Light Fruit Cake with liquor

Fruit cake is a must during this season of the year. But the cake is usually long gone even before Christmas arrive.

You are going to see a series of post of bakes I am baking for this Christmas. Oh by the way I just bought a new Christmas tree and I decorated it simply this year as I was lazy to take out the baubles and all. The dismantling and packing of the tree after the festive is a chore too! After all the feasting and celebration is over… who likes to be stuck with the packing of the tree and decorations. Thankfully my dear sister comes over every year to help me with the work! The snoopy coffee art is done by her.

This year I am trying out another recipe for this fruit cake. I got the recipe from a FB group.

Ingredients (For a 8″ square baking tin)

250g Butter
85g sugar
4 eggs (I used 60g)
240g plain flour sifted
1/2 tsp baking powder
500g mixed dried fruits ( I used jumbo black & golden raisins, cranberries, dried apricots, dried golden berries)

I only soaked some fruits in golden rum thinking that I will bake a small fruit cake. I later changed my mind to bake the full recipe so I had to add fruits that were not macerated.

Directions

Grease and line the baking tin. As I do not have a 8 inch square baking tin, I will be using one slightly smaller with the excess baked in another mould.

Cream the butter with the sugar till pale and light.

Add in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in the sifted flour and baking powder. Slowly add in the mixed dried fruits and mix well.

Pour the batter in to the prepared tin and use a scrapper to smooth the top of the batter.

Bake in a preheated oven at 150degrees for 1 hour 15mins or until its baked. Test with a skewer to see if it comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the oven and brush the top of the cake with more rum. Let it cool down completely then remove the cake from the tin.

When the cake is completely cooled, wrapped it in a cling wrap followed by another layer of baking paper and seal well. Put this into a airtight box and keep inside the fridge for at least 7 to 10 days to allow the cake to mature. You can continue to feed the cake with rum while it is maturing.

I did not keep the cake that long as I was eager to try the cake. I don’t normally like butter cake chilled as I find it hard. But I do like this flavourful cake though. I wished I had allowed it time to mature and feed it more rum. Yummy.

No Knead Raisin & Almond loaf

I came across this no knead loaf that looks simple to make. Since I don’t have much time to bake this week, this seems an easy way to churn out some healthy bread. This recipe is adapted from here.

Ingredients
240g Bread flour
120 Whole wheat flour
2.5g instant yeast
30g sugar
15g salt
360g water
70g raisins
70g almonds (chopped)

Directions
Mix both the flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a bowl. Then add the chopped almonds and raisins.

Slowly add in the water and mix it into a dough. You may not need all the water as it depends on the absorption of your flour. The dough is pretty sticky.

Cling wrap the bowl and leave it in the fridge to ferment for 12-18 hours.

After the fermentation, take out the dough and pour it on a floured working top. I find the size of my dough did not increase by very much. Doesn’t seem to need much work to degas also. Once I poured out the dough I tried to reshape it into a boule. It is still very sticky to handle, dust your hands with flour when you are handling the dough.

Leave the dough to proof again for another hour. My dough actually spread out instead of puffing up like other breads. I waited another 30mins as today is a rainy day.

Bake in a preheated over at 220 degree for 30-35mins. As I did not use a dutch oven, I put a tray or hot water at the lower tray of the oven. I think using a dutch oven will also help the bread develop a better height instead of spreading.

This bread has a nice chewy texture although the shape doesn’t look too appealing to me. I have reduced the sugar further from the original recipe as my almonds are already coated with sugar. Overall not bad and pretty effortless to bake.