Christmas Fruit Cake

I am not a big fan of fruits in butter cakes. I just felt that the taste doesn't quite pair up. But well, that's just me. Maybe I'm just being weird. ^_^ Anyway, since Christmas was around the corner and I wanted to make something Christmas-y, I chose to make a boozy fruit cake. Other than the rum added into the cake, I am also supposed to feed the cake with alcohol every 2-3 days.

The recipe is adapted from Anncoo Journal - Christmas Fruit Cake. It called for 500g of mixed fruit. I was like "hmm....it felt like a lot of fruits". But maybe it should have that much of dried fruits. Anyway, I only put in about 1/4 of the 500g of mixed fruits. I think this resulted in a shorter cake as I suppose the fruits can help with the heights of the cake. 

But oh well, I hope it still tastes good!

Ingredients:

• 250g butter
• 125g sugar 
• 4 large eggs (65g)
• 200g plain flour 
• 1/2 tsp baking powder  
• 150g mixed dried fruit (I used cranberry, raisins and apricots)
• 100g pitted prune - chopped
• 8 tbsp rum (for the dried fruits)
• 100g walnut - chopped
• 2 tbsp rum (for the cake batter)
• 2 tbsp orange juice 
• Orange zest from one orange 
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract

Method:

1. Prepare the dried fruits 1 day in advance. Add the dried fruit and pitted prune together with 8 tbsp of rum and mix well. Let the fruits soaked until the next day. I keep them in the refrigerator.
2. Beat butter and sugar untill light and fluffy, 
3. Add in rum, orange juice, orange zest and vanilla extract and mix well.
4. Add in egg yolks first, one by one, then followed by egg whites (the yolks and the whites do not need to be separated). After all the eggs are in, the batter will curdle, beat at high speed until the batter is smoother again.
5. Add 1/4 portion of flour to the mixed dried fruit and distribute the flour evenly.. 
6. Slowly add 3/4 portion of flour to butter mixture and mix well.
7. Add in mixed dried fruit and chopped walnut and mix well with a rubber spatula.
8. Pour the batter into a 8" square baking tin. 
9. Bake at preheated oven at 160 degree Celsius for 1 1/2 hour.
10. After the cake is done, take out the cake from the oven and let it cool slightly. While it is still warm, brush 3-4 tbsp of rum on to fruit cake
11. Leave cake to cool, wrap the cake with cling wrap and store in the fridge.
12. Pour 2-3 tbsp of rum on cake every three days until it is ready to serve.

This is how the batter look like after beating it past the curdling stage. It becomes
softer and creamier. Perhaps this caused the cake to be a little crumbly...

Getting ready for the oven...

Baking for the next 1 1/2 hours...

Doesn't seem to rise that much...the fruits are probably a bit heavy...

I am linking this to Yen from GoodyFoodies, Diana from The Domestic Goddess Wannabe and Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids plus Cook and Celebrate:Christmas at here.