Plum Cake or Fruit Cake is a cake made with candied or dried fruit, nuts, and spices and soaked usually in Rum. In this recipe I have used orange juice instead of rum and it turned out delicious. 

 

 

Ingredients:

• Dried and Dry Fruits:
• Apricot and Anjeer 1/4 Cup
• Dates 1/4 Cup
• Raisins and Sulatan 1/4 Cup
• Cashew
• Almond
• Pista
• Walnut
  (All 4 mixed 1 Cup)

Mixed Spices:

• Cloves 5
• Mace 1
• Dalchini 1
• Fennel seeds 1 tsp
• Cardamom powder 1/2 tsp
• Nutmeg powder 1/2 tsp
• Pepper powder 1/2 tsp
• Start anise 1

Other Ingredients :

• Orange Juice 1 1/2 Cup
• Maida Baking Flour 1 3/4 Cup
• Sugar 1 Cup
• Salt 1/2 tsp
• Vanilla essence 1 tsp
• Butter 1/2 Cup

Preparation:

Step 1: Take a bowl add all the dried fruits and add orange juice. The quantity of the orange juice should be as such that the dried fruits are completely dipped.Keep it in fridge overnight or more.
Note ( Orange juice is a substitute of Rum. Incase of Rum just replace orange rest everything remains the same)
(You can also prepare this recipe with water add 2 cups water to the dried fruits and microwave for 10 minutes)
Step 2: Sift all the dry ingredients.
Step 3: Seperate dried fruits from orange juice.(Don’t throw away the juice as we will be using it in the batter preparation.
Step 4: Add Sugar, butter, dried fruits, vanilla essence, mixed spices and juice in parts and make a thick consistency batter. You can add more orange juice if you feel the batter is too thick.
Step 5: Tranfer it to the baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 160 degrees for 35-40 minutes or more till the toothpick comes out clean.

Allow it to cool down in a cooling rack and enjoy this sumptuous delicious Plum/Fruit Cake this Christmas.

Step by Step Recipe with pictures:

Step 1 : Add one cup orange juice to a bowl. You can use fresh orange juice, I have used tropicana for this recipe.

Step 2 :  Add 1/4 Cup of Black raisins and Sultana

Step 3 : Add 1/4 cup Dates cut into small pieces.

Step 4 : Add 1/4 Cup anjeer and apricot cut into small pieces.

Step 5: Add prunes 1/4 cup

 

 

The next day :

Step 6 : Add all the dry ingredients, sift and set aside.

 

 

 

 

Step 7 : You get mixed spices in the market, if you are unable to get here’s the secret recipe to prepare the mixed spices.

Step 8 : Add cloves 5-6

Step 9 : Add mace 1

Step 10 : Add star anise 1

Step 11 :  Add fennel seeds 1 tsp

Step 12 : Add Dalhini stick medium sized 1

Step 13 : Add nutmeg powder 1/2 tsp

Step 14 : Add black pepper powder 1/2 tsp

Step 15 : Add cardamom powder 1/2 tsp

Step 16 : Grind it to a fine powder and mix to the dry ingredients.

Step 17 : Add powdered sugar or castor sugar 1 cup

Step 18 : Add melted butter 1/4 cup

 

Step 19 : Add all the fruits that were soaked in orange juice.

Step 20 : Add any 4 dry fruits of your choice 1 cup

Step 21 : Now start adding the orange juice that was used to soak the fruits. keep adding it in parts to make the batter. if you feel the batter is too thick even after adding all of the orange juice you can add additional 1 tbsp or more of juice to get a perfect consistency.

Step 22 : Sorry adding vanilla essence too late but it won’t affect the taste though! you can add vanilla essence while adding the soaked fruits.

 

Step 23 : Add this stage put your oven in a preheating state. Preheat at 160 degrees. Line up butter paper on all sides of the mould and grease with butter too. Start adding the batter and set it on all sides. Do not over fill the mould as cake will rise once baked so leave some space for it to rise.

Step 24 : Every oven has a different settings and heat at different level . I am covering this mould with aluminium foil so that my top layer of the cake don’t harden or burn. You can use butter paper instead or just leave it open.

 

Step 25 : Since I covered the top layer with aluminium foil, it took a little more time to bake. My cake was ready in 45 minutes. Insert a toothpick and check it should come out clean , if not bake further. Also always set you baking time to 45-50 minutes but the cake should be ready earlier then that. This step is helpful when you set your bake time to 35 minutes and the cake is not ready , you have to again preheat your oven and bake the cake, this might affect the quality of the cake. Setting a +time helps a lot but make sure you keep an eye on the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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