The rum plum cake reminds me so much like christmas in my home town, Nagercoil, India. The bakeries in this town are crazy full during christmas time and the cakes get sold out in no time.. Especially the famous “Greatest Bakery” their plum cake is the best and you can keep it for a few weeks. I tried making my version of the christmas cake.. it did not have the same colour tho!!!
The main thing for this cake is the rum / brandy soaked fruits.. I used cranberries, black raisins and normal raisins.
Rum Soaked Fruits:
- 750ml Jar
- Black raisins – 150gm
- Raisins – 125 gm
- Cranberries – 150gm (chopped)
- Rum – 150ml
method:
- Clean, sterilise and dry the jar.
- Place the raisins and cranberries in layers in the bottle (you can add apricot or whatever you want).
- Pour the rum in until its more or less submerged in rum.
- Keep the bottle/jar in a cool dark place and shake the bottle once a day.
- You can keep the fruits soaked for a week to 6 months. I started a wee bit late and i had them soaked for about 4 weeks.
Ingredients
Christmas Cake: (makes 6 small cakes of 4.5 inch baking pan)
- Flour – 250gm
- Butter – 200gm
- Dark brown Sugar – 200gm
- white sugar – 150gm
- Baking powder – 2 teaspoons
- Eggs – 4 large
- Vanilla – 2 teaspoon
- Cinnamon powder – 2 teaspoon
- Ginger powder – 2 teaspoons
- Candied orange peel – optional (Recipe found in the DIY section soon)
- Nutmeg – 1/2 teaspoon
- Rum – 125ml
- Milk – 60ml
Glaze:
- icing sugar -100gm
- Warm water – 2-3 tablespoons (depending on the consistency)
Method:
Christmas Cake:
- Before you start the cake, you need to do 2 things
- Drain the fruits on a sieve and let the alcohol run out of the rum soaked fruits.
- Make Caramel, Heat up the dark brown sugar with 60ml water until completely dissolved. Let it cool
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Butter the tins and coat them with flour.
- In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Beat in one egg at a time.
- Sift in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon powder, ginger powder and nutmeg.
- Add the rum and vanilla. Mix well.
- Add the milk and mix well until completely incorporated.
- Coat the fruits with a little bit of flour and fold it in the batter.
- Fill the cake tin with half the batter and bake for about 20-30 minutes, check from about 25 minutes.
- Once baked let it cool on a cooling rack.
Glaze:
- In a large bowl, Sift the icing sugar and add the warm water. The water is added as you like for the consistency.
- I wanted it as a thin glaze as i was planning to coat it with royal icing that was left over from icing of the gingerbread cookies.
Merry Christmas and
Happy Baking
xx
Happy Baking
xx