Christmas Fruit Cake

Christmas is here again, can you believe it? What a year we’ve had. The ups, the downs, and the challenges in between, but we made it. Praise God!

I love celebrating this time of year mainly because it’s the time when we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is also during this time I get to cook and bake some of my favorite dishes that I would not normally do during the year. It’s a fun and memorable time to give and share the love of Christ and I enjoy sharing my Christmas cakes with family and friends. One of my favorite cakes to bake is Christmas Fruit Cake. I’ve been baking since my teenage years. My grand-mom, mom, aunts and I would bake Christmas Eve nights. We used to stay up late straight to Christmas morning. The only sleep we managed to get was a nap just after 4 am Christmas morning. It was a fun and learning experience to share this time with my grand-mom.

It’s a family tradition to make fruit cake every year, I love cakes and fruit cake is a must have at Christmas. This sumptuous fruit cake is a non-alcoholic fruit cake; it will give you two 8″ cakes to share as you delight.

For this recipe, I blended the fruits with grape juice. Once I’m finished, I set it aside. If you wish, you can blend the fruits the night before and leave them in the refrigerator. If you are short on time, you can use it right away. Here’s a look at the blended fruits.

Also, you need to chop the pecan & almond nuts, green and red glazed fruits in small pieces to fold into the batter. The green and red will also add some color to the cake.

How to make Christmas Fruit Cake?

1. In your blender or Food processor, blend golden and dark raisins, prunes, mixed fruits, dried cranberries, and grape juice. Set aside.
2. Grease two 8″ baking pans with butter and line them with parchment paper.
3. Preheat oven to 300°F or 149°C.
4. Add butter (at room temperature) and brown sugar to a large mixing bowl. With a hand-mixer or standing mixer, whisk until light and fluffy for about 10-15 minutes.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, vanilla extract, orange zest, and orange juice. 
6. Add egg mixture to the large bowl with butter and sugar batter, little by little. You should get about 7-8 pours. 
7. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to a bowl. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger powder, and combine.
8. Slowly add dry ingredients to the batter and stir from bottom to top with a spatula until all the dry ingredients are thoroughly combined.
9. Add the blended fruits to the batter and fold into the batter with a spatula.
10. Then fold in chopped pecans, almond nuts, red and green glazed cherries.
11. Add caramel browning to the batter and combine thoroughly.  
12. Pour batter into your prepared 8” pans and place in the oven at 300°F or 149°C and bake for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours depending on how much of the blended fruits you add. Some people like to add lots of fruits while others prefer less. 
13. When completely baked, stick a knife through each one, it should come out clean.
14. Leave to cool and refrigerate. Serve at room temperature.

These Fruit Cakes are rich, moist and packed with lots of fruits.