Mitzie Wilson is a food writer, baker and our former Acting Food Director. Mitzie has been writing recipes for magazines for over 30 years, and was editor of BBC Good Food and Delicious. Her particular speciality is creating show-stopping bakes.
See more of Mitzie Wilson’s recipes
Mitzie Wilson
Mitzie Wilson is a food writer, baker and our former Acting Food Director. Mitzie has been writing recipes for magazines for over 30 years, and was editor of BBC Good Food and Delicious. Her particular speciality is creating show-stopping bakes.
See more of Mitzie Wilson’s recipes
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Ingredients
200g dried prunes, chopped
200g raisins
100g sultanas
100g dried pineapple, chopped
125g dried Morello cherries, or more raisins
50g stem ginger, finely chopped
125ml dark rum, plus extra to feed if desired
125ml port
200g self-raising flour
50g ground almonds
1½ tsp ground mixed spice
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1⁄4 tsp ground nutmeg
finely grated zest of 2 oranges
175g soft unsalted butter, plus extra to grease
175g dark muscovado sugar
2 tbsp black treacle
4 medium eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g fresh pineapple (peeled and cored weight, from a whole pineapple)
1 tbsp stem ginger syrup from the jar
175g icing sugar, sifted
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For a deeper flavour, soak the dried fruit for up to 1 month. The undecorated cake will keep for up to 3 months.
Put all of the dried fruit and the stem ginger in a bowl, then pour over the rum and port. Stir, cover and leave to soak for at least 24 hours, or up to 1 month.
Preheat the oven to 150°C, fan 130°C, gas 2. Grease and line the base and sides of a deep 20cm round cake tin.
Place half the soaked fruit in a food processor and blend to a thick purée.
In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, almonds, spices, orange zest and a pinch of salt. Place the butter, sugar and treacle in a mixing bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.
Stir in the dry ingredients followed by the blended fruit and the remaining soaked fruit, until well combined.
Spread the mixture into the prepared cake tin. Bake for 21⁄2 hours, or until a skewer comes out without any sticky cake mixture clinging to it. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then turn out to a wire rack. The cake will be crumbly when freshly baked, so wrap and mature for at least a week before eating. To store, wrap the cake in baking paper and place in a cake tin (not an airtight container). If you want to feed the cake, prick it all over with a co*cktail stick and spoon 1-2 tablespoons of rum over the cake roughly once a week, up to 4 times in total (if you add too much rum, the cake may fall apart!).
When you’re ready to decorate the cake, preheat the oven to 120°C, fan 100°C, gas 1⁄2. Slice the pineapple into 1-2mm thick rings; you should end up with about 8 slices. Arrange on a wire rack set over a lined oven tray. Brush lightly on both sides with the stem ginger syrup and bake for 1-2 hours, until golden and dry but still flexible; the oven time will depend on the ripeness of the fruit. While warm, press into the cups of a muffin tin. Leave to firm up
Gradually mix 2-21⁄2 tablespoons of water into the icing sugar until you have a thick smooth icing. Spread over the top of the cake with a palette knife, then ease some of the icing over the edge and down the sides. Decorate with the pineapple flowers and leave to set.
Tip
Use gluten-free self-raising flour, and add 1⁄2 tsp xanthan gum with the dry ingredients. You will need more liquid, so add the juice of 1 orange in step 5.
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Jamaican fruit cake is a holiday favorite known for its rich, moist texture and unique blend of spices. One key to making a super-moist and rich fruit cake is to prepare and hydrate the dried fruits in the right way. Dry fruits are usually soaked for weeks or even months to add that rich, boozy flavor and hydrate them.
What alcohol should you use? Strong, flavourful spirits with a high ABV are ideal for feeding fruitcakes. You can use rum, brandy or whisky for spice, or if you like citrus flavours, try an orange liqueur. Cherry brandy and amaretto will also work well if you prefer these.
Wrap your cake in a layer of greaseproof paper and a layer of tin foil to prevent air getting in. Store the wrapped cake in an airtight container. The cake should keep for (at least) a month or even up to a year with this amount of booze going on in an air tight container.
Soak all your dried fruits in your spirit of choice – whisky or brandy would be the most traditional options, though other aged spirits like rum also work, and sweeter additions like sherry, Cointreau or amaretto will add their own character.
Put your dried fruit in a small bowl and cover with boiling water. Let it steep for 10 to 15 minutes, and then strain the fruit and discard the water. The fruit will be plumper, juicier, and softer. To give your fruit some extra flavor, swap the water for fruit juice or a liquor, like rum, bourbon, or brandy.
Fruitcake aficionados will tell you that the best fruit cakes are matured – or “seasoned” in fruitcake lingo – for at least three months before they are cut. Seasoning not only improves the flavor of the fruitcake, but it makes it easier to slice.
Our answer. Opinions on the "maturing" of Christmas cakes does vary and is partly an issue of personal taste, but for the rich fruit type of Christmas cakes we would suggest making them up to 3 months ahead of Christmas.
An average rum cake has around 1/2 cup rum to bake the cake and eating two to three pieces of dry rum cake is too less to get you drunk. However, if you soak the cake in rum after baking and serve it after refrigeration, then eating too much cake can get you a little intoxicated.
You can use light or dark rum for this recipe. Dark rum tends to be more flavorful than milder light rum, and will add more complexity to the cake. My recommendation: use what you have. How do you keep a Bundt cake from sticking to the pan?
Long story short, tasting notes aren't always just the creative ramblings of a marketing department, and of the most popular to use is 'Christmas Cake'. A traditional Christmas Cake will actually use Scotch Whisky in the recipe so maybe it's no surprise that people pick up this flavor a lot when trying Scotch.
If you're looking for a dry cake, simply over-bake it! In all seriousness though, over-baking cakes dry them out. It could only be a 30 second window between perfectly baked and over-baked, so make sure you're keeping an eye on the cake. Begin checking it 1-2 minutes before the recipe instructs.
Use a combination of raisins, currants, golden raisins, prunes, dried cherries, or any dried fruit you prefer. For even better results, soak dried fruit in wine for at least 3 weeks or boil the fruit in the wine. Additional wine or rum can be brushed onto the cake as needed to keep it moist.
Rehydrate the fruits: Dried fruits can be quite hard and dry, so it's often a good idea to rehydrate them before adding them to your baked goods. To do this, simply soak the dried fruits in warm water or fruit juice for 15-20 minutes until they are plump and tender.
So you can soak them even for a month, 15 days, 5 days or even the night before you bake. I would recommend, if you don't have much time and want to soak the fruit asap, you can warm the alcohol, ever so gently as you don't want to evaporate the alcohol in the liquid – before adding it to the dried fruit.
Introduction: My name is Dean Jakubowski Ret, I am a enthusiastic, friendly, homely, handsome, zealous, brainy, elegant person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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Prep time: 1 hr 10 mins
