A few weeks ago before I left for Japan the hubby asked where we could purchase fruitcake in Singapore. I asked a couple of friends and no knew where to buy fruitcake. My friend Tappy said that she had just made one. For two weeks she coached me and shared her learnings from baking fruitcake. Luckily I was in Sydney she started to teach me and I realized it would be cheaper to buy ingredients there. Went back to Singapore with two super heavy luggages and got a bottle of whiskey from duty free. I was all set.
Before I started work on the fruitcake, Tappy had me review a couple of things:
1.
The fruitcake recipe from BBC - read this many times and also had to work on converting the measurements.
2.
How to line a round cake tin - important to watch especially if you've never done this before
3.
Demo video - good to watch so you have a better idea on how to prepare for baking
4.
Will newspaper burn in an oven? - a question you will definitely ask yourself if you've never done this before. At 150'C newspaper will not burn, just make sure your pan won't touch the sides and top of the oven (hubby partly burnt a mitt because it touched the oven ceiling).
Ingredients
The ingredients listed
here were fairly easy to find at Coles in Sydney. We also checked at Giant in Singapore and they had most of it. Tappy said that the ingredients were cheaper at Fairprice. All the ingredients though were much cheaper to buy in Sydney. One tip given in the video is to purchase the dried fruits after Christmas since it's usually on sale. Purchase your alcohol too in duty free if you can so it's cheaper.
Method
I read other recipes where they soaked the dried fruit in whisky overnight before baking. The BBC recipe did not do this, but Tappy suggested it would be good to do. So I soaked the 1 kilogram of dried fruit in 150 ml of whisky overnight. I used a clear Corelle pan with cover and mixed it with a plastic spoon.
The next day I simmered the dried fruit soaked in whisky with butter, orange and lemon zest, orange and lemon juice, and brown sugar for about five minutes. I returned it to the clear pan to cool. I waited more than an hour for the mixture to cool before I mixed it with the dry ingredients.
While waiting for the mixture to cool I prepared the round 8 inch tin. Cut the baking paper and put the newspaper around the tin. Hubby was very nervous about the newspaper since it was my first time to do it. I made sure to use cooking string (Tappy said she used metal paperclip to hold it).
*I trimmed down the newspaper
Once the mixture was cool I proceeded to mix the dry ingredients and then slowly added the mixture. During that time I got help from hubby to pre-heat the oven to 150'C for 10 minutes.
Then the egg and vanilla.
After mixing it thoroughly I put the mixture in the baking tin.
Then I popped in the pan in the oven. Watched it closely for 15 minutes to make sure the newspaper won't burn (sorry was paranoid!). At 90 minutes the cake started to smell like it was burning so I put a foil on top so that the top of the cake won't brown too much.
At 2 hours I was really surprised to see it was cooked through and did not need additional baking time. Removed it from the oven and put it on top of a wire rack. Took off the newspaper and let it cool a bit. While it was still warm I put 1 tablespoon of whisky on top after poking a few holes. Left if on the dining table overnight to cool.
In the morning I removed the cake from the tin. Poked a few holes and wiped it with another tablespoon of whisky. Wrapped it in cling wrap and then tin foil for the outside. It's in the fridge now. I'll feed it with more whisky in a few days.
Now have to sit tight for a few weeks before we eat it!
