Dry fruits/ Christmas Cake

🎉🎊I have grown up eating the plum cake/ Christmas cake shared by friends and neighbors during the Christmas season.🎄🎅

I love this cake because it’s loaded with nuts and dry fruits and moreover it’s without any frosting as I hate frosting over any cake except for the fresh cream.

It is a tradition for many during Christmas to soak dry fruits in alcohol and bake it after a month. Though we don’t celebrate Christmas, I crave for this cake by looking at the posts in social media so eventually it became a tradition for me to bake around this season by soaking it in orange juice for a week.😍🎊🎉

Ingredients:

Flour - 1 and 1/4 cup (250 gm)

Brown Sugar - 1 cup (236 gm)

Butter - 114 gm

Oil - 100 ml

Egg - 4

Molasses/Powdered jaggery - 2 tbsp

Vanilla extract- 2 tsp

Mixed spice powder - 1 tsp

Cinnamon powder - 1/2 tsp

Ground Nutmeg - a pinch

Salt - 1/4 tsp

Mixed fruits and nuts - 500 gm

Step by Step Instructions:

Beat sugar and room temperature butter until creamy using a hand mixer.

Then add oil and beat well.

Now add the 4 eggs one by one and mix until combined well and looks creamy.

Add the molasses, vanilla extract, mixed spice powder, cinnamon powder and salt. Give a mix.

Add flour into it and combine well to form a smooth batter.

Add the soaked dry fruits & nuts straining the juice and mix well. Save the juice for the feed after baking is done.

Grease the baking pan with butter and dust with flour to keep it ready or line with a parchment paper. I used two 7 inch pans. You can also use a single 9 inch pan.

Fill the batter in the pan till 3/4th of it and decorate it with whole nuts and fruits for a pretty appeal.

Cover the pan with a foil to prevent the top from burning and over coloring as we are going to bake it for longer duration.

Preheat and Bake at 285F for 3 hours and 30 minutes or the top turns dark.

Once baked, poke with a tooth pick to check it’s comes out clean. Poke some holes on the top and brush about 2 teaspoons of the remaining orange juice. Allow it to cool completely.

Store the cake in room temperature for a day or two and after that store it in refrigerator.