I cannot understand myself sometimes. The apartment is already full of all kinds of treats, but I am not done! There is still one thing I want to bake, and I will do it today! (I am very happy that there is a workplace full of sweet-toothed coworkers waiting…)
This post was actually planned already last year, but I noticed that I started making the preparations far too late — no matter how excited you are, an English fruitcake just takes its time. This year, however, I am ready in time, and today I will start baking so that I can taste this fruity delicacy well before I travel to my childhood home for the holidays.
Even though I translated this recipe as a traditional English fruitcake, I am using an adaptation suited to Finnish ingredients. Since this recipe uses fairly basic ingredients, it was easy to adjust.
Traditional English Fruitcake
- 1 dl yellow raisins
- 100 g succade
- 85 g preserved cherries
- 2 tbsp rum, almond liqueur, or the liquid from the cherries
- 200 g salted butter
- 2 dl sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar
- 3 eggs
- 260 g wheat flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 0.5 dl heavy cream
- Measure the succade, raisins, chopped cherries, and liquid into a bowl and let them soak. Mix to ensure the liquid is evenly absorbed.
- Whip the softened butter with the sugar. Add the eggs one by one.
- Mix the flour with the baking powder. Use some of it to coat the fruit. Add the remaining flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating with the cream.
- Pour the batter into a breadcrumbed loaf tin and bake at 175 °C for 60–70 minutes on the lowest level of the oven. Cover with baking paper towards the end of the baking time.
The recipe was very easy to prepare — the trickiest part was definitely the baking, as the baking time was so long. The consistency is very heavy; you can feel in your soul that this is definitely a Christmas recipe!
Maybe it was a bit much after all for my December, but this was a nice experiment. And after this, I would really like to try this kind of cake from a real British bakery.
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