Rose's Alpha Bakers: English Dried Fruit Cake

Another week of baking with my Rose's Alpha Bakers friends. Up this week: English Dried Fruit Cake. I'm a little late in getting my cake posted, but have been juggling the end of the semester and writing two papers...not to mention working full-time!

I actually made the cake last week and brought it to my office holiday party - it was a big hit (although, I made sure not to label it "fruit cake" so as not to scare anyone off!) so I had the cake and the photos done last week...I just didn't have time to write up my post.

a lovely spice cake with apples, raisins, and pecans

I am not a fan of English fruit cakes, so there was no way I was going to add any glacéed fruit. But, luckily this recipe didn't call for any! The recipe called for any mix of dried fruit that you'd like, in addition to fresh apples, so I kept it simple and just added raisins. So, in reality, my iteration of Rose's English Dried Fruit Cake was more of a spice cake with apples, raisins, and pecans (and rum).

The cake itself was very moist, even 3 days later, so I would recommend this cake if you need to bake something in advance. I added the optional rum into the batter itself so it had a nice, little rum background flavor - it was very nice. The cake also make a lot of pieces, so a good cake for a party or a crowd. Next time I would add more spices - definitely nutmeg and probably some ginger as well.

Enjoy!

mise en place - a pretty easy cake to make!

butter and sugar get melted down together...

... and then cooked for a few minutes

while the raisins are being "plumped" up in boiling water

the apples and zest are added to the sugar-butter mixture
...I had to try a bite of this, just to be sure...(delicious!)

then the eggs are added one-by-one

the nuts and raisins are tossed in the flour
(next time I would add the raisins directly to the wet mixture because
a lot of flour stuck to the wet raisins even after baking and didn't look good)

not very appetizing-looking batter...

but, ahhh, the finished cakes were much nicer!

delicious!

...I'd better just try a bite before the party. Yum!

Bye for now...