Alton Brown's Free Range Fruit Cake

This is an adaptation of Alton Brown’s Free Range Fruit Cake for the Christmas and New Year. I came to know about this brilliant recipe from Bong Mom’s CookBook and instantly fell in love with it. Couldn’t wait much further and baked this new year rum fruit cake for my family straight away after acquiring the ingredients and it turned out as awesome as the recipe promised it to be. Thank you Sandeepa and those of you who haven’t tried it yet make it today…..

Fruit Cake

Since I love to experiment with a recipe there are a few minor changes I made. The original recipe used normal granulated sugar but I used light brown sugar instead. Among the nuts I used cashew, walnuts/pecans, almonds while the original recipe mentioned only pecans and missed out on some ingredients like blueberries, cranberries because of non availability, used tutti fruity.

Fruit Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 cup gold rum
• 1 cup apple juice
• 200 gms butter
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp allspice powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon ground
• ½ tsp nutmeg ground
• 4 cloves ground
• 1 cup nuts (walnuts/pecans, almonds, cashew all lightly toasted and chopped)
• ¾ cup tutti fruiti
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 1 cup currants
• ½ cup cherries
• 1 cup dried apricots chopped
• ¼ cup candied ginger chopped
• ¼ cup candied orange peel chopped
• Zest of one lemon chopped
• Brandy for basting, I didn’t use

Fruit Cake

Process:

Step 1:

Combine all the dried fruits, cherries, tutti fruiti, candied ginger, candied orange zest and lemon zest and let them soak in rum for 24 hours.

Step 2:

Place fruit with the liquid in a non reactive pot and add sugar, butter, apple juice and spices Bring the mixture to a boil, stir often. Then lower the heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Turn off the flame, add the nuts and let the mixture cool.

After Boiling The Mixture I Put In The Nuts

Step 3:
 

Sift all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Gently fold in the flour mixture with the liquid mixture.

Step 4:
 

Beat the eggs one at a time in an electric mixer. Now mix the beaten eggs in the batter until fully incorporated.

The Cake Batter Before Going Into The Oven

Step 5:

Preheat the oven to 325 deg F or 160 deg C. Grease a baking tray well and spray with flour. Pour the cake batter into the tray and bake for 1 hour. Do the toothpick test by inserting a toothpick at the middle of the cake. If the toothpick comes out clean your cake is done, otherwise bake for 10 more minutes.

Fruit Cake

Step 6:

Take the cake tin out and cool on a wire rack. When the cake cools completely turn it out of the baking pan. Cover the cake and store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator for at least a week for the flavours to mature. If the cake feels dry then baste with brandy or rum every 2-3 days after checking. But my cake was super moist so I didn’t need basting.

Fruit Cake