Santa is on his way – Rum fruit cake

// 67 Comments
All set and ready? enjoying the bling bling and the redness?. Oh I’m loving it. City has completely turned white and with minimum day light (no complaints) it is glowing with numerous lights and huge decorated Christmas trees. It’s fantastic to see many merry people around, shopping, exchanging gifts, excited about their vacation, pretty much the list goes endless. Am sure it’s the same with you guys too! I already received three Christmas gifts :)), so during the weekend was wrapping mine, all to be give this week, excited! I love exchanging gifts and may be I sound like school kid, but I’m very impatient until the gift boxes are opened ;p
What have you all been baking as Christmas home made gifts?…I made rum  fruit cake, one of my fav cakes, have made it already 6 times still feels fresh whenever I bake them. Have made them as individual muffins, easy and fancy to pack as gifts….This cake has longer life time (well packed and stored-one month). The taste and flavor enhances as it ages, personally I prefer to have them after couple of days. As always I can’t resist warm cakes out of the oven but have noticed the difference as the days goes by.
Ah is anyone missing in the pictures below? Yes Santa!…He is all set and ready, reindeer is waiting for him… very soon he will visit ur house with loads of gifts and happiness. Stay tuned :)
Ingredients

For caramel:
175 gram sugar
110 ml water

For cake
275 gram  all propose flour
140 gram butter
140 gram sugar
5 eggs
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp baking powder (I usually use 2 1/2 tspn during winters)
1/4 tsp nutmeg powder
3/4 tsp cinnamon powder(You can change the spice powder amounts according to ur preference as well)
1/4 tsp clove powder
1/4 tsp cardamom powder
200 ml caramel
15 ml dark rum (I used Bacardi)
15 ml of red wine
300 gram mixed nuts+dry fruits+raisins+tutti fruity (according to ur taste, you can add more also)
2 tbsp flour

Method

Caramel

Heat wide heavy bottom pan (maintain at medium heat), gently spread the sugar in the pan evenly. Slowly the sugar will start to melt after couple of minutes. Don’t even dare to touch or stir the sugar, they will recrystallize. Just leave them to be on their own. When sugar is completely melted, they usually have beautiful amber color, now you can either use it right away or heat them for couple of more minutes till turn light brown (I prefer them with a tad bit of brown as it gives amazing color to the cake and the sweetness gets reduced very mildly). Take the pan out of heat, take them near your kitchen basin, keep it far away from you, pour in 100ml of water. Warning: expect a small chemical reaction, melted sugar is at very high temperature and with water they will almost try to explode, keep children away during this process, don’t panic it isn’t that dangerous.
After reaction cools down (within couple of seconds) now slowly stir in water until thick caramel blends well with water, let them rest for a while until it reaches room temperature. If some of thick caramel settles down, don’t worry.

Cake
Separate yolk and egg white
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (7 to 10) minutes. Now add egg yolk one by one and beat for about one minutes between each addition until they are smooth. Next add vanilla essence and mix well.
White egg whites until single peaks are formed.
Prepare the dry mixture. Combine flour, baking powder and sieve. Mix all the spice powder and combine well. Gradually, gently fold in the dry mixture and egg white alternatively to the cake batter (in 3 to 4 batches) until well combined. Now pour the gorgeous thick caramel, rum and wine. Again very gently fold in the bake batter.
Next, add two tbsp of flour to the nuts and toss them well with hands (every piece of nuts should be uniformly coated with flour, this process will prevent the nuts from sinking). Now add the nuts to the cake batter and combine them very gently.

Butter the cake pan and dust it with flour. Pour batter to 20-23 cm prepared cake pan. Bake in preheated oven at 170 degree C for about 50-70 minutes. After 50 minutes check every 10 minutes with tooth-pick until the cake is baked. It’s very dense cake, takes very long time to bake. Don’t open the oven before 45 minutes, the nuts in the cake will sink.

If you are planning to make muffins like me, pour in the batter to muffin mold/tins till it is half filled and bake in preheated oven at 170 degree C for about 25 to 30 minutes.

NOTE baking timing may vary slightly according to the oven you are using, so kindly keep a check after three quarter of specified timings.

Cool the cake on the rack till it reaches room temperature and dust caster sugar if needed.

67 comments

  6. Sanjeeta kk says:

    Wow! The cute little cakes are a great festive start, Ananda. Love the shapes and the gift wrapped goodies. Must be very flavorful.
    PS: Let me know if you need my address in case you decide to parcel one to me :)

  16. Pavithra says:

    Cute cupcakes.. truly delicious and Beautiful pictures Ananda. The whole setup looks awesome.. wonderful treat for eyes and wish u could send that gift packing to me.

