Fruitcakes are a type of celebration cakes This  fruitcake recipe I’m about to share is an absolutely delicious recipe. It is a rich and wholesome alternative to other savoury cakes and especially delightful for the festive season. One of the great problems of fruitcake is trusting its staying power. Which means how long will it stay for without going bad? How much alcohol should the fruits be soaked with and for how long do you need to soak the fruits? Another problem is the price. The supermarket-bought ones tend to be quite expensive with too much alcohol in them and you find it difficult to tell whether you are eating fruitcake or feasting on alcohol instead!

It is difficult to find a truly moist, delicious fruitcake without these issues. I am one curious baker who constantly wants to solve cake-related problems and I want to share with you four simple tips to baking a great-tasting fruitcake recipe.

Four Tips for Baking Fruitcake Recipe (Remember, this is one of my favorite type of celebration cakes!)

1. Ingredient Selection: All celebration cakes require use of good quality ingredients. The quality of your mixed fruits is very important. Mixed fruits can either be farm fresh or candied. I use unrefined dark brown sugar for more flavour and nutrition. You can use white sugar and darken with browning syrup if you can’t find unrefined dark brown sugar. Molasses is a great type of unrefined dark sugar. Other type is demerara. An absolutely great type of light brown cane sugar with origin from Guyana, a country in the Northern Atlantic coast of South America.
2. Tenderize Your Mixed Fruits: Soak the mixed fruits ahead of time with dark rum preferably three days ahead. Make sure to top up on the rum just to avoid it drying out during the soaking process. If you do not want to use alcohol, tenderize your candied fruits with any citrus juice of your choice. The popular option is orange juice. Orange juice may not give it the classic fruitcake flavour, it will however give it its own uniquely delicious flavour. The only disadvantage is that it does not have much staying power to preserve your fruitcake, only alcohol can do that and the best type of alcohol for delicious fruitcake is dark rum. I find brandy quite bitter and dark rum much sweeter, hence my recommendation, but you can do a mix of both.
3. Lining and Steam-baking: Line your pan with three layers of baking paper. Mix your cake batter, no need to cream butter and sugar, simply add all the cake ingredients and fold in the soaked mixed fruits. Arrange some almonds nuts and colourful maraschino cherries if you like. Steam-bake your fruitcake in a baking pan with a depth of 4-inches; this will help trap in as much moisture and help retain a tender texture after baking. To steam-bake, you add a pan of boiling water under the rack where you placed the fruitcake you are baking. All these extra tips are to ensure you come out with an excellently baked fruitcake!
4. Curing or Preservative Treatment: Cool, baste with some rum and wrap fruitcake in a cheesecloth or 100% cotton cloth airtight, add some more rum all over it and wrap again with 2 layers of foil. Then place in a plastic container with airtight lid and store in a cool dry place for a month. Every week, you can baste again with rum by opening the wrapped cake and rubbing some rum all it and the cheese cloth. Wrap airtightly again and repeat process every week. This can go on for 3 months if you like. I always recommend you baste with rum a week before consumption to revive the already mellow alcohol flavour. Other celebration cakes do not require all these preparartion processes. I guess that’s why fruitcake is the king of cakes!

With all these tips in mind, you are ready to try out this simple delicious fruitcake recipe!

Ingredients for one of my favorite celebration cakes: Fruitcake!

Soaked Fruit Mixture:

• 1kgmixed unsweetened dried fruit
• 2cupsdark rum

Fruit Cake Ingredients:

• 500g unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 table spoons of mixed spices (ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg)
• 250g unsalted butter softened
• 250g brown unrefined sugar
• 8large eggs room temperature
• 1tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
• 1tablespoon freshly grated orange zest
• ½cup  freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1grated apple (I prefer cooking apples like granny smith if you cant find, skip it!) peeled and coarsely grated
• ¾cup slivered almonds (or chopped pecans or walnuts)
• one batch soaked fruit mixture see above

For Storage:

• Any good qualityfor soaking

Glazing and Garnishing (Optional):

• ¼cup apricot preserves
• ¼cup (60 mL) water
• whole pecansfor garnishing

Follow my four tips above to bake it.

If you’ll like to see my other rich fruitcake recipes and step-by-step baking techniques or other celebration cakes, please sign up to our online school: www.learn.cakeflair.ng  so I can hand-hold you on this delicious journey of fruitcake!

Happy baking!

Deliciously yours,

Chef Juls of Cakeflair