Christmas Fruit Cake
Abuja, Nigeria · View all recipes
Overview
Christmas fruit cake is a dense cake loaded with dried and candied fruit, nuts and warm spices, soaked in rum or brandy, and made well ahead of the holiday it is named for. The alcohol is doing more than flavouring. Spirits act as a preservative, and the traditional practice of feeding a fruit cake, brushing it with more rum or brandy at intervals over weeks, both keeps it and deepens it. A properly fed fruit cake improves for months, which is why it is baked long before it is eaten and why it survives being posted. Raisins, currants, cherries and citron are the classic fruits. Mango appears in versions made where mango is what there is, which is a reasonable indication of how far the cake has travelled. It is a genuinely divisive cake. Its detractors have a point about the density and the candied peel; its defenders point out that most people's experience of it is a mass-produced one that was never fed. **This is not an African dish.** It sits in the Worldwide collection because the page exists and receives visitors, and removing it would break a working link.
AFN Heritage Note
Fruit cake is a long-keeping European festive cake in which the spirit content acts as a preservative, allowing it to be baked well in advance and periodically fed with additional alcohol to mature.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Soak dried fruits in rum for at least 24 hours first to plump them up.
- 2
Fold the soaked, candied fruits and nuts gently into the finished cake batter.
- 3
Bake until an inserted toothpick comes out clean, about 45 minutes.
- 4
Brush rum over the baked cake while still warm from the oven.
- 5
Seal the cake tightly with cheesecloth and parchment before storing to age.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Deborah Olayiwola- Soak the dried fruit in the spirit overnight before you start, not just for an hour.
- Line the tin with a double layer of parchment. It bakes long and slow and the outside will scorch otherwise.
- Feed it every week or two, a tablespoon of rum or brandy brushed over the surface.
- Bake low and slow. A hot oven sets the outside long before the middle is done.
Questions cooks ask
Why does fruit cake keep for so long?
The combination of sugar, dried fruit and alcohol. All three limit the water available for spoilage, and the spirit brushed on during feeding continues the effect. A well-made and regularly fed fruit cake can keep for many months and is generally considered to improve over that time.
Can I make it without alcohol?
Yes, and non-alcoholic versions are common, fruit juice, cold tea or apple juice can be used to soak the fruit. It will not keep anywhere near as long, so make it closer to when you need it and store it in the fridge.
Why is it on an African food website?
It is not an African dish. It appears in the Worldwide collection, which exists for non-African recipes that already have live pages on the platform. The page is kept and reclassified rather than deleted, because removing it would break a link that currently works.
Reviews
Be the first to rate this recipe
Cooked it? Your rating helps the next person decide whether to try it.
No reviews on this one yet. If you have cooked it, yours would be the first.