Fruit Cake Recipe Demonstration – Joyofbaking.com

Hi, I'm Stephanie Jaworski of joybaking.com. Today we're going to make a fruit cake and this is what it looks like. This cake is just loaded with nuts and candied fruit and dried fruit and really just enough cake batter to hold everything together. So the first thing you need to do is to preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit which is 160 degrees Celsius and then we will need an 8 inch 20 centimeter springform pan. Get the two pieces here with the clamp so you just put that in there whoop clamp that down and then I am going to butter my pan both the bottom and the sides and what I've done is just I melted just a little butter and then I've got a pastry brush. I find it much easier to do it that way than taking like a real like a hunk of butter and then rubbing it makes it a little quicker to do it this way so then just make sure you got everything well greased here and then what we want to do is to line the bottom so I just have a round here put that there this is going to make it much easier for us to unmold our cake when we're done and then what I've done is taken a long strip of parchment paper and this what you want to do I think this is about three inches which is what seven and a half centimeter sides so you want to cut your parchment paper to go a little like maybe an inch or so maybe or two inches above the rim so you know maybe four or five centimeters up like so and then just mine's a little longer so I'm going to butter that so you see if you butter your pan really your parchment will really stick okay so that's so as you can see here a fruit cake has so many ingredients so what I like to do just so I don't forget anything is to do what I would do at home is to do what I've done here and lay get everything done before you actually start making your fruit cake so if you have an electric stand mixer like I have here use your paddle attachment or you could use a hand mixer or really you could just a large bowl wooden spoon the first ingredient you will need is one cup 225 grams of butter I like the unsalted I prefer the flavor you could use salted here as well either one just leave if you're using salted butter as always just leave out the salt that's called for in the recipe now first I'm just going to beat this the butter just till it gets nice and smooth okay and whenever you're making any kind of batter make sure you scrape down the sides and your the bottom of your bowl as much as you need to make sure everything gets mixed together so the next ingredient is one cup 210 grams of firmly packed light brown sugar dump that in there and then I'm going to beat this on medium high speed probably two three minutes we want to get some air in the batter in the with in these two ingredients so maybe two three minutes on medium high speed that looks good as you can see we're just looking to get them all nicely creamed together with some air next you will need three large eggs that would be 165 grams out of the shell and have your eggs at room temperature and I'm going to add them one at a time because they mix in better if I do it one at a time so I'm going to beat that in then add the next one add the next one I'm going to just scrape this down make sure everything's mixed in if you there's a lot of liquid you got the fat the butter and then all these eggs so you know your batter if it curdles don't worry about it that's very normal here I'm just going to beat this just for a second more because once we add our dry ingredients if there's curdling that'll just smooth right out so now next we are making a traditional fruit cake which means it has some booze alcohol both in the cake and then we're going to brush the outside of the cake so I am now adding three tablespoons 35 grams now you can use there's various choices I'm using Grand Marnier because I like that orange flavor you could use just a cognac you could use the sherry you could use a rum probably whiskey you know whatever you like and have in the house and then also what you will need is the the zest which is the outside skin plus the juice of one orange which I've already done that so I have now always when you're doing this wash your fruit first and then I've used like a microplane you could use a box grater to get your zest and then cut it in half and squeeze the juice for reference purposes I mean really we're just doing this for a little flavor this is about a quarter of a cup 60 grams of orange juice and then we also are going to do just get the zest of one large one lemon again wash your lemon first and then get the zest you know adding a little bit of citrus juice and the zest really kind of perks up all the flavors in your cake so there we go and I'm just going to beat that in like I said you're going to have some major curdling of your batter here with all that liquid but we will remedy that in a moment so in a separate bowl I have two cups 260 grams of all-purpose flour you may know that is plain flour and I'm also going to add to this three quarters of a cup 75 grams of ground almonds now these ones I just bought you know you can buy bags of ground almonds I find in your grocery store a lot of times now is they're on the baking aisle or in the health food section or what you can do is just take some almonds and put them in your food processor and just process them until they're finely ground just be careful you don't overdo it and then you end up with a paste and then also I'm adding one teaspoon four grams of baking powder and then a quarter of a teaspoon or no a half a teaspoon two grams of salt I'm just going to whisk that together and then the most important part is the nuts and our fruit because that's what a fruit cake is all about so you will need two and a quarter pounds which is one kilogram of a variety of canned or a dried and candied fruit really this is up to you you can use there's use the fruits that you like and that you can find I'm going to tell you just kind of what I have here I'm using a combination of the dark raisins golden raisins and I'm kind of using about equal weight of each of these I'm using some dried I have here both dried cranberries and dried cherries and then I have some dried figs and I've cut them you know kind of coarsely chopped them up always when you're cutting figs make sure you take off that there's a little end on it cut that off and then cut them up prunes you sometimes I use a combination of figs and prunes and you know some another idea is like apricots or mango because it has a bright nice orange color that kind of pop makes it kind of pops in your fruit cake so you know it's another thing I'm also using because I really like them the candied cherries I like the color and I I do like candied cherries what can I say and then I'm also using the candied mixed peel that you can buy and just as a side note here you know a lot of times your your candied fruit you can only kind of find around the holiday season so what I do is I usually buy extra sometimes I wait till after Christmas when it goes on sale and just pick up a few extra so I can make if I want to make a fruit cake or other things during the rest of the year and we need some chopped nuts you will need one cup 100 grams of chopped nuts