  17. Pavithra says:

    Ananda when i started reading the recipe I misunderstood the flour as gram flour and i was wondering cake using gram flour. Better u delete that word gram in the flour dear.

  20. Gulmohar says:

    I can’t think of a X’mas without this cake..It’s been always part of our celebrations in Kerala :-)I will be making it this year too :-)Yours look wonderful !

  26. Sharon Moh says:

    Your photos are simply gorgeous! And the cake looks delicious! What a wonderful gift idea. Though if I made such lovely cakes they’d probably all be eaten before I can even package them!

  29. Soma says:

    What a festive post! Love the warm red shades and I cannot think of Christmas without a fruit cake. With no time this year, I baked ourselves some quick fruity loaves yesterday.

  33. Anna Johnston says:

    Yes :) Me too…, I’ll be making Christmas cakes this weekend all going well for gifts and some cookies as well. Your photos are wonderful Ananda, just beautiful. I can just imagine where you live the Christmas scene would be set with all the snow & winter scenes too.

  45. Devaki says:

    What a beautiful presentation and what a perfect bunch of rum cakes. Just what we need to crank up the festive spirit into full gear!

    Ananda, love your signature style as usual :)

    Ciao, Devaki @ weavethousandflavors

  48. Fathima says:

    I am a big fan of fruit cakes/plum cake… I have started the tradition of making them at least every Xmas… I soak the fruits in rum and mine is still soaking… will make those this weekend hopefully… love ur idea of making them into muffins… will try that out!

  55. Catherine says:

    Aww, Ananda, how cute is that wee Reindeer teddy?! I want him :’) those cakes look very festive indeed, perfect with a cup of tea (or mulled wine… tis the season after all hehe).

  56. Indie.Tea says:

    How nice, to have a white Christmas! Christmas in California is brown and gray, because it doesn’t snow here.
    The little cakes look very good, and sound nice for the holidays.

  60. Ananda Rajashekar says:

    Padhu, Sanchita, Dr.Sameena Prathap, Sharmilee, Smitha, Pari, Tanvi@Sinfully Spicy, Rachana, Swathi, Radhika, Biny Anoop, Sayantani, Chow and Chatter, Priya, Cucina di Barbara, s, Malar Gandhi, Nandini, Dimah, Marus, Sarah Naveen, Treat and Trick, EliFla, Suja Sugathan, Indie.Tea, Torviewtoronto, Jay, swapna, Alessandra, Santosh Bangar, Roshan, Smitha, Pushpa, Foodie Ann and Afsal_ Alif Tons of thanks :)

    Nithya thanks a lot :)

    Sanjeeta kk ha ha send me ur address I will post it to you quick :)

    Kairali sisters Send me ur address :)

    Pavithra send me ur address dear and! Thanks again for pointing out the mistake Pavitra :)

    My attempt at The Julie/Julia project so do I dear :)

    Kulsum@JourneyKitchen i too love all the cakes Giggle :)

    Gulmohar this cake completes the celebration i know that :)

    Satrupa send me address shall post it to you:)

    Sharon Moh haha it trust me it was very hard to resist them from eating :)

    Sarah-Jane – SiliconeMoulds.com haha will send it you to make feel lucky may be :)

    Soma Oh how nice glad you have some quick version would love to know that :)

    mr. pineapple man Thank you!

    aipi Oh yes it did….loved every bite of it :)

    Anna Johnston Yes its is soooo beautiful, have manged to click some pictures, will share it shortly with you all :)

    Ms.Chitchat Awee Thank you very much :)

    Sandhya Hariharan sending one to you :)

    Devaki Thanks for tagging my style, love that :)

    Fathima oh soaked in wine rum are bliss…hope you had fun baking them :)

    delphcotecuisine oh thanks a lot, thanks for stopping by wishes from Finland to you!

    Rosa’s Yummy Yums tell me about it…i too love anything with rum :)

    Catherine Oh yes they so good with mulled wine…slurp ha ha sending him to you :)

    Indie.Tea oh yes i know how dark Christmas sounds like…snow brings a special charm to Christmas :)

    angicock Thank You Merry Christmas to you too :)

  61. Choclette says:

    What beautiful festive photos and I do like the sound of your cakes. I rather wish I’d made those instead of the cupcakes I’ve just made for friends. I like the sound of the caramel and rum in amongst all those nuts – yum yum! I have also made chocolate and hazelnut biscotti and a few other things though, so I’ll try not to feel too disappointed.

    Hope you enjoy the festive break and unwrapping all those gifts :)

  62. Choclette says:

    What lovely festive photos and such gorgeous cakes. The caramel and rum amongst all those lovely nuts has got to be a winning combination. I rather regret having made cupcakes now. I did also make chocolate and hazelnut biscotti and a few other things.

    Enjoy the festive break and unwrapping all those lovely gifts :)

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