Christmas Fruit Cake

Having lived in Kerala for most of my life with many malayalee Christian neighbors and friends, Christmas never went unnoticed. Even though Carols and Christmas stars put up in front of everyone's homes reminded you that Christmas was here, the highlight of the holiday season were the numerous fruit / plum Christmas cakes and home made wine that we used to get from our friends and neighbors. Only much later did I realize that some of these cakes were in incubation for almost a year, with the fruits being soaked in rum or brandy for that long before they were put in the cake.  It was not always for that long that these fruits were soaked, sometimes it was only for a few months, weeks or even a few days. But the longer they soaked, the better they were. Obviously!

I have always wanted to bake one of these cakes but never actually got around to doing that. What pushed me into baking one this year was that I forgot to bring back one from Kerala when I visited India last month. Now I had two choices – bake one or wait till someone went to Kerala to bring me back one. I did not really have the patience to wait that long but was lazy to actually bake a cake too. After much debate I finally decided to bake it myself but by then it was a little late and I could soak the fruits in rum for only a few days. It still turned out to be a lot better than what I expected it to be. I found a really good recipe in the New England Malayalee Association's blog and while using that as the base, made my own Christmas fruit cake. The measurements for ingredients are the same from this recipe, only I changed some of the ingredients a bit.

Christmas Fruit Cake - The Recipe

Candied fruits and peels - 1 box (you get it in the produce section at the grocery store - 8 to 12 oz tub)
Raisins - 2 cups
Rum - 1 1/2 cups
All purpose flour - 4 cups
Baking powder - 3 tsp
Butter, softened - 4 sticks (1 lb)
Sugar  - 4 cups
Caramel - 4 tbsp (the original recipe called for making caramel from scratch but I had a tin of readymade caramel I had bought on one of my trips, so I used that)
Eggs, at room temperature - 12
Powdered cinnamon - 1 tsp
Powdered nutmeg - 1 tsp
Powdered cloves - 1 tsp
Powdered dry ginger - 1 tsp
Pumpkin spice powder - 1 tsp
Salt - 3 tsp
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp

Add the rum to the dried fruit mix and raisins and keep them soaked in the rum, at room temperature for about 2 weeks ( I managed to soak them for only 3-4 days).
Preheat the oven to 350F and grease two square/round cake pans. Sift the flour and baking powder in a bowl. In a larger bowl, cream the butter and sugar and whisk the eggs together one at a time. Add the caramel, powdered spices, salt and vanilla and mix well. Now add the dry ingredients to this. Once mixed well, add the rum soaked dried fruits to this. Spoon into the prepped pans and bake for 1 hr or until done. Once done, remove from oven and let it rest on a cooling rack. You can pour some more rum on top of this at this point of time. Once cooled, wrap it tight and refrigerate.