Kerala Christmas Fruit Cake 4 ~ Eggless

oshlo.blogspot.com - Here's wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas with a delicious Fruit Cake!

What's Christmas without a fruit cake right? Well ever since I have started baking again from 2010, it's been a tradition that I have been following to make Fruit cakes during Christmas time. Would you believe that I have not actually tasted a store bought fruit cake? Sadly yes, and though I can say these eggless Christmas cakes taste simply delicious, I have to trust on my folks to judge the taste. Each time, they have confirmed that it tastes better than store bought.

Eggless Fruit Cake 1

Eggless Butterless Rum Fruit Cake 2

Carrot Cake

Eggless Christmas Fruit Cake 3

Each year I make sure I try a different fruit cake and all of them have worked out beautifully. This year I adapted my cake from Maria's recipe and worked around couple of things I didn't have. I was in a hurry to bake these ahead as a gift for my nephew and nieces, along with couple of cookies as well. Kids have gone visiting them along with Hubby dear and I am sorely missing them during this time. Though boys didn't taste this, they enjoyed the other cookies that I made.

The cake really tastes awesome after a day. I guess it needs to mature after being baked.

And yes I wanted to make sure I have something for K, so it's Kerala Christmas Fruit Cake. I know this fruit cake doesn't really have anything specific to Kerala, well we can play around with words right.

Kerala Christmas Fruit Cake ~ Eggless


Ingredients Needed:

All Purpose Flour / Maida - 1 1/4 cups
Baking Soda - 1/2 tsp
Baking Powder - 1/2 tsp
Brown Sugar - 1 cup
Butter - 85 gms, softened
Curds / Yogurt - 1/2 cup, room temp
Hot Milk - 1/4 cup
Vanilla Essence - 1/2 tsp

For soaking

Cashews, Almonds, Tutti Frutti, Raisins, Currants - 1 3/4 cup
Apple Puree - 1 cup

For spice powder

Cloves - 1
Cardamom - 2
Cinnamon - a small piece

For Caramel Sauce

Sugar - 2 tsp
Water - 1/4 cup

Instructions

Soaking of Fruits

Par the apples and puree it. Soak the fruits overnight in the apple puree. I chopped the cashews and almonds into tiny bits. You can also use dates/apricots etc; chopped it into small piece.

For the Caramel Sauce:

In a pan, heat the sugar and keep stirring until the sugar starts caramelizing. Then add water and bring boil. Make sure you don't burn the sauce.

For the cake:

Preheat the oven at 185 C.

I had the spice powder ready, else you can grind them together with sugar and keep it aside.

Sift together all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda. Using a hand beater, whisk together butter and brown sugar till creamy. This doesn't get so creamy because of brown sugar, still when it softens and turns texture or for about 10 mins, it's fine.

Add curds, vanilla essence and mix well. Batter might look curdled at this point, but it comes together after adding the flour. Fold in the sifted flour in two batches.

I added the dry fruits soaked along with the apple puree as such. If using apple juice, you can drain the soaked fruits and coat the drained fruits with 1 tbsp flour before adding to the batter. Fold in the fruits, spice powder and Caramel sauce.

Finally added hot milk to get the right dropping consistency.

Grease and line a cake tin with baking paper. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the cake in the preheated oven till a tooth pick inserted comes out clean. Bake at 30 mins at 185 C and then reduce to 170 C, bake for 15 mins.

Cool the cake completely before slicing. You can store the cake in an airtight container at room temp for 3-4 days. Else refrigerate the cake after 2 days.

Notes:

You can also soak the fruits in alcohol instead of fruit puree. The fruits got soaked in apple puree for nearly 10 plus hours. When I opened the bowl for mixing in, I realized the apple puree was almost slightly fermented.

Other Fruit Cakes
Christmas Cakes

other source : http://merdeka.com, http://okezone.com, http://cooking4allseasons.blogspot.com

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