Fruit Cake for the New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful start to 2011. We had a fun party on the new year's eve and a nice start to New Year's. In my post of Key Lime Pie (which I baked during Christmas), I promised to bake a fruit cake and post my recipe. I know you must be thinking what kind of girl I am, made Key Lime Pie for Christmas and Fruit Cake for New Year? Well.. I will say...I am different :)

I remember we used to love the Fruit Cake we used to get in India. It had lots of dried cherries and nuts. Lovely buttery taste with fruits, nuts and just the perfect amount of sweetness. Today I revived that taste and my husband loved the cake.

In the traditional fruit cake, usually the fruits and nuts are soaked in rum for a couple of days atleast but I didn't want to use the alcohol. What I did was cooked the dried fruit and nuts in 1/4 cup of orange juice and 2 tsp of rum extract till the nuts and cherries soaked up all the liquid. It worked perfectly well and the cake tastes just as awesome.

Here is the recipe (Click here for printable version)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp orange essence
2 tsp rum extract
1/2 cup orange juice

Method:
1. In a pan, add orange juice, rum extract, cherries, raisins and walnuts. Cook on medium heat while stirring until all the liquid is soaked up. Switch off the gas and let this mixture cool down.
2. In a small bowl, sift together the all purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Keep aside.
3. In the bowl of your stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together at medium speed.
4. Add eggs one at a time, mixing in between. Stir in the vanilla and orange essence.
5. Now hold on to 2 tbsp of flour mixture and spoon the rest of the flour mixture into the liquid one and stir it enough to combine.
6. Sprinkle the 2 tbsp of flour mixture on the prepared fruit nut mixture and toss it well. This method will not let the fruits n nuts sink to the bottom while baking.
7. Add the nut mixture to the prepared batter and mix using a spatula.
8. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan and pour the mixture into the pan.
9. Bake in 350 degree F pre-heated oven for about 40-45 min or until the toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
10. Let cake cool for 15-20 minutes before removing from the pan and let it cool completely before slicing.

Enjoy the delicious Fruit Cake and Have a wonderful New Year! 

Sending this to Champa's Bake Off Event.