A FRUIT CAKE RECIPE-XMAS TIME!

After marriag ei have been devouring food blogs :P,hehe hardless to say im a big fan and i love reading the blogs(minus the writers intro)better than love lost life sucks usual blogs!Actually fruit cake was the first cake i baked on my microwave and mind you I dnt have the convection oven in my microwave,its just a simple micro,but nevertheless I so wanted to bake a cake n tried it out.I first made my recipe eggless version cos i was scared if it wud be baked well,i used the recipe from shilpas blog (am avoiding using the blog names cos it shudnt seem like plagiarism,blog bites is making same recipe frm another blog and thats how I do it)and it came out very well,i loved the fact I could throw in all my dry fruits and nuts-almonds,cashews,dates,prunes,raisins and apricots.Mind you I NEVER soak my fruits in alcohol,dead against the use of liquer..Another disadvntage of micro is that cakes bcum hard aftr coolin,so u hav to reheat n it gets bak to soft textures,also size matters(litre capacity) and I use my round glass basin to bake-a 1.5 ltr bowl,a std 9"x8" bowl.this was in june i tink n well after mastering my searches on Indian blogs(very patriotic)last week I made a table brk up of 6 different kerala fruit/plum cake recipes(we dnt add plums btw just cherries!).frankly to be cald a good bakist(hehe new term coined by moi!),u hav to hav a aweighing scale n good measuring tools,funnily I always like to break the order and do my own thing,sometimes it helps and well sometimes not :P.My mum has gifted me some of my kitchen items like measuring jugs,spoons,icing bag n list goes on.Also use ingredients at rom temprature like eggs and butter,powder sugar aftr weighing, use a sieve to sift dry ingrdnts helps to mix it well,never beat a cake mixture hard mixing dry ingrdnts with the wet ones.Differences btw eggs and eggless versions I will detail in the end,also if u wnt the list of blogs i cud help u out :)

So heres my recipe to my fruit cake,I cant give any oven temperature setting or timings,but It took me a well 10 mins to get it cooked on micro high,centre was a bit runny,i should hav used a bigger bowl or half baked the quantity twice..I used 1:1:1 ratio of flour,butter and sugar.
TIP:Cake flour is expensive,but yield best result i think,but surely all purpose flour can be converted by just adding some salt and baking powder(read this amazing tip frm aparnas blog)
I used 1 cup of flour wit a pinch of salt and 1 tsp of baking pwdr.Then cream well butter add sugar slowly melting it well add yolks of 2 eggs.(Most blogs refer to not seperating eggs which is so easy!but I had an egg white seperator and so beated the egg whites to form hard peaks,sadly i used my hand beater,pls use an electric whisk for best results,else whites bcum watery n dnt giv a gud result).To the cream mix,add spoons of flour alternating with egg white.Prepare sugar caramel,i use my pressure cooker,just use half a cup of sugar add 1 tbsp of water and keep it on med-low heat till it turns dark,add a quarter cup of hot water carefully(cos it spits!)after flame is off.To the cooled caramel add a cup of orange juice(even apple is gr8,i hav tried),the chopped tuttifruit,glace cherries,raisins,prunes,almonds,apricots and a tbsp of jam and a tsp of vanilla essence.Add this by hand to the final mix slowly.There the batter is done,color is of lite brwn cos of caramel now time to bake,u can drizzle on some more juice as soon as cake is out,to soak up more flavour.

In the west ppl use brwn sugar,black treacle,zest of lemon,candied peels,rum and orange liquer.Fruits do sink to bottom but i nvr try to dust it with flour so it stays afloat,lazyyyyyyy..
Cake tastes better with ageing so i made mine way ahead of xmas,almost 10 days earlier,if u hav a cake box store it in it else airtight and in a cool place.Soaking of fruits can be done months ahead and its all about the spirit(literally :P)!!!

i will post a pic if i could make it look more festive!but a small try at my version of food blogging.

Merry Xmas Folks,Ho Ho Ho :D