I'm using almonds since I kind of go I got the ground almonds so I'll keep the almond thing going on but you could use walnuts pecans hazelnuts or kind of a combination so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to dump all of these now because at home you really don't have to put in separate like I've done I just wanted to show you the right you can just dump when you're measuring out your two and a quarter cups two and a quarter pounds sorry or one kilogram just put it in a large bowl you can see this is a lot of fruit here and now because some of the especially your dried fruits kind of stick together so what I do at this point is I just take I mean just take a couple big spoonfuls of my flour and then I just kind of toss one because you know like your raisins and stuff like and your dried cranberries and cherries they tend to like kind of stick together so the flour I'm going to actually I get my hands in there to kind of separate them so you don't get like clumps in your fruitcake so as you can see this is not difficult it's I find the most work to me is just getting everything measured out that part and cut up and all that kind of stuff but the actual batter is fairly easy to make so I'm just gonna wipe my hands here now I'm going to add all of this so as you can see that's a lot of fruit and nuts sure you get all the flour and then I'm going to slowly mix this in if you want to you could do it just by hand or I'm gonna try to use my beater here okay as you can see I know we can see it's all it's amazing how it all mixed straight in there so now all that's left is our flour mixture and I'll just slowly mix that in and we're done as you can see it I mean really it's the time is assembling all your ingredients now I'm just gonna make sure all that flour oh great let's put in here now as you know well if you've ever made this kind of fruitcake we are going to once it's we finish baking it and cooling it we're going to brush the outside with alcohol and we have to feed this brush it like over I'd say at least a couple weeks two three weeks you know once or twice a week you brush take your brush the cake with alcohol so this is a cake that if you're making it for Christmas is when you know most people want it so you know you you want to start it you know at least I'd say two three weeks before so maybe you know the beginning of December so this is a do ahead which is great because we're busy during the holiday season and if we whoop if we can do something ahead of time all the better and that's and then this cake you can freeze it you can keep it because we are going to brush it with a lot of alcohol that's not only does it give it the your cake a lot of flavor it it preserves it so it's a really cake that you can freeze or keep you know in a cool place for several months so now I'm just going to press this down as you could as you saw it was a very thick batter now you can um if you want at this point you can decorate the top with some you know nuts almonds or pecans or you know walnuts if you want to do that or a lot of people what they like to do is once they're ready to serve the cake they decorate it then with maybe you know some candied cherries and some toasted nuts and then just use some jam apricot preserves or something as a glue so either way or you could just skip that and just enjoy the cake as is which is typically a lot of times that's what I do so just make sure this is all pat down because this is really it's just all really thick batter okay so I'm happy with that and then like I said you could take you know hopefully you can see over the parchment you can just take some almonds and just press it into the top you know the way you want if you want to do that which we will so now this cake because we have a lot of fruit and nuts it takes quite a while to bake we are going to bake it at 325 or the 160 for one hour then you're going to turn your heat down to 300 that's 150 see and we're going to bake it for an additional I'd say 80 to 90 minutes so it's going to and you're looking it's going to turn nice and brown and then when the you take a skewer or toothpick and put it in you will get like a few moist crumbs coming out if you find you're it really over browns and you don't like that you could put some foil over the top and as always everyone's oven is a little different sometimes your oven can run a little hot so check it you know check it before if I say 80 minutes check it maybe at 70 minutes at that final 70 minutes because we don't want to over bake it so one hour and then turn your oven down to 300 Fahrenheit 160 150 and then another 80 to 90 minutes okay so our fruit cake is now baked doesn't that look gorgeous toothpick inserted in the center just came out with a little bit of moist crumbs so now I've put it on a wire rack and I'm just going to let it cool and then when we come back we will brush it with some alcohol so now our cake has cooled down I take off the ring and feel back the paper and then I find I can just lift it right off that plate and then it's still a little warm but I like to brush it with the alcohol while it's still a little warm this time so now I'm just taking you can just take a toothpick or some kind of skewer and just poke some holes all over the top help that alcohol get in and then I usually just around the sides and then because I put Grand Marnier in my cake I'm going to actually brush it with some Grand Marnier again you could use brandy, cognac, sherry, rum, whiskey and just put a nice coating now what you're going to do is we're going to do this and then I'm going to let it finish cooling then I'm going to wrap it in plastic wrap and foil and if you had like a cake tin you could put it in your cake tin and we want to store it you know like I said I find two three weeks and then take it out you know a couple times a week and just again brush it with whatever alcohol you're using and then you'll have a wonderful flavored fruit cake and like I said the alcohol acts as a preservative now if you live in a cooler like you want to store this cake once you cover it and store it in a cool dry place of course if you're in a colder climate you can just maybe put it in your basement or something like that because I live in a very warm climate I like to I store it in the fridge and then just take it out you know a couple times a week and brush it and then after that time you will have a wonderful tasting fruit cake like I said you can store for several months or you can freeze it I find at least a year you can freeze it which is nice because then all year you can just take out so I'm going to try it this one I made probably I don't know three weeks ago so I would have it ready to try and as you can see it gets because I keep brushing it with alcohol over the weeks it gets much darker in color so you don't worry if yours does that oh I know fruit cakes one of those things you either love it or you hate it I personally love it um so moist so flavorful you've got all those fruit all the dried and candy fruit and the nuts and then I find the alcohol flavor it adds moisture and add but it's not a strong really like alcohol flavor just very nice orange very nice so try it and until next time I'm Stephanie Jaworski of joybaking.com