. Add warm water (slowly from the side) to make caramel syrup and keep aside. (Be careful while adding warm water as it will sputter.)
Mix in 1 tablespoon maida to the chopped fruit to coat the fruit with flour and keep aside.
Soften butter in a mixing bowl. Beat in condensed milk.
Fold in the sifted maida with the condensed milk-butter mixture, alternating with aerated soda and caramel syrup till all are over.
Add the chopped dry fruits. Fold into the mix.
Pour the batter into the greased cake tin and bake for an hour at 180° C or till the cake is done. (Prick with the tooth pick in the centre of the cake. If it comes out clean the cake is ready).
Remove from the oven and cool for a while. Loosen sides of the cake, using a knife if necessary. Turnout over a wire rack/plate lined with cloth (to absorb moisture) and cool slightly before cutting into pieces.