Fruit Cake /Plum cake/Kerala style 2012

 Wishing all my readers and Friends a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Hope everybody joined the family and friends for this Christmas. Day before yesterday we went out for seeing Christmas lights in the nearby zoo. It was really fun, my daughter toughly enjoyed for about hour. Little one was fine till the lights visit, and he started crying while the way back home.

Here on the Christmas Eve, even the climate is really good at around 79 °F and forecasters are predicting that we are going to get a rainy Christmas, while the majority of the country is going to get snowy Christmas. We are going to enjoy the weather, when it is good. How about you guys?

In India it is already Christmas day.  Christmas in India mainly people going to church and enjoying the best home cooked food, and would celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Here also within in a few hours it is going to be Christmas and everybody would be ready to unwrap the Christmas presents and enjoy the delicious food.

Every year I try to make a Christmas delicacy from my home town, like plum cake/Rich fruit cake, Acchappam/ Kerala style Rosette cookies and Kuzhulappam/Rice flour cannoli.  I have finished cake till now. I need to make some rosette style cookies and cannoli. I think I will finish it by the end of the year.

However I made Finnish Christmas bread Joulimmpu, gingerbread cookies, chocolate brazil nut cookies and fruit cake ice box cookies.

For making the plum cake I used my new bundt pan gifted by my hubby. I added less alcohol and use more dry fruits, like, fruit cake mix, currants, dates, cranberries, apricots, nuts like, cashew, almond, Brazil nuts. I thought of using pistachio however drop the idea after seeing lots of chopped nuts in the end. This time I used Rum and increased baking powder and added baking soda. Soaked the dry fruits in ½ cup water and ½ cup Plantation rum for about 5 days and made this cake. It is delicious and soft. If you are looking for the hard fruit cake that is used for throwing, this is not the one.  I changed this fruit cake from the earlier version that is why I am writing it as one recipe. Here comes the recipe.

First grab the ingredients from pantry, chop the dry fruits and soak them in rum and water mix for 5 days.

 On the day of baking smear the nuts with almond essence and set aside.

 Make caramel syrup.

Sift the flour with baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices and set aside.

Separate egg whites and yolks and beat egg white and set aside.

Cream butter, sugar and add vanilla extract, egg yolks, orange juice and caramel syrup and combine everything. Then gradually add flour and mix everything. To this add dry fruits and nuts and finally fold in egg whites.

Transfer the batter to prepared cake tin and bake for about 1 hour at 350F.

Once cake is done allow to cool in the cake tin for about 45 minutes.

Then slice and enjoy. 

                                                          Print Recipe from here

Plum Cake/Rich Fruit Cake

Modified from my earlier recipe

Preparation time: Soaking 5 days + 2 hour

Yield: 15 serving

Ingredients:

Soaking

Assorted dry fruits cake mix (strawberry, papaya, kiwi and pineapple) (finely chopped): 1 cup

Raisins : 1/3 cup

Cranberries: 1/3 cup

Dates : 1/2 cup (chopped finely)

Dry apricot: 1/2cup (9 no chopped finely)

Dry Mango: 5 nos

Rum : ½ cup ( I used Plantation Rum )

Total dry fruit and ; fruit cake mix: 3 ¾ cup

I used  2 ¾ cup of this mixture for the cake

Nuts smeared with almond essence

Almond (Chopped finely): ¼ cup

Cashew (Chopped finely): ¼ cup

Brazil nut chopped : ¼ cup

Almond essence: 1/8 tsp

Batter

All purpose flour : 2 cup

Butter : 15 tablespoon( less than 1 tablespoon from 2 sticks)

Granulated sugar: 1 1/3 cup

Salt : ¼ teaspoon

Egg yolk: 3 at room temperature

Egg whites: 3 at room temperature

Baking powder: 1 teaspoon

Baking Soda: ½ teaspoon

Orange juice: 1/3 cup

Vanilla extract: 1 teaspoon

Caramel syrup

Granulated sugar: ¼ cup

Water: 1 tablespoon +1/2 cup

Lemon juice: ¼ teaspoon

Spice powder

Caraway Seeds: 1 teaspoon (powdered)

Powdered nutmeg: ¼ teaspoon

Powdered Cinnamon: ½ teaspoon

Powdered cloves: ¼ teaspoon

Powdered cardamom: ½ teaspoon

Powdered ginger: ¼ teaspoon

All spice powder: ¼ teaspoon

How I made:

Chop all the dry fruits including nuts into small pieces and soak them in Rum for at least one day advance. I soaked for them for 5 days. Smear the nuts with almond essence and keep it aside.

To make caramel syrup take ¼ cup sugar and 1 tablespoon water in heavy bottom pan and heat it until sugar melts and change cherry brown color. Add few drops of lemon juice to prevent crystallization of sugar. It took about 7 minutes for me. Transfer the pan with sugar to kitchen sink and immediately add ½ cup of cold water (Be careful with this step, otherwise serious burn can results) for easy cleaning. Keep aside and add only cold caramel syrup to batter.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottom of a10 inch Bundt pan  then butter and flour the pan.

Sift together flour, salt, baking powder , baking soda and spice powder in a bowl and keep aside.

Separate egg whites and yolk. In a bowl beat egg whites using a hand mixer until you get white peaks and keep aside.

In an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed, until everything mix well and incorporated. Add egg yolk one at a time to sugar butter mixture and mix well. Then add vanilla extract , orange juice and caramel syrup (1/2 cup) mix everything and combined well. Add slowly flour-salt-baking soda and baking powder -spice powder mix in small quantities and incorporate everything. Scrape down the sides of bowl once at twice. Stop the mixer and fold egg whites gently until no white streaks visible.

Finally drain the soaked fruits and add nuts and 2 tablespoon of all purpose flour and mix well. And fold in fruits and nuts into the batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smoothen the tops with a spatula. Bake for 1 hour or until skewer comes out clean.

Cool the cake in pan for 15 minutes and later invert them and cool completely for 45 minutes. Keep cake one or two days before serving.

Enjoy,

Variations:

• If you don’t want alcohol, use orange juice or apple juice.

I am linking this delicious cake to Favorite Recipes: Christmas Recipes hosted here.
Also linking to photography challenge hosted at Jungle frog cooking