Fruit Cake

This recipe is from my brother-in-law Anirudh and is made with bread instead of flour. What a wonderful way to use up old bread. He baked it for my birthday, and it goes best with coffee on the side. 

Ingredients:

2 cups of dried fruit - mixture of very sweet fruits like raisins and less sweet ones like currants

Enough alcohol (dark rum/whiskey) to submerge the fruits fully. I add Angostura and orange bitters for extra taste. Adding something like Grand Marnier also does wonders.

1 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of almonds powdered

1 cup of white bread crumbs (have a little more ready if the cake mixture gets too runny)

0.5 cups of cashews broken (or walnuts depending on taste)

0.5 cups of slivered (thin sliced) almonds

Zest from 1 navel orange

Juice from that orange

0.5 cups of butter, room temperature 

2 eggs

1 teaspoon of shahjeera, slightly crushed.

3-4 cloves, powdered 

0.5 piece of star anise, powdered

0.5 teaspoon of cinnamon

0.25 teaspoon of dry ginger powder 

0.25 teaspoon of coriander powder

0.25 teaspoon of nutmeg 

Method:

Preheat oven at 180C/350F

In a dry bottle, add fruits and sugar and soak them with the alcohol for at least 24 hours. Don't soak the nuts.

Mix the dry ingredients including spices

Beat the butter and eggs for a couple of minutes. Pour into the dry mixture 

Add zest and orange juice 

Add the dry fruit mixture to the mix.

Fold/mix everything. The mixture should be between chapati dough and idly batter. Add more bread crumbs if too runny, add orange juice if too dry. At the end, this consistency is what matters. You can increase or decrease ingredients you like but work to get the final consistency right.

Bake it in a buttered, deep dish for 45 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Reduce the heat if the oven is small. Reduce the heat and bake for longer if the top is baked but the inside isn't.

Drizzle some whiskey or rum over the hot cake (optional and definitely avoid if children will eat). Note that not all the alcohol evaporates even without this.

Best eaten the next day.